At the end of June 2019, I travelled to the Philippines, to join an underwater photography workshop. The workshop was organized by award-winning photographer Simon Lorenz of Insider Divers, and we stayed at Anilao Photo Academy.
Anilao in the Philippines is a small region on the island of Luzon, about three hours’ drive south of Manila. Fishing used to be the prime economic occupation, but over the years there has been dramatic over-fishing, for both food and the aquarium trade. Some marine protection measures have been put in place, and the area is becoming increasingly popular with divers, and particularly underwater photographers, due to the wonderful diversity of, in particular, macro sealife. Divers call it “muck diving”!
Nudibranchs, like those in the photos below, are popular subjects for macro photography, as there are several thousand species, of a huge variety of colours and shapes, and they tend to move slowly!
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I’ve been photographing what I see while diving for many years now, and I feel I’ve learned and improved over the years, but I decided to take a dedicated underwater photography workshop, to really work on my skills. Also it’s often difficult to really take the time to focus on photography, while on a regular dive.
This course was excellent as the dozen or so of us participating had a great ratio of divers to dive guides, 2:1, and sometimes just 1:1. We also had Simon and Pauline from Insider Divers, both top photographers, working with us on dives, and of course presenting a variety of subjects on land, to help us improve our photography and editing skills. Tim Ho, founder of Anilao Photo Academy, and another award-winning photographer, also joined us on dives, and gave a couple of presentations. Tim has mad skills as a photographer, and also emphasises that it’s not always necessary to have the latest equipment: he produces amazing photos often with just a simple point and shoot camera and a torch!
Sabre-tooth blennies sound ferocious , but are actually the sweetest looking little fish!
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Our days followed a regular routine: eat, dive, dive, eat, dive, eat, sleep! Some of us did an additional night dive too, and all of us took advantage of time between dives to upload and edit our photos, so we could review our progress. On land, we had the benefit of workshops and presentations on dive photography techniques, lighting, editing, and more. We also had the chance to regularly ask the pros for input on our photos.
I love the variety of fish we can see underwater, and frogfish are particularly weird and wonderful! I was excited to be able to capture the Hairy frogfish yawning at me!
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Shrimps and crabs also come in a huge variety of shapes, sizes and colours:
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This broken-back shrimp was particularly challenging to me. It was running up and down the whip coral where it lived, and I was continuously moving my camera to get it in shot, try to get it well lit, try to get it in focus. After about 20 minutes, my patient dive guide Kim wrote something on his slate and showed me: “that’s the tail”. Oh. Right. I couldn’t tell which way was up, and had spent 20 minutes shooting the shrimp, thinking its tail was its head! ok, shift a little bit, take a few more shots, yup, I think they’re in focus, ok I’m done with this one!! One of the many times I’ve laughed so hard underwater that my mask has flooded!
I was so thrilled the day we spotted a Wunderpus! It was my first Wunderpus! It’s an octopus that was not discovered until the 1980s, and not fully described until 2006. Although they’re not believed to be rare, they change their colour, texture and overall appearance as a means of defence, so they’re not always spotted and identified. I love the fact that its official Latin binomial is Wunderpus photogenicus 🙂
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Some favourites: some gobies choose to live in holes or tubes, or like this one, will take advantage of a discarded bottle. Flamboyant cuttlefish have been a favourite of mine since I first saw one in Komodo. And seahorses are always special. I was particularly interested to see both a yellow and pink variety of the pygmy seahorse: camouflaged to match its host gorgonian.
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The views above water were pretty special too!
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The Costasiella nudibranch has a face – yes it does, zoom in. Now you know why it’s called Sean the Sheep! I hadn’t heard of this one, and when someone mentioned it, and I saw a photo, I truly didn’t believe it. The day my dive guide pointed me to a patch of algae with tiny scurrying creatures all over it, I really didn’t know, couldn’t clearly see, what I was photographing. At the end of the day, when I looked at this shot on my laptop, I was thrilled to see Sean! This is about 3 mm long, and it moves (this is my best shot!). Costasiellae can incorporate chloroplasts from the algae they eat, and use them to photosynthezise.
Here’s just a few of the many different type of nudis we can find:
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(click on individual photos to see fullsize)
One day we watched a nudi party happening. Nudibranchs are hermaphrodites, and so when two or more meet, they generally take advantage of the situation and mate. I can assure you that these nudis were not manipulated, the party happened all by itself!
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This region is actively volcanic, and on one dive we came across a large area where the sand was warm, sometimes very hot, and there were bubbles dancing out of the sand. It was such fun to play around in the bubbles!
Here’s a close-up view of a sea urchin:
There are some small fish that don’t move around too fast, so you have a chance to take multiple photos, like these whip coral gobies:
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There are flatworms too, and if you don’t look closely, they can be mistaken for nudibranchs. The pink-eye gobies always look so nervous, darting around amongst their coral branches. And the leaf scorpionfish usually sits still on the bottom, pretending to be a leaf, just waiting for a small prey fish to swim close enough to be grabbed.
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At the end of the week, there was a photo competition. There were several categories, and during the week, seeing the work that my companions were producing, I had no expectation at all of winning any of the categories. And although I didn’t win, one of my ribbon eel photos came runner-up in the compact camera section. I have to say I was thrilled!
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Ribbon eels are such fun looking creatures – also known as the leaf-nosed moray eel, you can see why. They have hugely expanded anterior nostrils, that wave about in the current, or as the eel bobs around. They are often nervous and disappear back into their holes when a diver gets too close. But if you’re patient and sit still, they will come back out and dance around for the photographer! I haven’t often seen two together in a hole, and I was fortunate to get a few shots with both eels in focus.
It really was a fantastic week, with an unparalled opportunity to learn from some excellent photographers. I enjoyed the location, the company of all the other diver-photographers, and I feel I really learned a great deal from all the information we were given, and the chance to keep practicing what we learned.
With many thanks again to Simon and Pauline of Insider Divers, and Tim, Rina, Wade, the talented dive guides, and all the crew and staff at Anilao Photo Academy.
I was pleased to pay the full retail price for this hugely informative workshop.
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Oh what a marvelous adventure you took me on Danila! I’ll never be a diver, but I love snorkelling and have done a bit in a few different countries the highlight being the GBR. But this experience of yours was amazing. I’m glad I saved this post to have time to savour it. I may not be an expert but I think you photos are brilliant!
Alison
oh Alison, thank you for your lovely comments, and knowing your beautiful photos, I value your comments even more <3 This was a great experience, so glad I did it!
Danilla – These photos are amazing!
thank you so much Cindy!