Our first Lembeh Shootout in association with Underwater.kr has just finished, and it was a blast.
We made our rules very strict, specifically in relation to trying to limit our environmental impact, as one contestant put it… ‘It was refreshing to shoot with the discipline we sometimes forget.’
We laid out the categories in the following way:

• Compact Camera
• Mirrorless
• dSLR
• Super-Macro
• Unrestricted
• Portfolio

Then we had additional prizes for the following:

• Environmentally Friendly Diver
• Best Of Show

We did not want to promote the misuse of pointing sticks, or having animals in an unnatural environment, so the guides would not move critters to unusual, more favourable positions – and the judges and the guides were also checking to see if the critter was in the same condition when a diver finished shooting as when he started.  We’re pretty sure this is unique and it did make it very cool. For the judging, we based our criteria on the usual areas of image quality, composition, technique and subject, and we also considered the amount of tweaking the image had been subjected to.  This may explain why the order of images may seem odd if you have not seen the raw files.
So, here we go with the results:

Compact

Winner:  Balqesh Abdullah

(c) Balqesh Abdullah

Honourable Mention:

(c) Hng Che Leong

Mirrorless

Winner: Christine Foo

(c) Christine Foo

Honourable Mention

(c) Anne Adijuwono

Honourable Mention

(c) Nicole Ng

Honourable Mention

(c) CH Low

dSLR

Winner:

(c) Kay Burn Lim

Runner Up:

(c) Carmelo Bethencourt

3rd Place:

(c) Carmelo Bethencourt

Honourable Mention:

(c) Jeong Kwon Park

Honourable Mention:

(c) Alvin Ho

Super Macro

Winner:

(c) Kay Burn Lim

2nd Place

(c) Patrick Rebai

3rd Place

(c) CK Chong

Honourable Mention

(c) Carmelo Bethencourt

Unrestricted

Winner:

(c) Kay Burn Lim

2nd Place:

(c) Kay Burn Lim

3rd Place:

(c) Christian Jansen

Honourable Mention:

(c) Won Ha Kyoung

Portfolio

Winner:

(c) Jeong Kwon Park

2nd Place

(c) CK Chong

3rd Place

(c) Patrick Rebai

Best of Show

Winner:

(c) Jeong Kwon Park

Environmental Diver

Winners:     Patrick Rebai & Christian Jansen  (Joint Winners).
A special thanks to all of the sponsors, the new friends we made and the old friends we saw again.