"This was taken at of my all-time favorite dive sites: the aptly named "Cathedral" which bottoms out at 138 feet/42 meters and totally blows your imagination. This volcanic structure can be found near Gran Canaria' capital Las Palmas (Spain) - an island off the coast of the western Sahara. The dive site is often hard to reach due to strong currents and heavy seas but when you make it, there's no way you can capture it's awesomeness. Seeing is believing, photos just pale to the real thing.
Because of the strong currents on top and the depth of the dive this is quite a tricky one and you have very limited time at the bottom (2-3 minutes before you go into deco – which means the water pressure has squeezed so much nitrogen pressed into your body that you can’t just quickly rise to the surface in case something goes wrong). I had agreed to enter the cave first with my “model” and see if I could take a shot as quick as possible. Since I’d never done the dive this was a bit awkward and it really didn’t help in relaxing to get everything perfect. However, I did manage to capture two handfuls of shots before the rest of the divers also came in and ruined my chances of a shot like this. Out that small series which this was by far my favorite. Would actually love to dive this place a few more times to really get the perfect angle but sometimes you just got to deal with what you have." -Rutger Geerling
EXIF:
Manual exposure: 1/50sec, f/6.3 at 200ISO
Canon 5D with a UK-Germany underwater housing
Canon 15mm fisheye f/2.8
No strobes used
May 31st 2011
Near Las Palmas, Gran Canaria (Spain)