Monday, June 15, 2009

Top Honors at 2009 Digital Shootout in Bonaire

Each year, underwater photographers gather in a distant ocean location for an annual Digital Shootout. This year, the event took place June 6-13th, 2009 on the small Dutch Antilles island of Bonaire in the Caribbean. Approximately 50 underwater photographers participated in workshops with some of the best professional photographers in the business and had nightly critiques of the photography.

At the end of the week, each photographer is asked to enter their top images taken at the event for a “friendly” contest. This year there was well over $10,000 in prizes up for grabs including trips to exotic locations, photography equipment and gift certificates.

The top honor at this event is the Jim Watt Award of Excellence for the Best of Show. Jim was one of the earliest professional underwater photographers to adopt digital cameras and was always there to share his passion and tips to new photographers.

This year, I was honored to be presented the Jim Watt Award for my image of a 18” needlefish on the surface. I spent two afternoons stalking the needlefish which are only inches below the water’s surface waiting to launch a surprise attack on unsuspecting schools of minnows. I used both a 12-24mm lens and a 10.5mm fisheye lens to capture the images on my housed Nikon D300 camera. The winning image was taken with the fisheye lens at 1/250th of a second shutter speed and an aperture of F-11. These are fast moving fish and shooting in such shallow waters can be difficult. Because it is such a reflective subject, strobe positioning and power settings were also key to the shot.

Three other images I submitted also placed in different categories as well. All of the winning contest images may be seen at http://www.thedigitalshootout.com/bonaire2009.
Make sure you also watch the First Place video. It is hilarious and I actually make a couple of cameos in it.

Jim Watt Award of Excellence - Best of Show
Macro Unrestricted - Second Place

Macro Unrestricted - Honorable Mention


Wide Angle Unrestricted - Honorable Mention

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on this prestigious award! Your buddies are proud of you.