In 2023 I spent 3 weeks in Buceo Anilao/Philippines (Buceo Anilao resort) and hoped to fly back with a decent amount of good pictures.

Unfortunately, I had very little luck overall and had to deal with a rather lazy and uncooperative guide the entire time who also always preferred to dive against the current.

On top of that, after the first day of diving, I had several days of total diving downtime due to a typhoon (although other dive centers were diving in calmer bays).

Blackwater diving was promised to me at the beginning, but it never happened.

All in all, I can't recommend the rather expensive Buceo Anilao.

After the trip, I was so frustrated that, although I saved the photos on my computer, I didn't develop a single one.

I more or less put the trip out of my mind and only remembered it just a few days ago, went through all the folders and tried to identify the species.

After that, I decided to develop some of them and want to show a few images here in chronological order (I'll start with day 1 and work my way through the individual diving days).

Incidentally, I believe this was my first ever diving holiday where I didn't use the wide-angle/fisheye lens even once.

I don't know if anyone is interested in the camera settings – if so, please let me know and I'll add them.

Generally, I photographed everything with the Canon R5, the Canon RF 100/2.8 Macro lens and two Seacam 150D strobes in a Seacam housing, sometimes using snoots and close-up lenses (Nauticam SMC1+2).

All images are uncropped (otherwise, I'll mention it in the image description) and developed with Lightroom and Photoshop.

Day 1 (just one check dive):

Disc Anemone Shrimp (Pliopontonia furtiva)

Day 2:

Female Hairfinned Leatherjacket (Paramonacanthus japonicus)

Warty Frogfishh (Antennarius maculatus)

Highfin snake eel (Ophichthus altipennis) with a Black coral goby (Bryaninops tigris) and if you look very closely, you can also see a parasite, probably a Gnathia sp. (yellow colour) between Goby and mouth

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by waso

Beautiful images! 😊 It’s a shame the trip didn’t go as planned, but I’m glad you’re sharing these stunning photos with us!