BLUE News
TopShot winners
Photo: Ivo Vaessen
The winning images of this year’s Red Sea themed
underwater photographic competition at the Boot
show in Germany celebrated the uniqueness and
variety of diving in Egypt. Wrecks, dugongs, schooling
fi sh and colourful macro subjects made up the winning
combination.
The TopShot competition, run in association with the
CDWS, the Egyptian Tourist Authority,
www.Taucher.net, Unterwasser and show organiser
Messe Dusseldorf, covered four categories of pictures
taken only in the Red Sea, including ‘life on the reef’,
‘diver’, ‘wreck’ and ‘macro’.
Judges at Taucher.net selected 25 out of more than 400
images entered, and framed these for display at the
nine-day Boot show in Dusseldorf in January, one of
the biggest diving events of the year. World renowned
underwater photographers, Americans Todd Essick and
Helmut Horn, Austrian Wolfgang Pölzer Werner Thiele
and Eckhard Krumpholz, Norbert Probst and Udo Kefrig
from Germany, picked out the fi nal winners for each
category.
At the awards ceremony at the show, CDWS managing
director, Zeyad M ELBassel, spoke of the work of the
chamber and said how the beauty and variety of the
Red Sea features shown in the competition images
demonstrated why Egypt was one of the best places
in the world to dive. He highlighted the CDWS’s
commitment to also make the Red Sea one of the
safest places for divers through the adoption and
implementation of European standards throughout the
industry.
Photo: Franz Hajek
The main prizes for the winners were donated by the
ETA and CDWS, which included a ‘wildcard’ entry to
a Red Sea photo shoot-out in November with fl ights,
accommodation and diving. Those awarded second
place in each category received diving equipment
donated by Aqua Lung, Mares and SeacSub. Third
placed contestants were given prizes by both Scubapro
and SubGear.
More than 2,000 of the 15,000-plus visitors to the
photo-exhibition also added their competition
comments for judges, grading each of the 25 Red
Sea images. As it turned out, these visitor-judges
demonstrated a keen eye for photographic knowledge
– their scores were a close match to the professionals’
fi nal decision.
The judges said the standard of images was extremely
high for a non-professional competition and that the
winners showed outstanding skills.Thomas Heckman
was awarded fi rst place in the ‘life of the reef’ category
with his shot of a dugong feeding in sea grass. A
striking image of the wreck of the Giannis D was
enough to crown Ivo Vaessen in the wrecks category.
Franz Hejek picked up fi rst prize in ‘macro’ for his blenny
shot. The fi nal fi rst place went to Thomas Lueken in the
‘diver’ category for his shot of a diver in glassfi sh.
Famous Red Sea residents, such as dolphins and
dugongs, featured highly in second and third places in
the competition.
14 www.cdws.travel
Issue 5 March - April ‘10
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