May 2022 Video Contest Winner and Review

Hi all. So many good places in the world to dive and so good to see them being filmed and appreciated. However we are too close to loosing it all with overfishing, pollution and climate change so lets not be complacent and make sure we all do our best to protect and conserve.

Five entries this month and the winner is Baja California – Socorro : Diving in size XXL by Noemie Stroh. I do realise that not everyone has access to such amazing marine life and so I always look at filming skills as well as the actual species. But in this case Noenie has capture incredible images of incredible wildlife and edited them together in a thoughtful and exiting way.

Underwater birds by Maria Bereozka

The video shots you get by free diving are so good. No bubbles to worry wildlife. Beautiful ray and good music choice. I think I have said it all before on your previous films. Great and really nice to watch.

Scuba diving changed my life! by Maria Bereozka

Love the written intro. It was Cousteau who inspired me to explore the undersea world although perhaps a few generations before. Nice to see a different style of film from you. Lovely sentiment and very well shot with a perfectly slow pace. A simple film but with good impact. Have a look again at your opening narration as your words were a bit quite and lost behind the music. Love the long shots.

Meet the reef Egypt by Domenico Pertschi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-d5YyiTkEs

Hi Domenico. Lovely images of some fabulous marine life. All sharp, steady, well framed and well lit. Good music choice too which kept a nice pace to the video. Red Sea – fabulous place to dive.

Tiran Island: scuba diving with Go pro 9 by Maria Bereozka

We are going to need to change this monthly competition name to the ‘Maria Bereozka show’.  You have more entries than anyone else I know. Excellent. Keep sending them in. Nice pre-dive sequence which really captured the feel of Red Sea boat diving. Good underwater images and the music fitted well. As you are now getting into the scuba aspect of underwater filming and finding much more to film, have a think about some sort of narration or story line.

Baja California – Socorro : Diving in size XXL by Noemie Stroh

Fabulous drone shots to open the film. It’s a wonderful location. The link from the surface shot of the Sea lion to the underwater was great and the following images were stunning. I loved the shot of the diver under the massive shoal of fish. Your camera work is very good as is your lighting. The dolphin squeaks under the music was a simple touch but very effective. Well done. So many good images. The puffer fish and the ray made me smile. My only negative thought was the music, while starting well it eventually became a bit monotonous.

The June competition is now open for entries. You can enter up to three videos by clicking here.