Kind of wondering what happened to the thread this year?!? I know people like to post to FB nowadays but I'd much rather look at images here where they haven't been auto compressed/sharpened/adjusted and you know you are looking at the whole set and not just whatever FB's algorithm du jour has decided for you. I look forward to this every year so hopefully people will participate.
Here is my buddy Rob learning that it is in fact possible to get too close and too low to an underwater photo subject.
To lazy to dig but from the last trip, sort of right place right time.
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Sorry! Adam sent me an email reminding me that I hadn’t started this yet.
Of course the highlight of my year was getting married in September. I am certain to be in trouble with "the wife” for posting a picture of us online, but definitely my highlight of the year. She gave me permission to put this one on my website, so I reckon I will get away with hot linking it here! As a bit of photo trivia, this was taken by Marco Colombo, previous winner of animal portraits category in wildlife photographer of the year and winner of the Bronze plonker in the portfolios at this years World Festival of UW Images, Marseille. Taken with my D4 and 70-200mm lens.
I’ll post an underwater photo later in the thread.
Alex
I'm sure you realize what kind of joke you're setting yourself up for with the 'animal portraits' fact - I'll just skip it this once. Congrats on the wedding!
Nothing I could post could come close to the importance and significance of Alex's image. Congrats partner!
I do have a favorite from this year but it was made by my son Jeff. It was the first time we had gotten to dive together in many years and it was a great trip to the Revillagigedos Islands. There were so many dives with so many big Oceanic Mantas in the water that we had time to set up shots of each other. It doesn't get much better than a great dive trip with your son.
Happy New Year, Cheers!
Steve
Alex: congratulations on your marriage!
It is always a challenge to pick just one favorite shot! This year I had more than one candidate from the same day of shooting the most challenging local (i.e., location not requiring a plane trip or boat ride to get to) salmonine species to shoot, the Cutthroat Trout. Locally, this species is about three orders of magnitude less abundant than salmon. The alternate pic to the one chosen here is in my Christmas E-card (posted on another thread).
So many great photo opportunities this year, but my favorites were all from swimming with humpbacks in Tonga.
Indubitably my favorite picture for 2014 is this one :
Between what I have shot both here in Palm Beach Florida (sharks, sea turtles and goliath groupers) and the Philippines, picking my favorite was tough. The one I at the top of the list (not for composition or camera technique, but rather for shear luck) is this one in a lifetime encounter with a lone 500 lb. Blue Fin Tuna that made a surprise visit last fall off Jupiter, Florida.
So many fantastic dives and encounters makes for difficult choices!
I've decided to post a picture of Caron snorkelling with a whale shark during the Wetpixel Whale Sharks expedition to Isla Mujeres in July/August. Caron had never seen a whale shark before, and when we bumped into the amazing numbers that you can encounter in Mexico, her joy and excitement were so amazing to see!
I, as is traditional, may well cheat and post another soon.....
Adam
it is so difficult to pick one best or favorite image! My favorite is a group portrait I shot of my sister, brother in law, niece, and nephew in Anilao on their first ever tropical dive, after 10 years of waiting for the kids to be old enough to dive with us, because it is such a great memory of their experience. But this is one of my best of the year technically, straight out of the camera with no adjustments at all:
My best from 2014 is a scorpionfish on the plateau at Daedalus:
My images can't compare to you experts but I really liked the one below taken on a night dive in Cozumel although I had a hard time choosing between it and this one:
A couple of Favorites, both memories from two fantastic holidays, first with the Humpback Whales in Tonga where we had amazing encounters with heat runs along with Mothers & calfs. The second to wrap up the end of the year at North Stradbroke Island.
Hoping for more and better experiences for the new Year,
Another of mine for the year is this greater hammerhead shot in the same place (different month) as the Blue Fin Tuna.
One of my favorites was this Kona Manta Night dive where 23 Mantas showed up to feed in our lights.
One of my favorite images in 2014; ranked 1st - Macro with a theme category in "CMAS European UW Photo championship"
and made me the champion
I thinkk the attached image might be my favourite from 2014. Not becauce of the quality, but because it was the beginning of thinking repeating shapes when I'm working with the smallest subjects. Lens: 100 mm with 2 extention tubes + 10x diopter. Full frame. .
I thinkk the attached image might be my favourite from 2014. Not becauce of the quality, but because it was the beginning of thinking repeating shapes when I'm working with the smallest subjects. Lens: 100 mm with 2 extention tubes + 10x diopter. Full frame. . 
