Red Sea Diving Safari is involved in a wide range of efforts and educative programs like Reef Check, Marine Biology Workshops, Videography Workshops, Photography Workshops.

Underwater Photography Workshop with Paul 'Duxy' Duxfield

Underwater Photography Workshop with Paul 'Duxy' Duxfield

Red Sea Diving Safari is delighted to welcome Paul 'Duxy' Duxfield to its line-up of workshop leaders, in conjunction with Oonasdivers. Marsa Shagra and Marsa Nakari are the perfect locations for an easygoing escorted photography trip.


From Duxy:
Whether you decide to shoot macro or wide, stills or video, this place will fill your memory card up with shots. There’s enough reef to explore a new section every dive, or you can shoot and repeat stuff to perfect your techniques.

Who is this trip for?

Nakari & Shagra Digital Delights is open to anyone who likes easy going diving, doesn’t like being on a route march underwater, and would love to be able to choose the time and duration of the dives for themselves.
You don’t have to own a camera to join my trips, but if you have any form of underwater photo equipment, be it a GoPro to a DSLR, and would like some help and advice of how to get the best from it, then I’m your man. My extensive experience leading trips and helping people of all abilities will sure to be of value to anyone, even the slightest bit curious about trying underwater photography.
The ability to have unlimited house reef diving at the times of your choice is sure to be a boon to more experienced underwater photographers wanting to do their own thing.

Why were these locations chosen?
Marsa Nakari & Marsa Shagra have it all for the diver and photographer. The air-conditioned chalets and shoreline tents are all centered around a beautiful bay that opens out into a beautiful house reef. 
The fringing reefs have all the usual Red Sea suspects (too numerous to mention individually) suspended in clear blue water with hard and soft corals aplenty.

The reef topography itself lends itself to photography, with little inlets, bays and swim-throughs allowing you to take advantage of the best direction of the light all day long.
If you desire there’s also the option to take trips to outlying reefs and Habilis. as well as RIB or daily boat for day long excursions to Elphinstone or Sha’ab Sharm if the oceanic white tips are around, and Dolphin House for, yep, you got, dolphins!

Nakari & Shagra allow us to make dive and photo decisions based upon local knowledge on the day, which is another advantage of these villages in that we can bend the itinerary to squeeze out the most from your holiday.
Whilst we will have a daily plan, we can change things and offer extras as the overall mood, and local conditions dictate.


Another big plus of Nakari & Shagra is that when night falls there is the most wonderful canopy of stars above our heads, and being on land we can stabilise our cameras and try a bit of low light and astrophotography.

For these trips, I will also be introducing some panoramic photography into the workshop. The sunset landscapes here lend themselves beautifully to showing you how to stitch multiple shots together within Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.

For the Photographer
On my trips, I will teach you how to get the best from Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, which are by far the most commonly used photo editing software programs in popular use. Don’t worry if you've never used them before or even own them, I can get you up to speed using my laptop if needs be. However, if you’d like to do a lot of editing while away, then your own laptop is probably a good idea.
If you already use another piece of software, no problem, I will most likely have knowledge of it and will be able to work my way around it.

For the Videographer
Shooting and editing video is a big deal nowadays. Many of us have GoPros or cameras with filming capabilities that shoot great video, and I can help show you how to do this. I aim to dedicate a whole day to shooting and editing video.
Adobe Premiere Elements is probably the best option currently for most cameras at a reasonable price, but I also use iMovie, Final Cut Pro X and there’s a new kid on the block I'm learning, which is free, but very powerful, called Da Vinci Resolve and works for both Mac OS and Windows.

What techniques will be explored?
With most beginners, I start by teaching shallow available light photography, showing how to use RAW and/or using Custom White Balance to get good colourful confidence boosting pictures from the off.
With the proliferation of GoPros and other action cameras, a slightly different technique is required, and we will explore this by using filters and processing to get good colour in the shallows.
Once we have covered natural light, I move on to using external lighting both continuous and strobe.
Once you are starting to get to grips with all the technicalities, we can move to explore subject choice, composition and marine life behavior to give you the skills to find, shoot and edit your pictures, raising your game as we go.
With the more advanced photographer/videographer I tailor my advice to suit their individual needs.

Will there be any presentations?
I try and make time most days to present talks on a variety of subjects, and I'm currently creating some great new material!

·         Available Light - when, where, and how, to take advantage of the available light
·         Getting Flash #1 - how to mix flash and available light
·         Getting Flash(er) #2 - flash positioning and special techniques
·         Composition is King - why good framing might be the most important thing you’ll learn.
·         Shoot, Edit, Show - making a video with your camera, even if it doesn’t shoot video!! 
·         What a fish knows - fascinating facts about marine life and reef behaviour 

There’s a lot to pack in, and sometimes, with unlimited house reef diving, you may not be able to make it to all the talks, or we end up doing a couple of extra unplanned excursions further afield, but I’ll endeavor to get the key talks done come what may.

How I plan my day 
I will usually dive at the earliest possible opportunity of the day and then the latest time before night falls. I think these are the best times of the day for the light and anyone is welcome to join me. This routine allows me the bulk of the day to dedicate to one-to-ones and talks.
After breakfast I will decamp to our allotted training room at 930am and will be at your disposal. Most days I will arrange a talk around 11am which will usually last for an hour with a Q&A session afterwards which should take us onto lunchtime.

After lunch I will be available again from about 130pm until 3pm where I will repeat the morning talk for those that missed it. There will be another open session until about 430pm when I will start to get ready for my late afternoon dive.
After the days diving has been completed, and for those not choosing to night dive, we will decamp to the bar with our computers and cameras for an hour or two chat about the days events and have a picture review session for those that would like, and to ask me further questions.
This is a typical day as planned, but if we decide to take a day out on a daily boat at Elphinstone for example, or we take any dives further afield outside of these times, then of course we’ll have to change the plan.

Workshop Schedule

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