We are happy to announce that the winner of the RSDS Photo Competition for January 2021 has been chosen. Congratulations to Ahmed Dakroury with his photo “Coexist“!
Ahmed wins a free stay at the RSDS village of his choice. You can view the winning photo, and all the January 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 Ahmed, and good luck to all those participating in 2021!
From Paul Duxfield, our competition judge:
Macro or wide angle? Wide angle or macro? This is the agonising question a lot of underwater photographers face when making the decision to set out on a photography dive.
And it often feels as if you get the choice wrong, because if you go tooled up for shooting scenes and bigger creatures with your wide angle setup, then you’ll definitely spend the dive
finding teeny tiny critters and wish you’d set up for macro instead.
This, of course isn't an issue if you've got a camera rig with the functionality to shoot both types of photo on the same dive, but it is a problem if you’re shooting with a more conventional interchangeable lens camera, typically, but not exclusively, a mirrorless or DSLR rig.
So what is all this got to do with this months picture selection then?
Well, after careful consideration I narrowed the choices down to two pictures which really caught my eye amongst a strong field of potential winners again.
And special mentions go to Beata Pawlowska’s very cute shot of a pair of Puffer Fish hiding under a coral, Keith Sheldon’s Scorpion Fish portrait and Marga Maas’ very tightly cropped dolphins shot, which were all very close contenders.
At the close of the day though, my final choices were down to that difficult decision I mentioned earlier, and it was either Wioletta’s excellent macro shot of the Chromodoris rearing up in an excellent pose, or Ahmed Dakroury’s beautiful wide angle picture of a freediver joining a pair of dolphins that had split off from the larger pod at Sataya Reef.
In the end I found it very difficult to choose but came down in favour of the wide angle shot, as I’ve mentioned before in these posts, I love a shot that can sell our love of the underwater world with a wider audience, and this image certainly does that.
It has a human in frame, with quirky different coloured fins, a connection with the animals, with the two dolphins getting closer, and a bigger scene with the pod below.
A lovely shot all told Ahmed, and whilst a close call with Wioletta, free diver and dolphins gets my choice this month.
Very well done indeed.
it would be lovely to meet some of you competition entrants and anyone else interested in honing their underwater photography skills in our June 2021 Red Sea Photo Camp this year.
So why not join us. I’ll be with Phil and Anne Medcalf from Alphamarine photography in early to mid June at the Marsa Shagra location
It’s not too expensive, is great fun and we’ll be having daily lectures, talks and of course be diving with our cameras and sharing our skills and knowledge each day.
- Duxy
Duxy has been running escorted photo workshops in Marsa Shagra for the last three years. These workshops are designed for camera users of all experience levels, with any type of underwater camera. Duxy is on hand to share tips and information, troubleshoot individual photography issues, escort early morning and late afternoon dives, and give talks on specific subjects. The 2021 Red Sea Photo Camp with Duxy and Alphamarine Photography will be in Shagra from June 8-19 2021 - full information.
