News
Hone your underwater photography skills with Alphamarine Photography at Red Sea Diving Safari in March
Alphamarine Photography is running an underwater photography workshop event at Red Sea Diving Safari’s Marsa Shagra Village in March 2024. The event includes eight classroom sessions on different aspects of underwater photography given by Phil and Anne Medcalf over four days, and then repeated. The workshops will start on 12th March and run until the 19th, inclusive. There won’t be a need to attend any of the talks in a specific order. This rolling program approach means attendees can arrive at any time during or before the event, and as long as they are in the resort at least four out of the eight days, they can access all the talks. That, in turn, gives lots of flexibility with flight options.
The talks will cover exposure, composition, using light, and underwater photography styles and techniques. Each will be about 45 minutes long. Guests will also be able to access Anne and Phil for advice throughout the eight days of the event, not just during the days they attend talks. They’ll run impromptu sessions and give at least an hour’s one-to-one time with everyone who is booked on a workshop. There’ll also be a selection of demo equipment available to try, including wet lenses and strobes.
Between them, Phil and Anne have over 50 years of diving experience, and over 30 years of those have been spent taking digital pictures underwater. In that time, they’ve dived around the world, including many trips to the Red Sea, as well as Indonesia, the Maldives, Australia, and the UK. Together, they turned their interest into a business in 2017 and now own Alphamarine Photography, an underwater photography training and retail company. They have a highly rated blog on their website alphamarinephoto.com and a Facebook Q&A group with over 2000 members worldwide. They’ve written on underwater photography for magazines and presented on the subject at every Go Diving show since the event began. Their workshops and online courses in photography and photo editing attract students from around the world. Alphamarine’s expertise ranges from getting the best from budget-friendly cameras such as Olympus TG’s to using the latest high-end mirrorless options, and experience as retailers gives them a broader knowledge base than many underwater photographers when it comes to the equipment available.
Anne and Phil Medcalf
Marsa Shagra village has a range of accommodation from tents to air-conditioned chalets. A standard package will include full board, most soft drinks, and five days of unlimited house reef diving. Meals are buffet style, with a good range, and the meal times are long enough to allow for early morning dives and night dives without any risk of missing out. The house reef diving is excellent, and you can dive unguided from 6 am to 8 pm. As well as accessing the house reef from shore, zodiac dives on the outer house reef are covered in the unlimited package. Marine life is impressively varied, with regular sightings of turtles, reef sharks, and dolphins, as well as a great deal of macro life to find and occasional sightings of whale sharks. Elphinstone reef can be dived by speedboat with a journey time of about 20 minutes for a supplementary charge, as can a range of other local sites by boat or shore.
The way bookings are handled for this event is that you book your holiday package through Oonasdivers (oonasdivers.com) if you are in the UK (contact Red Sea Diving Safari for their agents elsewhere), and once you’re booked, you pay the workshop fee of £175 to Alphamarine Photography. The format and the resort setup suit people coming on their own, as a couple, or a group. If you have non-photographers with you, they don’t pay the workshop fee. Red Sea Diving Safari’s website is https://www.redsea-divingsafari.com For more details about what the workshop entails, to book spaces, or anything else, email info@alphamarinephoto.com.
Fire on Monroe Bravo is the latest book in the Jack Collier series by Fred Lockwood. Our story begins with our lead characters, Jack and Sandro, owners of Marine Salvage & Investigation Company, arriving on the Monroe Bravo Oil & Gas Platform in the North Sea. Having secured a contract for their vessel the MV Stavanger to act as support ship to the platform for TransGlobal Oil, our protagonists are on a celebratory visit.
However almost as soon as they arrive a series of explosions rock the platform, causing huge damage, loss of life and the very real danger of a massive human, ecological and financial disaster.
As the danger mounts for both our heroes and the surviving workers, Jack and Sandro will have to escape the inferno, all while trying to save the platform and the men still trapped unable to help themselves.
The disaster sets the scene for the unfolding story lines following the fate of the platform and our main characters, the police investigation into a suspected terrorist act and the actions of TransGlobal Oil as they attempt to navigate the pubic outcry and financial repercussions.
In his eighth book, Fire on Monroe Bravo, Fred Lockwood delivers an explosive thriller, with plenty of above and in-water drama, and our heroes fighting for survival, what more can you ask for?
We thoroughly recommend this read and look forward to the next in the series. For more information about his book series, you can check out the reviews of his previous books here on Scubaverse.
- Title: Fire On Monroe Bravo
- Author: Fred Lockwood
- ISBN: 979-8325324536
Available in a paperback version and for Kindle from Amazon and book stores.
In June we were incredibly fortunate to be invited to dive in Alonissos, a small Greek Island in the Sporades island chain located in the North Aegean Sea. While I have long been a big fan of the Greek Islands as a great holiday destination, I had not had the opportunity to do any diving on previous visits and Mike and I were extremely excited to see what Alonissos had to offer both above and below the surface!
The Sporades are easily accessible via the airport in Skiathos (the first island in the chain), which is served by Jet2 flights from all major UK airports from May through October. Numerous ferries and charter boats make island hopping from Skiathos Town a breeze. After an hour boat ride, the picturesque port of Patitiri was a wonderful introduction to Alonissos, where we were met by our gracious hosts Kostas of Albedo Travel and Dias of Alonissos Triton Dive Center. Mike and I were delighted to be staying at the Paradise Hotel, aptly named for its stunning views over the sea and great location for walking to the waterfront.
Alonissos is beautifully situated in the National Marine Park of Alonissos and the Northern Sporades, the largest marine protected area in Europe. The surrounding seas offer fabulous marine life, including incredibly rare species such as the Mediterranean monk seal. They boast deep walls covered in gorgonians and sponges, stunning topography with caverns, swimthroughs and pinnacles, and the first accessible ancient shipwreck from 500BC!
In locations where historical sites have been reported, the waters are largely restricted, but with collaboration between government, underwater archeologists and dive centres, incredible underwater museums are being created for a truly unique diving experience. Alonissos is home to the first of these, the Ancient Shipwreck of Peristera Accessible Underwater Archeological Site. The chance to dive into history (along with reports of healthy reef life and amazing underwater topography) meant Mike and I were keen to get in the water.
Our introduction to the diving around Alonissos was at the Agios Georgios Pinnacles, in the channel between Alonissos and Skopelos. This fantastic site was named “The Chimney,’ and proved to have a huge amount to see. We got to a decent depth here (over 25m), and marvelled at a colourful reef wall with a wonderful swim through whose rocky walls were absolutely covered with life. As well as brilliant topography there was no shortage of macro life here. We saw numerous nudibranchs, five different species in total. The second dive at Mourtias reef nearby was a shallower dive along a nice wall with lots of crevices. Several moray eels and grouper called this site home. We enjoyed looking in the crevices for lobster and smaller benthic life, such as cup corals and tunicates.
Our itinerary allowed us two dives a day with afternoons left to explore the island with our hire car and evenings to enjoy the famous Greek hospitality. This proved to be a lovely mix of in-water and land based diversions.
The next days diving to the Gorgonian Gardens and Triton’s Cave was to be even better! These two stunning sites are nothing short of fabulous. The Gorgonian Gardens was a deep wall near to the Agios Georgios islands. The ever-present currents in this deep channel meant that the sea life was amazing … the namesake Gorgonian sea fans dotted the wall at a depth of 30 to 50 meters, getting ever larger the deeper we went. Above 30m was by no means less beautiful, with sponges, corals, scorpionfish, moray eels and some rare and colourful nudibranchs.
The second shallower dive of the day was to Triton’s Cave or the Cavern of Skopelos, on the east side of that island. The spectacular rock formations had wild striations both above and below the water making a truly epic topography. The cavern entrance was at 14m, and big enough for a buddy pair, winding up to 6m and passing two beautiful windows out into the blue. Emerging from the cavern, the light at the shallower depths and the incredible rock formations made for a fantastic gentle swimming safety stop and we all surfaced by the boat with massive grins.
Check out our next blog :Alonissos: The complete diving destination (Part 2)” to hear about our amazing dive on the 2500 year old Peristera Wreck!
Thanks to:
Alonissos Triton Dive Center https://bestdivingingreece.com/
Albedo Travel https://alonissosholidays.com/activities/
Paradise Hotel https://paradise-hotel.gr/
Alonissos Municipality https://alonissos.gr/en/
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