We are happy to announce that the winner of the RSDS Photo Competition for May 2025 has been chosen. Congratulations to Paul Savage with his photo "Midas blenny with a smile".
Paul wins a free stay at the RSDS village of his choice. You can view the winning photo, and all the May 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 Paul, and good luck to all those participating in the coming months!
From Paul Duxfield, our competition judge:
A splash of colour. Thats what this months competition boiled down to in my opinion. Composition is guided by a number of ‘rules’ I’ve put rules in quote marks because it’s a very flexible set of guidelines really in my opinion, and it’s creatively dangerous, I personally feel to stick too rigidly to these rules.
You may have heard of the common ones like the Rule of Thirds or the Golden Section even, whose foundations are firmly rooted in mathematics. But there’s also the less common ideas like the Rule of Odds, Google it, and these are all really great ways to get you to practice what is known to work whilst developing your own personal style.
Colour combination and contrast is also something that has strong visual appeal with us, and it’s a particularly useful technique in our favoured area of photography, as we’re so often bombarded with a myriad of bright primary and secondary colours, often all in the same fish, i'm looking at you Parrot Fish!
Anyway for May my favourite three drew me closer because of their strong colour, and more importantly how the shooter employed one strong colour against a less colourful background.
So my first of my final three was Paul Savage and his great macro portrait of a vivid yellow Blenny, very central in the frame to the exclusion of all else. And then I loved Pamela Fischer’s orange red starfish in stark contrast again to the dark vignetted background. I’m not sure if these two shots were snooted to achieve the end result or edited to isolate the subject, to be honest, I don’t really care, it’s up to the shooter and their original vision in my opinion, although I do realise that lot’s of competitions take a more purist view. This isn’t the place to philosophise on this.
My last colourful picture choice is Giulia Mereu’s Pyjama slug, one of the commonest but no less pretty and colourful creatures we can often encounter. This is a great example taken side on as the creature stretches its body up and forward. It’s less contrasty and bright as the other two, mostly because of the background and edit, but still a fabulous more naturalistic shot.
In the end though I’ve settled upon Paul’s lemony splash of yellow and his vignetted Midas Blenny, awesome well done.
Well done to everyone else, keep up the good work and keep sending those entries in, and maybe you’d like to join our second Fotofest this year in December? It’s quickly filling up and we’re limiting the spaces to give everyone the best experience. This workshop is designed for camera users of all experience levels, with any type of underwater camera.
