Underwater Photography, Competition and Community

Adrian Stacey was a competitor on the Dauin Dive Festival in 2024, and in 2025 he was invited again to the competitors, however this time to behave as one of many photograph judges.

From Competitor to Judge on the Dauin Dive Festival

In 2024, I travelled to the small city of Dauin, Philippines, to cowl the Dive 7 Festival and to take part within the related photograph contest. It was my first time in Dauin, a famend muck-diving vacation spot, and it was my first time competing in a photograph shootout. This time, I used to be invited again to be a choose by the organisers, NORDA (Negros Oriental Dive Association), which was one other first for me!

The Rise of the Dive Dauin Festival

Now often called the Dive Dauin Festival, the occasion has been working for a number of years and is supported by the Philippines Department of Tourism, the Local Government Unit (LGU) of Dauin, and the Negros Oriental Provincial Government, which is quickly to be renamed the Negros Island Region.

The pageant is quick changing into a must-attend occasion within the Philippines dive calendar and is attracting each native and worldwide photographers; in reality, roughly half the individuals weren’t locals. There has been a formidable enhance in individuals, which is roughly doubling annually. The 2025 occasion had 100 keen photographers vying for the honours.

The most important sponsors for the pageant have been Divevolk, an modern firm that produces underwater touchscreen housings for telephones. They have been additionally showcasing their new product, SeaHyperlink, which permits dwell streaming from underwater, and the Dive Dauin Festival was the primary photograph contest on the planet to be live-streamed!

Another most important sponsor was Silver Reef Dive Resort, which hosted the judges, nationwide authorities officers and different main sponsors. This distinctive resort, constructed from repurposed delivery containers, is designed with sustainability in thoughts.

The pageant kicks off in model with a welcoming ceremony that includes dancers, a lavish banquet, and speeches from native dignitaries. The closing ceremony and awards have been equally spectacular.

How the Underwater Photography Competition Works

Participants have 4 days to shoot a successful picture and are required to submit one photograph for every class. Beginners have three classes: Macro, Nudi, and Fish Portrait, whereas Compact and Open (huge cameras) have seven classes to realize greatness in. These embrace Macro, Nudibranch, Fish Portrait, Wide Angle, Creative Lighting, Bonfire (night time dive in open water) and Marine Behaviour. There was additionally a video highlights part for budding filmmakers.

Categories, Spotters and Strategy

Several dive resorts from the area host individuals; these resorts and the photographers take this competitors very severely. DPVs are sometimes used to save lots of time transferring between topics, and spotters are offered to assist discover elusive and strange creatures. Photographers will generally ask spotters to discover a specific critter. They may even search their steerage on which picture to submit and by which class, the best alternative can imply the distinction between a successful shot and inserting nowhere!

Such is the significance of those unsung heroes of the macro photograph contest that one of the best spotter can be given an award and prize.

Inside the Judging Room

After 4 days of frenetic capturing, all photos should be submitted by 5pm on the ultimate day. The photos are then collated into their respective classes, and the judging can start. The closing ceremony was scheduled for 5pm the next day, and with tons of of photographs to evaluate and winners and runners-up to pick for every class, it was clear that it could be a prolonged course of.

As a first-time choose, I used to be undecided what to anticipate, however after assembly the opposite judges, it quickly grew to become clear that there have been no egos on the panel and that this may be an pleasurable and humorous expertise.

My fellow judges have been Ram Yoro, an skilled photographer from the Anilao area of the Philippines; Boogs Rosales, an completed film-maker and photographer from Manila; and Jenny Stock, a talented photojournalist. The fifth choose was Imran Ahmad, knowledgeable business photographer, sadly his busy schedule meant he may solely be part of us through video hyperlink for the ultimate day’s judging.

For the choice course of, we have been ushered into a non-public room with a big display on which the pictures have been displayed. A technician would then scroll by means of the pictures for a class, spending just a few seconds on every. He would then repeat the method, and this time the judges would vote to maintain a picture in the event that they preferred it; if the bulk voted sure, then the picture can be saved. Some classes had as much as 40 photos, so we might generally want a number of runs by means of to whittle it right down to round seven to eight photos. This is the place judges may champion a selected picture they felt strongly about, explaining why they thought it ought to stay in consideration for a high spot!

Ethics, Editing and Image Selection

Photographers submitted an edited JPEG and an unedited RAW file. Once we had a couple of photos left, we might evaluate the RAW information to make sure that the modifying had remained inside the competitors guidelines. We would additionally look out for tell-tale indicators of interference from a spotter or photographer, resembling creatures clearly being harassed or in an unnatural surroundings or place, these pictures would additionally not be chosen. We would contemplate the problem of the shot, the rarity of the topic, good lighting and composition. Selecting the best picture for the proper class additionally makes an enormous distinction, and if some photos had been appropriately categorised, they’d have positioned even larger and even received! Selecting one thing totally different additionally makes a giant distinction. While most individuals shot macro for many classes, we might have preferred to see some good wide-angle pictures within the Animal Behaviour or Fish Portrait classes.

Once we had our last few photos, every choose would then choose their high three based mostly on the factors outlined within the competitors guidelines and their particular person preferences. The scores would then be tallied up, and first, second, and third locations have been awarded based mostly on the judges’ votes. There have been many excellent photos, and selecting a favorite photograph is a really subjective matter, however for probably the most half, we agreed on what we preferred. This was lucky as a result of it took us a complete of 9 hours, to pick the winners.

We even had a working lunch, as we wanted to finish our choice course of by 4pm so the organisers may put together for the awards, which have been as a consequence of begin that night. Although it was an extended day of reviewing photos, I totally loved the method and located it fascinating. Hearing how the opposite judges rated the photographs and what to look out for when it comes to composition and pure habitat was an actual eye-opener.

Diving Dauin Beyond the Competition

Thankfully, it was not all work. Before the judging started, whereas the contestants have been taking their photos, I used to be additionally happy to find that we might be capable of make quite a few dives. As we weren’t allowed to mingle with the individuals, Silver Reef offered us with our personal non-public boat.

The Dauin shoreline stretches for miles and provides over 40 dive websites, that are dwelling to a wealth of sought-after critters. Frog fish, seahorse, flamboyant cuttlefish, tiger shrimps, harlequin shrimps, mantis shrimps, golden gobies, bobtail squid, nudibranch of each description and way more can all be discovered on the black volcanic slopes and patchy reefs.

Muck Diving, Snoots and Unexpected Mantas

Although I desire wide-angle pictures, it’s good enjoyable discovering these usually tiny and unfamiliar beings. For this journey, I had a brand new Kraken Snoot that I used to be desirous to familiarize yourself with. A snoot is a bit of kit connected to a strobe, which creates a highlight impact on the topic whereas leaving the remainder of the picture in darkness. The outcomes may be dramatic and spectacular, however they aren’t as straightforward to make use of as I had first anticipated. However, after a few dives, I started to get the cling of it and began to realize some pleasing outcomes. I now have a newfound respect for well-snooted photos.

For our first dive, I used to be all set as much as go on a critter hunt once we have been knowledgeable {that a} juvenile manta ray was making common appearances on the dive website we have been visiting. This facilitated a fast change of lenses, and it proved to be name because the younger manta joined us after just a few minutes of getting into the water.

Apo Island and Wide-Angle Opportunities

In addition to exploring the critter-infested website of Dauin, we additionally ventured over to Apo Island. This tiny island boasts some lovely reefs and serves as a nesting website for inexperienced and hawksbill turtles. Here I received the prospect to check my cellphone within the Divevolk housing. I used to be pleasantly stunned by the outcomes. Once the pageant had completed and my judging duties had been fulfilled, I managed to get in a single last dive for extra observe with my snoot. This was on the Aivy Maes home reef, Cars, a website famend for frogfish, that are an important observe topic as they have a tendency to not transfer.

Conservation, Community and the Festival’s Future

Diving is an enormous draw for Dauin, which has not solely been blessed with excellent muck diving but in addition has some nice reefs and an enormous turtle inhabitants at Apo Island. This particular mix of macro and wide-angle has been recognised by TIEZA (Tourism Infrastructure Economic Zone Authority), which has donated an eight-seater hyperbaric chamber to the area. The Mayor of Dauin, the Honourable Galicano A Truita, has additionally donated a few of his private land to deal with the chamber.

The Dauin Dive Festival subsequent 12 months is poised to be even greater and higher, with workshops deliberate for each spotters and photographers. There will nonetheless be a eager deal with conservation, with seashore and underwater clean-ups scheduled, and finest practices for photographers and spotters will nonetheless be enforced. This pageant is a superb showcase of what may be achieved when native authorities companies and the non-public sector work collectively. It is nice to see the pageant go from power to power, selling diving within the area, which advantages each the native communities plus the realm’s reefs and the creatures that dwell on or round them.

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