UPY 2025

UPY  Wrecks - Commended
'Salem Express'
Christian Horras

The wreck of the "Salem Express" is no ordinary dive. Many lives were lost when the passenger ship sank in 1991. It was my first dive there and it made me shiver when I saw the wreck and the lifeboats on the bottom of the Red Sea. It had a special atmosphere to it, a graveyard, sad and oppressive, but also (with no other groups of divers around) kind of peaceful and quiet.
I tried to recreate this atmosphere in the picture and chose an upward composition with the sun backlighting the wreck. A single diver completed the composition giving a sense of scale and adding some "human touch".
After the dive all of us felt saddened and we all agreed that this wreck should be treated with the utmost respect.

Judge's comment: A well chosen angle and silhouette to capture the sombre solitude which fatal shipwrecks create. A very respectful image. - Peter Rowlands