Bali has some fantastic diving and none more so than when on a trip organised by Shannon Conway with critter finder extraordinaire Graham Abbott with whom I have spent the last couple of weeks based at Scuba Sereya on the East coast of Bali.

Graham and Shannon asked for a wish list and a wish list they got from me including wunderpus, harlequin shrimps, boxer crab (or pom pom crab!), cardinal fish with eggs in their mouths, spanish dancer, and so the list went on! I couldn’t believe as the days went by more and more critters were being crossed off my list, wierd and wonderful sea creatures that I hadn’t seen pr photographed before. We did a mix of muck diving (black sandy bottoms) and beautiful reef diving and of course the famous Liberty Wreck and by the end of the 2 weeks I had crossed everything off my list apart from seeing another jawfish with eggs, we found the jawfish but think maybe a few days more and they would have been looking after their eggs in their big mouths!

At the end of the trip Shannon organised a photo competition and I was really chuffed to find I had got a 2nd place with my cardinal fish with eggs shot and 4th place with my schooling jacks – really chuffed even though the first place prize of a free trip to Scuba Sereya and the prestigious Shannon Conway trophy wasn’t to be mine but went to a fantastic lady Linda with a great sot of a grouper being cleaned by a shrimp on his lip – great one Linda!

A MASSIVE thanks to both Shannon and Graham for such a fantastic underwater photography trip and to all the guys and girls at Scuba Sereya for a fantastic stay, I definitely hope to meet you all again soon!!

I’ll post more soon but here are the 3 images I entered into the competition

It’s day one of Shannon Conway’s The Art of Underwater Photography trip in Bali and how can things get better when already today I have seen yellow crinoid shrimps, “doughnut” nudibranchs, a thorny seahorse AND the most amazingly wonderful WONDERPUS!

A life long dream to see these amazing creatures was realised this afternoon at the end of another fantastic critter dive led by Graham Abbot from Diving 4 Images who is running the workshop with Shannon.

These amazing creatures have always fascinated me and I have already been lucky enough to see a couple of octupus too…

Tomorrow we’re off to Pong Pong amongst other sites, the 60mm macro lens in on and ready to go!

On the 9th May I welcomed Stefan, Jon and Gunnar down to Portland for a 2 day workshop along the great Dorset coastline. All three of the chaps had shown me some stunning images on their websites prior to the course and were obviously very good photographers but looking to learn and understand more about using ND and graduated Neutral Density Filters.

With the weather looking promising, after running through the theory over dinner we headed out to Portland Bill, a place not often photographed at sunset but the cloud was looking interesting enough to give it a go. Within 10 minutes of setting up, the chaps had grasped the concept of the ND & graduated filters and even though they had not managed to have their Lee Filters delivered, were making great progress with my spare Hitech and Cokin filters.

We were treated to a great dawn shoot and a lovely day shoot the following day and even though the cloud was closing in fast we headed out to an old jetty for sunset. It quickly became apparent we wouldn’t see the sun setting but were rewarded with the most amazing stormy skies as the heavens opened! So often great landscape scenes are missed because it’s raining and although the conditions make it harder to concentrate on the perfect compositions and exposures looking through rain covers with water running down your nose, it often pays off to give it a go!

We managed to get away with a light shower on our final dawn at Weymouth Pier and spent some time critiquing images around lunchtime, these guys were good and their images fantastic!! Unfortunately after our afternoon shoot the heavens opened again but alas this time we had flat grey skies so the consensus was to head to the pub and wait to see whether the skies would change!

A great couple of days, hopefully well worth the trip from Sweden for Gunnar and Hamburg for Jon! Thanks chaps, I really look forward to meeting you again and will ensure I have a tinfoil hat with me to deflect your mickey taking!!