I had been hanging on to these shot to post in the "behind the photo" contest but it seems to not be happening so today they get to see the light of day. Entitled Patience as the final capture took some waiting around for it to happen. The subject is a Nudibranch the stunning looking Nembrotha Kubaryana, also called the Variable Neon Slug. Nudibranchia are a massive group of sea slugs, generally they have amazing colour schemes and can vary in size from 4mm to 400mm, found all over the planet but abundant in tropical waters, there are a unknown amount of varieties exceeding 5000 and counting as new ones are often discovered.
I always dive with my camera and love nudi's as they are slow moving and this gives you time to attempt many shots hopefully leading to photo worth keeping. On this day I was about 40 minutes into the dive when I spotted this chap crawling up the reef. To get my eye and focus in I took a quick shot but it just wasn't positioned how I would like.
First attempt.
Ok this is going to be a waiting game , the shot i'm after is face on and this little guy is in the process of climbing to the top of a cliff in his world, five more minutes and we are getting closer to the image in my minds eye.
Still not what I want but better.
With air starting to run low I urge the critter to get a move on. Its still not playing the game, will I get the photo i'm hoping for or will I run out of air first?
Come on dude get a move on.
Finally with its mountainous climb over it has reached the peak and starting to take on the shape I was hoping for but still not posing for the camera, come on my little friend, air and time are getting short and all I want is to take a quick photo to show the world that slugs can be beautiful but time is air and i'm gonna have to leave soon.
Please look this way.
Then finally as if my thoughts had been heard, a glance straight at the camera as if to say go on then get on with it, a couple of pops of the shutter and bingo, at last this is what I was after, quick check of my gauges and it was time to go, safety stop and back to the surface. Underwater photography poses many challenges but the biggest issue is time constraint we can only stay as long as we have air to breath. Hope you like the final shot, what I was waiting for was the way they rear up and take on the form of a Dragon (well that's what I see).
Patience is a virtue!
Thanks for taking a look if you are interested in the man behind the photos check this out.
[My re- introduction to the HIVE community.](https://hive.blog/hive-174578/@biggypauls/my-re-introduction-to-the-hive-community)
