Having traveled extensively in Mexico and swam in cenotes (pure deep-water sinkholes), I can let you know firsthand simply how extremely picturesque they’re.
The lilies that develop in these Mexican subterranean waterways are extremely vibrant – however diver and underwater photographer Ysabela Coll does not simply let you know, she additionally proves it on this beautiful {photograph}.
Coll took the picture whereas diving in a cenote, and it not too long ago gained the Underwater Seascapes class of the Photo Competition for United Nations (UN) World Oceans Day.
A wider a part of the UN’s annual World Oceans Day marketing campaign, the competitors celebrates photographers that draw consideration to oceans and the environmental challenges they face.
“Emerging from the darkness of a Mexican cenote, we entered this underwater garden teeming with colorful water lilies and small fish,” mentioned Coll.
“The sudden contrast transformed the scene into a dreamlike world, where light, color and life replaced the silence of the cave.”
Coll was diving with a decade-old Nikon D500 in an underwater housing, utilizing a Tokina AT-X 107 DX 10-17mm f/3.5 fisheye lens. She used a 1/160 sec shutter pace at ISO640, together with an f/10 aperture and focal size of 10mm (a 15mm equal, on Nikon’s former flagship APS-C physique).
I like how sharply your complete scene is targeted, but additionally how the wide-angle subject of view packs in so many exotically coloured lilies.
Alongside her stepfather and equal ocean apasionado, José Alejandro Alvarez, Coll co-founded Álvarez+Coll – a nice artwork and conservation pictures enterprise specializing in the great thing about (and threats to) marine ecosystems world wide.
“Cenotes are vital freshwater reservoirs that sustain biodiversity and surrounding communities, yet pollution and climate change increasingly threaten their fragile balance,” mentioned Coll.
This 12 months’s competitors winners had been introduced throughout the UN World Oceans Day occasion on June 08 in New York.
You can view the 2026 winners on-line on the competition website, with 4 profitable images as a result of be printed for exhibitions world wide.
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