Cephalopod Photography: Klaus Stiefel

Next on my (long and growing) list of cephalopod photographers to feature here is Klaus M. Stiefel, a neurobiologist who currently works in Okinawa.  All of the photos in this post were taken by him.  He was cool enough to release them under a creative commons license, so feel free to use them, just don't use them for anything commercial and make sure to give him credit (lots and lots of it.)  You can click through on all of the photos to access them on Flickr, including larger versions (which I always recommend - they make great desktop wallpapers.)  Let's dive right in, shall we?

To start off, a portrait of an adorable cuttlefish of unknown species (if anybody can tell, please post it in the comments - I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I'm very bad at identifying species):



Moving right along, we have these two lovely photos of the flamboyant cuttlefish, Metasepia pfefferi.  Klaus calls this posture a "threat display", although I'm pretty sure it is used both as a defensive behavior and during hunting, especially for shrimp and prawns.  My favorite thing about pictures of M. pfefferi is that they always look so relaxed, just because of the shape of their pupils.





Last in our illustrious lineup of cuttlefish is an unidentified individual who is expressing its papillae beautifully and showing off its ability to use binocular vision by looking at the camera with (count 'em) two eyes.



You want squid?  We've got squid!  Well, a squid.  This is a juvenile squid (species unknown, though one of the commenters on Flickr suggests that it's a bigfin reef squid, Sepioteuthis lessoniana) floating among the fronds of a sea lily.



Here is an octopus (again, species unknown) expressing a very striking white ring around its eye.  This looks to me like it might be related to the eye-bar body pattern component, which is used during defensive behavior by adult octopuses to obscure the shape of the eye or make it appear larger than it really is.



Here's a great shot of some octopus arm suckers, showing various degrees of flexion of the suckers themselves.  I wish I knew the species of octopus that these belonged to.



I just love pictures of octopuses peeking out of things!  Here is the obligatory inquisitive-octopus-eyes shot:



In this series of photos, Klaus captured a dramatic color change in an octopus.  It looks to me like the octopus tried to camouflage itself, then decided that wasn't going to work and began to hide under the rocks.









 Finally, we'll close with a gorgeous photo of a cephalopod that is too often ignored: the Nautilus.

 

 Thanks for reading!