UPY 2025

UPY  British Waters Macro - Commended
'Gold'
Ryan Stalker

Portland Harbour is great for night dives in the winter. There are numerous Bobtail squids at the location which have massive personalities for their size. On this particular dive I intended to get in to look for these creatures and I took a few backgrounds down to see if I could do something a bit different. This Bobtail was swimming about and I decided to put my glitter boards to the side on the seabed and concentrate on taking the pictures of just the creature. However, on the Bobtail seeing the board this little chap decided it would be much more fun to sit on the glitter board and investigate it. The Bobtail stayed on the board for a good 20 minutes thoroughly checking out this sparkly board in its territory.

Judge's comment: I love the usage of different background and to create different, artistic images. Not all judges liked the image as much as I did, also due to the fact that the background is clearly artificial, but we decided to have it placed as the creativity of the photographer and the very good execution are speaking for themselves. Nicely done!
Tobias Friedrich