First Place
Second Place
Third Place
Honorable MentionUnderwater Photographers
Noam moved to Eilat in the red sea 13 years ago to work as a diving instructor. He opened his own dive center in 2004 and named it "Nemo Divers". Noam started taking photos underwater in 1999 for the first time with Nikonos V with no knowledge of photography what so ever and slowly taught himself "how to do it right". In 2006, he obtained his first Digital camera (Nikon D2X) and Housing (Seacam). Since then he started to take photography more seriously and wine competitions around the world. Today, he still teaches diving at Nemo Divers and teaching underwater photography for beginners and professionals .
Dale Sanders is a professional photographer based on Vancouver Island in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He has been diving and photographing many of the worlds most spectacular diving locations for over thirty years, but still finds some of the very best diving to be at home in the waters of British Columbia. He has published a book on the area entitled "The Emerald Sea", and has recently returned from six weeks of diving and photographing beneath the ice in Canada's arctic, working with an IMAX film crew. Dale shoots Canon EOS DSLR cameras in AQUATICA housings, with Ikelite Strobes and Nocturnal Lights focusing lights.
After more than 6 years as a liveaboard PhotoPro & Captain, Christopher Guglielmo recently settled into Fort Lauderdale, founding the underwater imaging business, AquaExposure. He strongly favors fisheye lenses, forcing himself to get wildly close to every subject and create a fresh perspective, even on traditionally macro subjects. With the utmost concern for the aquatic environment and his photo subjects, he practices and teaches his concept of "zero-impact photography", so as to never negatively effect the ocean and its inhabitants while shooting. Christopher's photography can be viewed at www.AquaExposure.com.
For over a decade, commercial photographer Aaron Wong (www.aaronsphotocraft.com) has shot for fashion magazines, celebrity profiles, and advertising campaigns all over the world with clients like Levi’s and Elle, and with celebrities like Gong Li and Mandy Moore. No stranger to water, the native Singaporean has been going out to sea since he could remember. But it wasn’t until 2004 that he took the plunge into the world of underwater photography. Since that momentous date, he’s garnered several international underwater photography awards including BBC wildlife photographer, Our World Underwater, and Through the Lens. In 2006 Aaron merged his two greatest passions by bringing fashion photography underwater in his ongoing “WATER.COLORS” project. Images from WATER.COLORS have won awards, fronted ad campaigns, and featured prominently in fashion magazines. Recently, Aaron was chosen by Sony to produce a series of images based on his WATER.COLORS project for Sony’s latest line of DSLR cameras. Aaron now divides his time between studio work and the exploration of Asia’s tropical waters, while dreaming of crazier ideas to shoot.
Borut Furlan was born in 1959 in Postojna, Slovenia, and is now living in Ljubljana. He has a Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree in chemistry and is working in a pharmaceutical industry. Borut started diving in 1977 and is a member of the oldest diving club in Slovenia, DRM Ljubljana, which was founded in 1952. He entered the world of underwater photography in 1979, building his own underwater housing for his first camera and later he built three more. Since 1998 he uses state of the art Seacam underwater camera housings. Since 1980 he uses exclusively Nikon photographic equipment, from 2006 digital Nikon D2x.
Magnus Lundgren, swedish wildlife photographer, believes that inspiration is the key. "Mother nature always brings some sort of rugged unsentimental truth to me. She inspires and makes me just plain happy. It feels a bit like a great football game. Unrehearsed, exciting and nature does not try to be anything other than what it is."
Yeang Ch'ng is a MD-PhD student at Harvard who recently received his PhD in Neuroscience and is completing his final year of medical school. Aside from photography, he is interested in how the brain works and hopes that a future career in neuroradiology may combine all his interests.
