We are happy to announce that the winner of the RSDS Photo Competition for June 2024 has been chosen. Congratulations to Morgan Osman with his photo "Look Into My Eyes".
Morgan wins a free stay at the RSDS village of his choice. You can view the winning photo, and all the June participants here.
If you would like a chance to win, simply register on our website and upload your photos from our competition page. Each day we choose a 'photo of the day' from the selection of entries. Anyone can register on our website and vote on photos entered into the competition. At the end of the month our Photo Pro and photography workshop leader, Paul ‘Duxy’ Duxfield, looks at the votes and chooses a winner from the highest scoring photos. Full terms and conditions and prize details are available here.
Congratulations again to Morgan, and good luck to all those participating in the coming months!
From Paul Duxfield, our competition judge:
The eyes have it.
Eye contact seemed to be a big theme this month, as I was drawn to a number of shots with the main element of the shot being the creature or creatures that were the main subject looking straight into the camera.
Who knows what is going on in the animals head but I’m sure you’ve been on a dive and found an animal holding you in its gaze.
It’s a special moment and in some cases, I’m thinking of the lucky situations when I’ve shared a great moment with an Octopus, it really can feel like you're making a connection.
From a photographic standpoint it connects the viewer to this connection and really can give some weight to the photographic composition.
The pictures arrive in my inbox in no particular order other than what Flavia has sent them to me, so my first image for June I found hundreds of pairs of eyes looking at me from within the frame, this was Gennady Elfimov’s marvellous shot of a cluster of Damsel Fish eggs stuck to a whip coral, almost an overdose of eye contact! Nicely framed in the diagonal, a strong shot, and titled to reflect the obvious link to the popular Minions movies.
Equally strong were the next two pictures I saw, I loved Ruth Wanger’s squat lobster surrounded by a frame of delicately pink and purple soft coral, and whilst not got strong eye contact it’s nevertheless a great shot bravely framed centrally, but I think this works in this context.
The next shot of note though has a lot of great eye contact by Morgan Osman of a goby of some description peeking out at the viewer from its coral hidey hole, this shot is all about the eye contact and is strongly framed, ticking a number of compositional boxes, diagonal, rule of thirds and negative space, the colours are striking too.
Head on shots with both eyes looking at the viewer are difficult to achieve and require patience so well done to Krista for her shot of a cute puffer fish, another well timed eye contact example.
Other shots that jumped out at me were Jane Morgans Oceanic White Tip, Elena Jaeger’s cleaner shrimp, Ahmed Dakroury’s group of Indian Mackerel and the beautiful sun lit reef and Turtle portrait by Ahmed Helal.
At the end of the day though I’m drawn back to Morgan Osman’s Goby shot, simple graphic and effective, so it’s grabbed the top slot for me for June, well done.
