Underwater Photography Day with Ocean Divers, Caterham, Surrey

And so it was a beautiful sunny day on Saturday 2nd June, I think a day that I will always remember in the history of teaching underwater photography over my past 7 years. It was most definitely the course that I arrived to with the least amount of sleep, after just arriving after a marathon 2 day journey from Bali to help Aquatic Alliance, the Manta Trust and Shark Savers and spent the night camping in the airport terminal to make sure that I got to work bang on time, or even early :) .... I love the team at Ocean Divers in Caterham. Led by Paul Davies, they are always full of cheerful smiles and giggles and have a great atmosphere. The theory session that morning was held in a gorgeous Spanish restaurant, most definitely the perfect venue for me to be in, particularly when suffering from jet-lag. Those strong Spanish coffees worked very well to help me keep up my compact camera magic and guide Paul, Stratis, Sam and Kevin to master all of the controls that their compacts had. And what a variety we had today! Paul had two cameras, a Canon Powershot 640, an Olympus MJU and was also testing out the Canon Powershot S100 that Cameras Underwater had kindly lent us. Sam was determined to get to grips with her INON Z-240 strobe for the first time, together with her Canon S95 and wide angle lens. Keith was also in the Canon club, with a Canon Ixus and a wide angle lens too. And Stratis had a Sony Cybershot, without any strobes or lenses, but was still really chuffed by what he could achieve with his camera. And of course, with it being Jubilee weekend, we had to have something way more patriotic than my fluffy toys to practice with! And a special thank you goes to Sam who went to the lovely effort to bring along home-made cupcakes all in jubilee casings. They were simply ace! It really was a fabulous day, we went off to the local school nearby to use their pool to practice underwater and everyone was really pleased with what they could achieve. Paul couldn't believe how much he learnt in just one day and also got to grips with his strobe. All of them finished the day full of confidence and afterwards had a lovely final review of the photos they took to make sure that everything was grasped before heading for the local pub. Thanks guys, it really was an amazing day and a really great welcome back. Check out Ocean Diver's website if you are a diver looking to join a club in this area. A warm welcome and gorgeous cupcakes are guaranteed all year round!

Shark & Manta Ray Fishery in Lombok, Indonesia

So after helping Ian and Jacqui with their photoshop skills in Northampton, it was time to head back to London and up to Bradford, Yorkshire on the overnight coach and see what could be sold out of my storage container there, to try and raise enough money for a trip out to Indonesia to help the manta ray and shark researchers there to shed some light on the number of sharks and rays that are being fished off the island of Lombok. I saw a Facebook thread the week before from Shark Savers and Aquatic Alliance which really shocked me to see what was going on in such a beautiful part of the world and just instinctively knew that I had to help somehow. My boyfriend is from Indonesia and not working at the moment, I felt that it was ideal to get him from Manado to this area so that he could talk to the locals and get a real feel to see what was going on. I tried to work out an itinerary to see how I could get there to make a mini-documentary on this, but however hard I tried there were so many options it was impossible to do this alone. I emailed a couple of companies based in Bali directly who I'd had contact with over the years, but for whatever reason, none of them wanted to help me make the documentary to help raise awareness of this issue. It was a last minute call on Monday afternoon at 3.30 pm that I will never forget to Sarah at Dive Worldwide to see if there was any way that she knew where I needed to go to get to the market. Unbelievably, and I will never ever forget this moment either in my whole 15 years of travelling the world's oceans, and email came back to me the next morning to say that an itinerary was all sorted for me by Bali Diving Academy and that I was travelling as their guest. I was so unbelievably touched that the owners, Sveva and Michael, wanted to help me and Michel so much and the speed of their help was truly touching. So after travelling back on Wednesday, it was time to head to the airport on Thursday morning and a special thanks goes to Jo and Graeme from Ocean View Diving Services in Lancing, Sussex who went out of their way to give me a lift to the train station. Just a shame that in the hurry of packing all my camera equipment that I couldn't text them to say thank you though! And of course they couldn't phone me to tell me to go back and pick it up either! Two days of flying through Hong Kong and as soon as I arrived in Denpasar, it was time to catch another flight to Lombok. Sveva was waiting for me there with the largest welcome smile I've ever experienced in my whole life. Two hours later and we had arrived at our little cottage where we were staying. Two hours of sleep and it was time to get up at 4 am ready to go to the fish market in nearby Tanjung Luar. I had never been so scared in my life, but knew that it was something that I had to do. Sadly, as soon as we turned up at 6 am whilst it was still dark, a dead manta ray was already there, caught as by-catch from the squid fishermen. We stayed there for 5 hours, Amir our taxi-driver went to interview the squid fishermen and Michel stayed with me to interview the guy who is responsible for catching sharks. He told me that a large shark would be coming in later, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw that morning. This morning, or this story isn't about just sharks and mantas, it was also about other beautiful ocean animals. I found a gorgeous eagle ray still alive in the market with locals walking over it. I tried to buy it and took it back to the sea to try and set it free, but sadly it's tail was broken and therefore it couldn't get enough strength to swim back out to sea. Much as I prayed for a solution, there was no other way but to take it back to the market to meet it's fate. As soon as it landed back on the cold concrete floor that was now it's destiny, it let out a huge sigh and for as long as I will live, I will never, ever forget it's face or that sound. I even wanted to build it a little home so that at least it could still live in the ocean or at least go to "Eagle Ray Heaven" in its rightful home, the sea, instead of being sliced to pieces by a knife whilst still alive. Every day I think of that beautiful creature and has instilled and reinforced the very reason why I started following my passion for whales, dolphins and sharks back in 1997. All around me were crates and buckets of fish. We found endless buckets of squid, more buckets of shrimps, triggerfish, blue spotted rays on kebab sticks as well as huge tuna heads and even a sailfish and a blue marlin. There were knives and blood absolutely everywhere and still that beautiful manta lay on the floor waiting for someone to come along and buy it. It didn't take long and whilst I was on the other side of the market trying to save the eagle ray, there was someone chopping it up and taking away the parts that they needed leaving behind just the insides of the manta with a pool of blood. And then arrived one shark and then another one on canes, both measuring between 2.5 to 3 metres. They needed 4 men to carry them and were quickly dropped onto the tiles whilst men circled around measuring their fins. An auction ensued and both of them were sold for 4 million rupiah, about £280 pounds for both of them. As soon as one of them arrived I said to Michel that one was pregnant, and sadly I was right, 13 little baby sharks were all lined up in front of me with nothing more than the mother's eye remaining that was recognisable as to the creature that she used to be. We learnt that the shark fins are dried just a few metres away at a local house and that all the fins as well as the gill rakers go to Surabaya in Indonesia before going to Hong Kong and Singapore directly. We also found out that the local fisherman earn about £100 per month for being out at sea practically every day and that they would gladly welcome a change. The saddest part about this trip was that there was women and children in amongst all the blood and gore which ensued from chopping the fish, sharks and rays, such a shame when the little village itself was so pretty. Michel is out there for another 2 weeks collecting daily data as to what kind of sharks are being captured and numbers as well as the rays. I've left him my camera so that he can hopefully ID them as well and send the information over to Shark Savers as well as Aquatic Alliance and The Manta Trust. I've also been in touch with Project Aware who have been really helpful and sincerely hope that this data will be able to help them change this area in some way. Did I learn something from this trip? Yes, I learnt that the local people are doing what they need to do to make a living and feed their families and that for me, I fell in love with the ocean even more deeply than when I first saw my programme on whale sharks back in 1994 in St James Hospital in Leeds .... A really special thank you goes to Bali Diving Academy for hosting me during the craziest 5 days of my life last week. Without their passion and dedication, this project to help our oceans would never have got off the ground and am hoping and praying that it will not be in vain. I'll keep you posted ....

Photoshop Course in Northampton - 19th May

So a week later it was time to go and help Jacqui and Ian with their photoshop skills at The Marriott Hotel in Northampton. A nice early start and a lovely train ride from Brighton with a morning capuchino and lovely smiles were waiting for me at the station. A great day was spent helping Ian and Jacqui to develop their already beautiful photographs of their recent trip to Botswana. Skies were enhanced, grass stems removed, images were converted into black and white with splashes of colour being added to create interesting effects, all in an easy-to-understand and very hands-on way. I really enjoyed travelling to help them, so if you are reading this and would like me to come along and help your dive club have a fabulous day or evening having some photoshop fun to make collages and turn your photographs into stunning works of art, just get in touch. Prices start from just £129 for a full day per person depending on the size of the group.

Panasonic & Canon Day with Graham and Ruth at London

Phew, what an incredibly busy few weeks it has been. What with moving my stuff between Bradford back to Brighton, moving into a little shared studio right near to Brighton seafront as well as helping lovely guests with their photography, today is the first day of sitting still enough for the past month to be able to update this blog. I promise that it won't take me so long in future ... So on 12th May it was time to welcome lovely Ruth and Graham with their Canon Powershot and Panasonic Cameras to Amphibian Sports. It was definitely one of the most special occasions of ever running my underwater photography courses in 6 years as Graham had absolutely no idea where he was going! His lovely wife Adele had booked the course as a complete surprise for him and kidnapped his camera without his knowledge, sneaked it into the car and took him on an unknown mission! Ruth was learning how to make the most of her strobe as well as getting to grips with all the different creative settings that her Canon S95 could offer her. Graham learnt how to make the most of his Panasonic camera and had lots of fun playing with his settings and learnt that even though he had less buttons to use than Ruth, that he was still capable to taking beautiful shots without having any of the manual controls that Ruth's camera did. Graham also had another surprise, not only did I bring him a birthday cake, his favourite chocolate one but Ruth did too, a lovely chocolate and cola one, so there was cake for everyone at Amphibian Sports that day, including its customers! Happy Days! It really was a great day helping them both and having Adele along too ... it was another reminder for me that all compact cameras can take great pictures, it really is a case of knowing those settings that each camera has to make the very best of it!