UPY 2025

UPY 2016 British Waters Wide Angle - Highly Commended
'Tadpole shoal'
Matt Doggett

I was looking out for ways to test my new Nauticam housing early last year. One lunchtime I found a shoal of many thousands of toad tadpoles streaming along the margins of a wildlife pond near where I worked. The visibility was only around six inches but I thought it was worth a go! Over the next week I returned whenever the sun shone and experimented with different settings and lens combinations until I found something that worked. Every time I placed the camera in the water the tadpoles instantly swarmed all over it so I had to repeatedly lift it in and out the water, which in turn disturbed the nice neat shoal. It took a lot of failed efforts just to get this shot but it gives a nice idea of a tadpoles’ eye view on the world.