Your Favourite Photo Of 2023

[Davide DB]

7 minutes ago, ColdDarkDiver said:

This was an image I captured with natural light at the end of dive as I was heading to the exit and saw the other buddy pair in the water doing their safety stop.  I think it captures the expansiveness and the feeling of clear-water, ice-diving of floating under expansive clouds. Plus, I like the grain as it gives it a bit of a classic feel like I was shooting hi-iso slide.  The story of the image was I forgot my flash sync cables (doh) on this dive so was forced to shoot everything with ambient and very little light.  This dive was pretty much pitch black so I pushed the camera to its limit throughout the dive and ended up taking pretty different pictures than I frequently do and this ended up being one of my favorite images I took during the year.  This is from Dayton's Wall, Ross Sea, Antarctica.      

 

Wow very evocative.

Is it ice above the divers?

[ColdDarkDiver]

Just now, Davide DB said:

 

Wow very evocative.

Is it ice above the divers?

Yes, there was about 2-3m of ice this year that we were diving through.  This site had a pretty solid dusting of snow on top of the ice, which is what made it so dark. 

[jllb]

Image taken @ Anilao in may/june
 

[Grm]

Certainly not the best photo but makes me smile every time it pops up;  fond memories of a couple of days diving with friends. Uk divers do love to chuck stuff into lakes😂

[divegypsy]

My favorite underwater subjects are the cephalopod mollusks and I had several nice ceph encounters during my Sept/Oct dive trip to Bali.  My favorite was with an incredibly co-operative squid.  I first found it near a tangle of anchor ropes as I was returning to shore and use my last four hundred PSI shooting one shot of it after another.  Several time it came so close I couldn't get the whole squid in the picture.  But my air lasted for only a few minutes and when I went ashore for a new tank, I yelled for my dive buddy to get ready for the squid.  It was there.  And as Mark shot his first shots of the squid, I shot him shooting it.  Then the squid darted down to bottom to grab something.  It was a peacock mantis shrimp.  And the incredibly co-operative squid allowed both Mark and I to shoot it dining on the mantis shrimp.  The last shot in this set is my favorite shot of 2023.  All pictures were taken with a Nikon 70-180mm Micro-nikkor zoom and a small dome port.  And two Ikelite 161 strobes on TTL.

[bghazzal]

3 hours ago, divegypsy said:

My favorite underwater subjects are the cephalopod mollusks and I had several nice ceph encounters during my Sept/Oct dive trip to Bali.  My favorite was with an incredibly co-operative squid.  I first found it near a tangle of anchor ropes as I was returning to shore and use my last four hundred PSI shooting one shot of it after another.  Several time it came so close I couldn't get the whole squid in the picture.  But my air lasted for only a few minutes and when I went ashore for a new tank, I yelled for my dive buddy to get ready for the squid.  It was there.  And as Mark shot his first shots of the squid, I shot him shooting it.  Then the squid darted down to bottom to grab something.  It was a peacock mantis shrimp.  And the incredibly co-operative squid allowed both Mark and I to shoot it dining on the mantis shrimp.  The last shot in this set is my favorite shot of 2023.  All pictures were taken with a Nikon 70-180mm Micro-nikkor zoom and a small dome port.  And two Ikelite 161 strobes on TTL.

 

 

 

Awesome! That's a really lucky moment - I've seen quite a few of these bigfin reef squids hanging around near the moorings in the area, but never hunting, and much less a peacock mantis shrimp!

Great shot, and really one of those "in the right-place-in-the-right-time moments" !

Edited January 16 by bghazzal

[divegypsy]

Yes bghazzi, it was an incredibly lucky moment.  But when those moments happen you have to be ready which is why I shoot so often with the 70-180mm Micro-nikkor.  There is no equivalent lens for a Canon or a Sony, nor an equivalent lens that works with any mirrorless camera, which is why I shoot with the D850 and use my Ikelite 161 strobes on TTL.  I shot several dozen shots of the squid and while they weren't all perfect, almost every one was within easy processing range.  The only failures were when I made a mistake and shot from so far away that the strobes weren't quite strong enough for the aperture I had chosen.  In the next day or two or three I will post a "portfolio" of pictures I shot on my 2023 Bali trip.  I took five other lenses on the trip (8-15mm fisheye, 16-35mm, 24-85mm, 105mm Micro-nikkor and 200mm Micro-nikkor)and shot with the first three of those lenses on about eight dives.  On the other dives I shot with the 70-180.  Didn't use the 105mm or 200mm.

[MrChen]

Limonandra nodosa, photographed at BHB

 

[ridgebackpilot]

[wetdreams]

Not my best picture, but probably my favourite.

 

"The seahorse is gone".

This was the cryptic message we received upon arriving at the diving center.

Lorena and I were not discouraged (we had been driving for an hour because a seahorse had been spotted at Ifach Rock, one of our habitual diving spots), so we asked the dive center staff to give us some directions to find it.

When onboard, we told Sergio, the skipper, we wanted to jump where the seahorse had been seen. "the loco photographer again" he should think.

"Ok, we will enter the water a little further, and we will swim towards you little by little until we find each other" said Guille, the Dive Master as Lorena and me were entering into the water.

My wife and I were looking for the little horse for half an hour without success, but finally we managed to find it, right where we had been told.

In our area, finding a seahorse is the jackpot, so I took as many photos as I could until we almost ran out of air.

Then we heard the sound of the boat's engine overhead (Sergio signaling us to surface), and I realized it was time to go. "A couple more photos and we'll start the ascent" I thought... and suddenly, to my surprise someone appeared from the surface. It was Guille, he had never seen a seahorse, and he asked Sergio permission to go down with the little air he had left to see it, since he was sure that we had finally found it.

He indicated with signs if could I take a photo of him with the seahorse (I'm not a big fan of including divers in my macro photos but hey, he seemed so happy!!)... so I told him to stand behind the seahorse, then I moved as far away as I could (I had the 80mm macro mounted on my Fuji) and took a couple of photos... The result is this one, which I especially like because of the expression on Guille's eyes.

One look says it all.

 

I'll be happy to hear your feedback.

 

My setup:

Fujifilm X-t3

Fujinon 80mm macro

Nauticam Na X-t3

Backscatter Mf1 x 2

 

@wetdreamsphoto

[Sarthur1]

On 12/25/2023 at 9:30 PM, FrancoisC said:

 

Taken in "La Gravière du Fort".

A pond in Alsace, France, near Strasbourg, managed by and dedicated to divers.
Not as cool as some exotic places, but only one hour from home, and many friends there.

Olympus EM-1 mkII with Olympus 8mm Fisheye in Nauticam housing and 2x Retra Pro Xnull

What kind of marine life can you find in that pond?

[Sarthur1]

only 1 is hard, but I guess it'll be this turtle (Careta careta) photo I shot in Paphos, Cyprus. it kind of remind me of Nirvana Nevermind album.

Sony a6300 (Fantasea housing), Sigma 16mm lens, f/8, 1/200, iso 160.

null

But I like the trend of uploading more pictures so...

 

[EFLT]

 

Here is a shot of a giant pacific octopus in a dark 7 degree ocean. 

Edited February 2 by EFLT

[Zlati]

My favourite shot(s):

 

[CaolIla]

3 hours ago, Zlati said:

Very nice,  a not commun picture... but I love it.

[CaolIla]

My best turtle 

 

[KirstyA]

My favourite photo of 2023, for obvious reasons... doubt I'll ever get so lucky again.  What an animal!!

 

[JonGross]

On 12/31/2023 at 4:11 PM, Dave_Hicks said:

Here are a few of my favorites of the year:

 

[Pacific Spiny Lumpsucker - Puget Sound]

 

 

 

I love me some PSLs!  Nice portrait!

 

[Andrey Narchuk]

Last year I continued my attempts to collect underwater panoramas with marine animals. Steller sea lions from Moneron Island were happy to pose.
The main problem is that they move very quickly. You have to do dozens and hundreds of takes so that you can stitch together several frames later. But the panorama better shows what is happening in the water. A large number of sea lions that surround you on all sides.

[bvanant]

Too many to try to sort. Here is one from Black Water in Komodonull

[MatthewSullivan]

Not sure this is my favorite image of 2023 but it was by far my favorite experience. One of my best friends (pictured) and I got to spend a day looking for alligators and managed to be in the water with this 11 footer. Incredible experience and so intimidating and humbling.

[Kamaros]

I haven't finished going through all of my photos from last year, but of the ones I've developed so far, it would probably be one of these sea lions. I've been diving with the Monterey sea lions on a regular basis for the last few years, but it was only last year that I was finally able to capture some photos of them that I actually liked, which I attribute mostly to investing in a copy of @Alex_Mustard's Masterclass book and picking up a WACP-C, which does a much better job of filling the frame for shots like these compared to the 8-15mm fisheye I was using previously.

 

Honorable mention goes out to this shot of a flamingo tongue snail from my second ever attempt at using a snoot, and this jellyfish (some sort of turritopsis?) from the only blackwater dive I had a chance to do last year, which I like for being one of those rare examples of a photo where backscatter actually enhances the image.

null

[ChrisH]

Two of my favorites from last year, both taken in Aqaba, Jordan. It was a really nice experience and I enjoyed the wreck diving there!

[Steviep]

This was my favourite, three Eagle Rays lining up in formation in the Galapagos in December’23

[TimG]

On 2/7/2024 at 1:31 PM, ChrisH said:

Two of my favorites from last year, both taken in Aqaba, Jordan. It was a really nice experience and I enjoyed the wreck diving there!

 

Tremendous setup on this shot, Chris. Dive light at the rear? The diver balances the image out really well and produces a super piece of storytelling.