UPY 2025

UPY  Black and white - Runner Up
'Evening with sharks and birds'
Borut Furlan

I was in Moorea with my daughter in September 2021, in the middle of complete lock-down. All dive shops and boat rentals were closed and tourists were not allowed to move out from their hotels (except 1km for recreation...). Fortunately our apartment was quite close to the famous spot in the lagoon with sharks and rays and the owner of apartment arranged us two kayaks for "recreation". So we put our snorkelling equipment and my housing on kayaks and paddled to the spot. We were three days completely alone there with all the shark, rays and birds just for us. In three days I took more than 5000 images, I kept about 200 and I was satisfied with about 10 of them. The image above is one of my best ones.

Judge's comment: Excellent action between the upper world and below the surface. This could have worked very well as a color image as well, but the photographer did make a good choice to convert it to black & white! - Tobias Friedrich