Bluewater Photo, located in Santa Monica, California and owned and operated by the Underwater Photography Guide owner Scott Gietler, has announced the winners of their 2011 Photo Shootout.
Photo taken by Brian McHugh – 1st place, Portrait category
The Shootout, which took place September 16-19, included an opportunity to participate on dive trips aboard several California’s Peace, Spectre, Sundiver, and Raptor charter boats. The competition required photographers to shoot their photos within a 72-hour timeframe, and underwater photographers were eligible by diving from any boat, beach or island south of Point Conception, CA to the Mexican border. In addition to the open shooting category where anyone could participate, there were also categories for compact cameras and unedited videos.
The SoCal Shootout was judged by some of the top professional underwater photographers in Southern California: Andy Sallmon, Todd Winner, Richard Salas and Mark Strickland. Richard is the author of “Sea of Light”, a coffee table book on Channel Islands underwater photography. Andy, Mark and Todd have all been published multiple times this past year in many of the world’s best dive magazines.
More than $16,000 in prizes were awarded, including a 5-day dive trip to Wakatobi Dive Resort in Indonesia.
To see the list of winners and the winning photos themselves, click here to visit the Bluewater Photo Store website. California Diver Magazine will also be featuring the winners in our November/December 2011 issue, which will be mailed to subscribers on November 5.
1st place Macro, Michael Zeigler. “Top Snail”