UPY 2025

UPY  Portrait - Highly Commended
'Suprised'
Filip Staes

I spent several hours photographing these funny looking shannies, also known as smooth blennies or common blennies during the Open Belgian Championship of underwater photography last september. This species can stay out of water sheltering under rocks or seaweeds so we have to dive at high tide to find them in shallow water. They are very curious but also move very quickly so you need a lot of patience to get them right in your frame. The photo is an in-camera double exposure camera. The shanny photographed with a 60mm macro lens and a Backscatter strobe with snoot while the background was taken with a Tokina 10-17mm and natural light in the same waters.

Judge's comment: The decision to use the double exposure technique helped this image stand out above the head on, plain portraits but I can't help but feel that it would have been higher placed as a tighter vertical crop.
- Peter Rowlands