The 7th Annual Ocean Art underwater photography competition winners were announced this week. The competition sorted through thousands of entries from across 70 countries and consisted of 16 categories ranging from Wide-Angle and Super Macro to Cold Water and Marine Life Behavior. The Best of Show image was awarded to Duncan Murrell for capturing an image of three giant devil rays in the midst of an underwater ballet.
While some of the usual names in the underwater photography community were awarded this year, there are a lot of new names on the list, which is refreshing to see. As a diver and underwater photographer myself, I am always in awe of the amazing creatures our seas are home to. Certainly, all of the awarded images do a wonderful job at encapsulating the beauty of our oceans. If underwater photography isn't your thing, these images may just change your mind. Enjoy!
Macro Category Winner — Jeff Milisen
Wide-Angle Category Winner — Francois Baelen
Underwater Art Category Winner — Bruno Van Saen
Compact Marine Life Behavior Category Winner — PT Hirschfield
Nudibranch Category Winner — Flavio Vailati
Compact Wide-Angle Category Winner — Melody Chuang
Cold Water Category Winner — Greg Lecoeur
Compact Macro Category Winner — Sejung Jang
Mirrorless Wide-Angle Category Winner — Eugene Kitsios
Super Macro Category Winner — Edison So
Portrait Category Winner — Claudio Zori
Mirrorless Macro Category Winner — Steven Walsh
Mirrorless Behavior Category Winner — Fabrice Dudenhofer
Reefscape Category Winner —Yen-Yi Lee
Novice DSLR Category Winner — Alvin Cheung
If you'd like to check out the rest of the awarded images you can do so here.
All images used with permission from the Ocean Art Competition.
Stunning photos! Thanks!
As an aside, why are there separate categories for different types of cameras?
Compact cameras tend to be used by entry level underwater photographers. Compacts also suffer from shutter lag which makes capturing a key moment a bit of a challenge so they separate them out. Some competitions such as Underwater Photographer of the Year require that the photographer has only used a compact camera which prevents more experienced photographers from just using a compact to win in that category.
And how about DSLR vs Mirrorless? How does it affect underwater photography?
The symmetry of that whale tail photo is awesome! The diver on the left side helps make the whale look larger than life which I always love in whale photography. Swimming with giants! It's very surreal.
Wow.