UPY 2025

UPY  Portrait - Commended
'Chinese Opera Mask'
Wayne Lai

I saw a group of cardinal fish not far away from the shipwreck of the Thistlegorm during my first visit to the Red Sea. Some of them were incubating eggs in their mouths. I spent about 20 minutes to get this perfectly symmetrical shot of cardinal fish with eggs. It looks like a Chinese opera mask on a black background.

Judge's comment: Shooting underwater fish portraits requires endurance and most of all patience, patience and more patience. The author knew in his mind’s eye exactly how he wanted the shot to look. This portrait is faultless. The two eyes are perfectly symmetrical. The strobes illuminate the eggs within the mouth and wrap around the entire features of the fish. Fish portraiture at it’s very best.
- Martin Edge