Wetpixel

Live Reports: Wetpixel/Under the Jungle Cenote Workshop

Day 6

Our winning streak with the weather continues! To capitalise on this, we decided to go for sites with great ambient light again.

Our first dive was at Cenote Ponderosa. The cavern line has an amazing curtains of light, which, when combined the Under the Jungle team’s phenomenal modelling skills provide beautiful imaging potential.

The group were really getting to grips with the idea of balancing strobe light to light up the models’ faces, while exposing for the ambient light. It is a challenging environment, given that you area also under an overhead while shooting, there is silt that is easily disturbed with any loss of buoyancy, and the extremes of tonal range that exist in these unique places.

We the packed up and headed for Under the Jungle’s home cenote, Taj Maha. This offers a variety of creative opportunities, with threee distinctly different cenotes all accessible from the cavern line.

Cenote Esmerelda has an amazing “gully” full of fallen trees, with beautiful blue water in the background

Cenote Sugarbowl also has beautiful blue shallow water (it is an air space you can surface into if required) and has a rope ladder than dangles down into the water providing access if required. Above the surface, the cenote has coloured and decorated walls, along with vines dangling down into the water. Split shot potential alert….

Lastly, the “Point of Light” cenotes offers laser-like beams of blue light slicing through the water like a Pink Floyd album cover.

Again, we opted for a 1:1 guide to participant ratio, to maximise creative opportunities and flexibility.

After a great day’s diving, we headed back to base, and Adam and Tom moderated a question and answer session, focussing on any areas that the participants were still finding troublesome. After dinner, we then reviewed the participants images:

Image by Chris Forbes, Cenote Ponderosa

Image by Nir Friedman, Cenote Taj Maha

Image by Peter Korn, Cenote Sugarbowl

Image by Patricia Dusman, Cenote Points of Light

Days 1& 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7