We are happy to announce that the winner of the RSDS Photo Competition for April 2025 has been chosen. Congratulations to Tom Ingrams with his photo "Snouting around".
Tom wins a free stay at the RSDS village of his choice. You can view the winning photo, and all the April participants here.
If you would like a chance to win, simply register on our website and upload your photos from our competition page. Each day we choose a 'photo of the day' from the selection of entries. Anyone can register on our website and vote on photos entered into the competition. At the end of the month our Photo Pro and photography workshop leader, Paul ‘Duxy’ Duxfield, looks at the votes and chooses a winner from the highest scoring photos. Full terms and conditions and prize details are available here.
Congratulations again to Tom, and good luck to all those participating in the coming months!
From Paul Duxfield, our competition judge:
Have you seen the light? I have, and it’s never been more evident than in this months selection of competition entries.
I felt that there were two very close winners again this month and the eventual winner was chosen simply because they’d used an unusual technique which is almost getting a bit too much in the rarified world of competitive underwater photography, but is being used in this case in a much more subtle and nuanced fashion in my opinion.
Like last month though I’d like to look at a couple of the close to the top shots that just didn't quite make it because of very minor issues which I will address.
Pamela Fischer had a couple of carefully framed entries, but I felt in both cases the main subjects didn't quite stand out enough. So there needed to be more contrast between the divers and the background and my favourite with the Scorpion Fish the fish itself should be a little more obvious either by editing or at the time with lighting.
Jasmin’s Lionfish (under the jetty?) with the Silversides is an absolutely gorgeous image only let down a tiny bit by the Lionfish itself being a little bit dark, again easily addressed in the edit and would have really been in with a high chance if this was the case.
I can see where Paul Eijkemann was going with his deliberately under lit shot of some Barracudas, difficult creatures as they're very reflective so getting them lit with strobes is quite the task sometimes. Hard to say how to improve other than some careful masking then burning in on the editing software really.
There were a few shots using the sun as a compositonal element which is often a gamble unless you're shooting at the ideal depth and the time of day to maximise the sunbeams and dappled light. There is a sweet spot, which combined with the relevant camera settings will all combined will give the best sunrays, but it’s also quite variable so learning when to recognise the time of day and dial in your settings just so is a practiced art.
Which brings me to the first shot in my two favourites.
Now as mentioned earlier Barracudas aren't the easiest creatures to light. As they're very reflective, your strobe settings and positioning need to be enough to make out the creature but not so much that it reflects too much light back like a mirror losing all the detail in a white out. So Aaron has done really well here in this regard but also framing perfectly using the sun and the beams to balance the shot. Not easy as you're juggling the composition along with the camera settings to achieve the final result.
My second of the two front runners is Tom Ingrams stunning fish portrait of a Cornet Fish. With the creature on the diagonal three dimensionally coming out of the carefully exposed reef behind with a not too overexposed sunball in the background. However what raised this already great shot above the rest is in Tom’s very subtle added motion blur, which I’m hoping is in camera for the added technical Kudos, but even if not it’s not too overdone as a lot of shots using this technique can be, and I’m as guilty of this as anyone to be honest, because it’s fun.
Fancy techniques are all well and good but they need to be utilised with a proper purpose and not just for the sake of the technique itself. This is a great example and exactly why I’m giving it the top spot this month. Well done Tom.
Don’t forget whilst this Summer's Fotofest is full with 14 participants joining me at Marsa Nakari, we’ll be doing it all again in early December this year. And it’s a perfect opportunity to learn and practice all of these techniques and much more, with a fun crowd of fellow underwater snappers.
