One of our BluSnoot (Fiber Optic Snoot) customers used his creative skills to achieve very unique lighting of the Portuguese Man of War (bluebottle) Cnidaria. Australian photographer Matt Smith's photo (below) has been selected as the face of the 2014 BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition. He also was named Australian Geographic ANZANG Nature Photographer of the Year 2014 with another photo (bottom) of the same subject. Matt used his BluSnoots to light the Bluebottle from below the surface and achieved some outstanding results. Congratulations Matt on some of the most creative underwater photography we have seen for some time. Check out more of Matt's photos and back ground on his website: www.MattySmithPhoto.com
Matt Smith's Photo is the face of the 2014 Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.
Matt Smith says:
"I have always had an attraction to the water and the tricks it plays on light for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are of my brother and I snorkelling on family holidays to France and the Mediterranean Sea. I can clearly remember my first experience of watching shafts of sunlight weave and dance down into the deep blue, carved by the rippling ocean surface. I bought my first film SLR camera in my teens to try and capture what I loved to see and I used it to shoot the coastlines of my home country of the United Kingdom. It wasn’t long before my curiosity and appetite for shooting the ocean meant I would have to get in and shoot underwater, so I saved and bought a waterproof housing for my camera so I could explore further. As my photography skills grew I needed to travel more to get the images I imagined, so trips abroad to far off countries followed. Now residing in NSW Australia after emigrating from the UK in 2007 I have the worlds biggest playground at my feet, the Pacific Ocean…. And I have truly fallen in love with it. Recently I have been working on a series of over/underwater images using different lighting techniques and have even designed & constructed my own special 18” (46cm) lens dome port to help me get really sharp over/under focus. To illuminate the “under” part of the image I often employ various snoots and diffusers to shape the light to best suit my subject, including the Reef Images BluSnoot. What I really like about an over/under picture is that it gives an underwater image a sense of place. It marries the underwater world with our own familiar world, it links the unknown with the known."
"I have always had an attraction to the water and the tricks it plays on light for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are of my brother and I snorkelling on family holidays to France and the Mediterranean Sea. I can clearly remember my first experience of watching shafts of sunlight weave and dance down into the deep blue, carved by the rippling ocean surface. I bought my first film SLR camera in my teens to try and capture what I loved to see and I used it to shoot the coastlines of my home country of the United Kingdom. It wasn’t long before my curiosity and appetite for shooting the ocean meant I would have to get in and shoot underwater, so I saved and bought a waterproof housing for my camera so I could explore further. As my photography skills grew I needed to travel more to get the images I imagined, so trips abroad to far off countries followed. Now residing in NSW Australia after emigrating from the UK in 2007 I have the worlds biggest playground at my feet, the Pacific Ocean…. And I have truly fallen in love with it. Recently I have been working on a series of over/underwater images using different lighting techniques and have even designed & constructed my own special 18” (46cm) lens dome port to help me get really sharp over/under focus. To illuminate the “under” part of the image I often employ various snoots and diffusers to shape the light to best suit my subject, including the Reef Images BluSnoot. What I really like about an over/under picture is that it gives an underwater image a sense of place. It marries the underwater world with our own familiar world, it links the unknown with the known."
 The 2014 Australian Geographic ANZANG Nature Photographer of the Year Competition winning photo. |  Glaucus Marginatus lit from above with a single Blusnoot as it floated on the surface of the water. |
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