Your Favourite Photo of 2009

Happy New Year!!!

from Nusa Penida, Bali, Indonesia

There are plenty of excellent photos in this thread. Here's my effort: a well-placed frogfish that has taken on the rusty coloration of its shipwreck home.

Now THAT is a freaking cool froggie and backdrop!

It was the 2008 list that really got me excited about underwater photography. I read the forum weekly and I am learning so much. Thank you all for everything you contribute, the questions you answer, and the photos you share.

Here is my favorite because of the experience of having this guy dive down at my bubbles and tugging on my fins. I didn't care that the water was 49°F and I was freezing. March 2009. Coronado Islands, Mexico.

Posted on flicker http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4057/422391...b6548a797_o.jpg

I love pygmies and photographing them. Won a prize in a shootout at lembeh last year with a frontal shot of pregnant one with the fan polyps open. Didn't feel that shot was sharp enough and I was very happy when i got this shot when I went back to Lembeh this year in june. Sharpest shot i've gotten to date.

Taken with an Olympus E-3 in an ikelite housing and Sigma 105mm Macro lens, Nexus close-up wet lens and twin Inon Z-240 strobes.

This is without a doubt my favorite picture from 2009. My heart wasn't in picture taking mode during this dive at all. It was taken at a spot named after a late friend of mine (Kawika Chetron) who had discovered it not long before he died. Visibility was so good that at first I thought we were in the wrong spot as we descended onto the site. The bottom is about 120 feet and we could see the bottom as we passed 20 feet. This is completely unheard of in Monterey Bay. I spent most of the dive feeling melancholy that my friend wasn't there to see such incredible visibility and I spent the first 30 minutes of the dive just swimming around in a bit of a daze. Near the end of our planned 40 minutes of bottom time I started to snap out of it and found this very small basket star sitting on a gorgonian. I'd shot it earlier in the dive but hadn't gotten anything decent. On a second look I got a different angle that I really liked. After looking at the image more carefully during the decompression I knew I had something special. Kawika was famous (infamous?) for only posting his very best work. He deleted better images than I have in my best of catalog. I'm the opposite kind of photographer and often post extra imperfect images to give a feel to a dive. On this occasion I only had the one image so the two ideals converged. I'm not sure I've ever done any better.

Clinton

Funny, I looked at my photos from my dives in tropical areas this year (which comprised almost all of my diving...), and could not pick a favorite. Nothing jumped out at me. Guess I did not stretch my limits or explore creativity enough there. That will thus be a challenge for my next trip.

So I am picking this one, which is technically imperfect, taken a couple of weeks ago in my back yard in Puget Sound, in 48 degree fahrenheit water, shivering in my drysuit at night. A special little fish comes up from the depths this time of year, probably because he knows most divers don't like the cold this much. My first photo of a lumpsucker. Not my best photo, but a special one for me.

I was fortunate enough to do a lot of traveling this year and although I got a lot of good images, there weren't any that leaped out as an obvious "best". This is one of the ones that I really like. It is a common subject and is very simple but I love the rich colors and the sense of movement (It was in a blasting current). It was taken during a 4 day live-aboard trip along the Big Sur coast, which is as spectacular underwater as it is above. It is rarely diveable because it is so exposed.

2009 saw me moving to Far North Queensland and spending most of my time on the Great Barrier Reef with a camera in my hand (still or video). I've seen some great things since being up here, and have taken a bunch of shots I'm more than happy with. However, my favorite for the year was taken at my previous regular dive site - Julian Rocks off Byron Bay, NSW Australia.

I saw this flabellina rubrolineata get knocked off his rock by a wayward diver's fin, so took the opportunity to get some shots as he floated back down through the water collum.

Canon 40D in Aquatica housing, 60mm, 2x Z240's.

Have a great new years all, and happy shooting in 2010!

Ryan.

Nice positing. I hope to see this little boy in 2010.

Happy New Year!

I didn't get a lot of diving this year. I'm blaming my wife who broke her wrist and needed an op right before we were due to go to the Maldives, so we ended up with a staycation instead.

Anyway this was my favourite shot of the year. It was taken on shearwater on a wetpixel trip in the summer. My strobes were virtually dead when I took this and It was taking thirty seconds to recharge between shots but this attempt came out.

shot using a Nikon D200 with Tokina 10-17mm

This was a hard one! It gives a new meaning to "kill your darlings" when you are asked to select ONE picture from a whole year. Anyway, here we go:

This picture was taken during a liveaboard with Solmar V in November 2009. The trip took us to Socorro Islands, and this picture was taken at Rocca Partida, the most remote of the islands, where we had three days of outstanding diving. This may not be my best picture, but it is one of the pictures that I feel proud of, and that really represents one of these moments where you really feel privileged and humble. My buddy, the frog(man), is Anders Salesjo.

This pic was shot in ambient light with a Fujifilm S5 Pro and the Nikon 10,5mm/2.8 Fisheye in a Seacam housing.

Cheers and good luck, all of you, during 2010!

Ingvar Eliasson

Correy

Here's a wide angle taken at Point Lobos, Monterey CA. of a good friend who passed away this year in a diving accident.

Nikon D80 with a Tokina 10-17MM, Ikelite with Dome, Inon Strobes

Taken at the end of a dive in PNG a 2 months ago, D700 in Aquatica, 16mm

Hi all,

What an amazing collection of images. So much talent and inspiration....

I'm going to cheat too-sorry in advance. My first picture is of my wife Caron, in the Red Sea in November. Caron has suffered for the past two years with a really bad back condition, and this has seriously limited her diving. So this picture is for me a sign of her long slow and very brave return to full fitness.

My second cheating picture is one taken on a memorable dive on the Farne Islands, UK. We spent an hour and a half interacting with the a large group of rowdy and amazing seals. The level of interaction and excitement was amazing!

Once again thank you all for the advice and inspiration!

Adam

Like others tough choice, just like the shape...

I do like this thread!

Privileged to dive a lot this year including a trip with Alex and a group from the UK (mostly) to Raja Ampat. Thanks to Alex but also Graham Abbott (Premier dive guide) for an unforgettable time. The place that sticks most on that trip is the blue water mangroves of Nampele unlike anything else I've dived.

Happy safe diving to all.

Tim Digger

I liked this one

Nikon D300 , 60mm , 2X DS125

Amir

2009 was a little different for me than in the past. In some ways it felt like I hit a wall. Especially when it came to getting the WOW shot. There seems to be so many of them coming in from all over the world and the digital age for U/W photography is maturing. So, I've kinda come to a crossroad. Do I spend hours looking for the rare shot or just work on being creative with what's presented?

I'm leaning towards the latter. This coming year will be spent working more on capturing patterns and texture. This photo was taken in Port Hardy, Canada and is one I'm pretty happy with:

Wishing everone the best in the coming year.

Rand

2009 marks the year when I got my first FF camera and it gave me back the joy of uw-photography...

Now I have to decide each time to film or photograph.... aah...

I choose this image because it kinda shows what diving is to me. Weightlessness, Silence and Joy.

I wish you all a happy and healthy new year!

To all those who are on my snail-mail list and received the holiday card - and to all those who are not - Happy Holidays!