This page will let you know what we have been up to and any changes made to our web site.
September 2009
We just got back from Fiji where we did some "bad" shark dives with Beqa
Adventure Divers in Beqa Lagoon. Pictures coming soon.
October 2008
We spent two wonderful weeks in Lembeh Strait, Indonesia. The last time
we dived in Indonesia was a liveaboard trip to Komodo way back in 2001.
This trip reminded us of what we have been missing. We have never
seen so many critters and such a variety in any one place.
We have added the first page of our
Lembeh gallery here,
more pages to come as we process our photos.
August 2008
Diane and I headed up to Haapai in Tonga to spend a week with our friend
Glenn Edney and his whale watching and diving business. It was
great to get away from the wet winter we were having and enjoy sunshine,
warmth and lots of whales. We were also fortunate to be able to
get into the water with whales five of the seven days we went out.
We have added a new page to our
Tonga gallery with
pictures from this trip.
April 2008
No news is good news. It has been over a year since we updated our
web site. In the intervening time we have been to the UK (May
2007) to visit Diane's relatives and discover some long lost relatives
on the Armstrong side. This was not a diving trip, instead our
first real holiday in years without diving. We stayed in Weaverham
with Diane's Aunt June and saw parts of Wales, Scotland and Ireland as
well as England.
In February 2008 we went on a cruise with Quark Expeditions to the Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia and Falkland Islands. This was a really fantastic trip, although once again no diving was involved. We have loads of photos to process and will add some new galleries in the next month or so.
October 2006
Ross received a highly commended in the wildlife photographer of the
year competition with a photo taken from the Poor Knights.
We have just got back from eight wonderful nights at Sipadan Water Village. The diving was great, both muck diving for unusual critters around Mabul and Kapalai Islands and also Sipadan Island for bigger fish and turtles. We expect to have the gallery available before the end of October.
August 2006
We spent a couple of wonderful weeks in the
Ha'apai island group in Tonga with our friends Glenn and Tiana Edney. Our
objective was to see humpback whales which we did (above water) on every
day but only managed to get in the water with a mother and calf on our
last day. It was an unforgettable experience, although the
conditions (windy and stirred up water) prevented us getting
really great pictures.
July 2006
28 July - We saw a porcupine fish at
the Poor Knights today. This is a fish we have not seen at the
Knights before, we have seen them on the Northland coast on several
occasions. What was really strange is we saw about 30 or more.
All quite small animals and on or near the surface. Some fully
inflated and others in groups of up to 10. Very strange and it
will be interesting to see if they stay around and become a common
sight.
In August we are heading up to Tonga to hopefully view and swim with humpback whales. We are very much looking forward to the trip.
March 2006
We had a very good summer season with some
nice dives at the Knights. March has been a great month for us. A
number of our images were used in the latest edition of
New Zealand Geographic magazine
including the cover picture. Ross also won first place in the
wide angle category of the 2006 Underwater Images competition.
Lastly, we have just spent a week in the South Island of New Zealand to
go whale watching and dolphin swimming. Have a look at our
Kaikoura/Akaroa
gallery for some of our pictures from this trip.
November 2005
27 November - We have just returned
from a fantastic trip on Breaksea Girl exploring
Fiordland and
Stewart Island.
It has been a few years since we have been down that way and it was so
nice to get back.
October 2005
30 October - We have added our last
tropical gallery - Kimbe
Bay, PNG. We have enjoyed two great trips to Kimbe Bay with
Alan Raabe on FeBrina and MV Stardancer.
29 October - The visibility has improved a bit at the Knights but is likely to be patchy from now on due to the spring plankton blooms.
We have nearly completed all the galleries. The latest are Matapouri Estuary about 10 kilometres north of where we live. We have also got a gallery of black and white images taken in Matapouri.
24 October - Ross received second
place in the wide angle category in the Los Angles UPS 43rd International
competition:
http://www.laups.org/gallery2/v/Intl2005/2005C/02nd_C_seeing-is-believing_RossArmstrong_77.jpg.html
10 October - after reading some books on web design and a reasonable amount of trial and error we have hopefully finalised the design and can start concentrating and loading the content.
We have added our first gallery (Poor Knights), all the images are taken with our new D70 cameras.
Also added a single picture gallery of a minke whale. A wonderful, one-off encounter on our first overseas photography trip.
September
2005
We have started our first
re-design of our web site layout since it was first created over five
years ago!
The new web site will have more information about the equipment used for
taking each picture.
The re-design is quite a daunting task, which is one reason why we have put it off for so long. We hope the disruption does not cause you too much inconvenience and that you will like the new look.