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Shlomo Cohen - Judge -

Naturally, the safety tank positioned at the bottom of the boat, at a depth of 5 meters, became more and more popular, as nice and long safety stops at the end of the dive became even more essential than before.

Even when simply observing the divers preparing themselves on the boat, you could easily tell which photographer is participating in what category. Huge underwater video cameras laid around the boat represented the Cyprus Underwater Video Clip category, pretty women fancily dressed up (or not dressed up at all…), working on their make up, served as an evidence of the Fashion & Nudity category and handmade plywood banners with environmental awareness titles acted for the Environmental Conservation Campaign category.

Ronny Fogelman's very original idea
One of the participants in the Environmental Conservation Campaign category is Ronny Fogelman from Israel. Equipped with a very original idea, Ronny arrived to the competition especially in order to participate in this category and dedicated all of his dives in order to produce 5 underwater images that together assemble his campaign. Ronny thought that an initiative campaign, which focuses on how divers and sea lovers can increase underwater environmental awareness, would be more effective rather than simply going for the common underwater environmental violation scenes that usually perform a leading role in such categories. He designed an underwater protest, making use of divers holding plywood signs prepared ahead. Each of the images in the campaign features a different composition in which the divers and signs are differently arranged. Ronny is very happy with the results so far and he is confident that his creative campaign will produce some nice results, with respect to a few different aspects…

June 4th, 2009

This was the last day of the competition, in which all competition participants had to take their final shots. Some of the photographers, who were already happy with their Zenobia images and looked for a variety of underwater creatures, chose not to get on the boat and instead, headed towards for other dive sites around Larnaka. Others went for another intensive set of deep dives at the Zenobia wreck.

“Woman of Cyprus”
Since the Zenobia is one of the main categories in this competition, it was the major subject that most photographers focused on, including those who participated in the Cyprus Underwater Video Clip category. Edward Snijders from Netherlands, for example, prepared a video clip called “Woman of Cyprus”, referring of course to the Zenobia wreck. He looked for the origin of the name of the wreck, and found out that Zenobia was the queen of Palmyrene Empire who conquered Egypt in the 3rd century. His video presents the “Zenobia Queen” as a remarkable attraction, while everything was planned ahead in details, including independently mixing a soundtrack, recording a voice track and preparing a storyline for his shots.

Diving Zenobia 20 years ago
Edward shared with us that he first visited the Zenobia wreck on 1989 and that he was very thrilled to come back after 20 years. Back then, he says, there was significantly less life on the wreck, though he recalls that the lorries, which are now found towards the bottom of the wreck, were still hung up from the wreck on 1989. Producing a video clip that tells the story of the Zenobia is one great closure after 20 years!

Since today was the last opportunity to take photographs which can be submitted to the competition, the diving boat did not come back to the harbor at the afternoon as it usually did. Photographers who were willing to compromise on nothing less but perfection insisted to continue for two additional dives and tired but happy, we all came back to the shore in the evening.

No diving tomorrow!
Later that night, all the competition crew, including participants, judges, producers and representatives of Larnaka municipality, all went out for a fancy dinner in a fine restaurant that serves Cyprus national food. As drinks were on the house, most of us came back to the hotel in a condition that clearly states: NO DIVING TOMORROW!

Now all photographers are examining their photos and videos, making their final choices regarding the work that they will submit to the competition. Since these were three extremely intensive days of underwater photography, many memory cards will have to be processed in this long, meaningful and fateful night. Tomorrow, all photographers will finally submit their work, and those who did a good job and made the right decisions, will burn a CD that’s worth a few thousand Euros…