This was quite difficult in many ways but i’ve finally made a decision!
I say this because there were two really excellent Oceanic White Tip portraits, which i'm guessing were from Elphinstone?
These were from Robert Paauw and Irena Cok they were equally good examples of this iconic creature, seen regularly if you visit Red Sea Diving Safari and take an excursion out to Elphinstone for a bracing early morning dive, and they often join you for a thrilling end of dive encounter.
There were also a couple of great turtle shots, taken on the house reef and also at Abu Dabab a short trip away, and are all but guaranteed. I personally have never dived the house reef and not seen a turtle at various times during the week.
So well done Melanie Kern and Wijnand Plekker for a lovely pair of turtle shots, but unfortunatley in the face of such high quality competion I found the choice too difficult to decide upon between any of these four, and so I looked at what made me smile and made me think along different lines in this case, and quite unusually for me opted for a macro shot.
Paul Williams' humorous sideways, both literally and metaphorically, look at a detail of a fish that is both fascinating and injected with a little bit of levity. The title in this case is as important as the shot. "Fish Eye Lens".
It’s technically well executed, cropped and presented sideways and so becomes more than just a simple macro study of a puffer fish, and is a great abstract.
So in the end, in the face of very worthy and stiff competition I’ve chosen Paul’s shot as this months winner.
Well done!
