Finally the week ended and we got to the competition, the part everyone was waiting for. There are lots of prizes for a multitude of categories including wide angle and macro, both traditional and unrestricted (without and with editing), a fluorescent category, and sharks category, and of course video. I only entered the wide angle and sharks categories because that’s all I really shot.
I came to The Digital Shootout ready to learn and maybe get one good shot, what I didn’t go to do was win any awards. But I did! I won an honorable mention in sharks for one of my motion blur shots, third in the wide angle traditional for a shot of a barracuda under a dock, and finally first place in sharks for another motion blurred shark that I made black and white. I was so ecstatic that I won! I almost swept the sharks category with only one shark dive which was my first shark dive. My trip to Roatan was one of the best weeks of my life. I am eternally grateful to the entire crew from Backscatter, and Berkley, Erin, and Christian for helping me so much and making me realize that I love underwater photography just as much if not more than terrestrial photography.
