Last week took place the 35th Festival de l’Image sous-marine in Antibes, southern France. This was a great opportunity to get away from the freezing temperatures around here in Luxembourg and to drive south 1000km.

Festival mondial de l'image sous-marine

I had also organised to meet an online buddy from Digidiver.net there, Thomas Vignaud aka Autopsea. It’s always interesting and funny to meet people you only know from the net for real. Concerning Thomas it was a great day to meet as he won the first prize in the photo competition as well as the prize of young photographer with his great turtle shot.

the winning shot!

I believe he needs some time to completely realise what happened to him. And this is only the beginning, I’m sure!

Thomas with his "Oscar"

The day after you could even find his turtle on the front page of the newspapers.

interesting reading

You can check out more of Thomas’ beautiful work on his flickr account and find him as well as moderator on www.digidiver.net

For the month of November which corresponds to grey and cold weather here in my country, I wanted to bring some light and colour on your computer screens. These butterflies are made out of white plastic. They are illuminated by night during a festival held in Luxembourg City (see former post).

Papillons - Butterflies

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Stumble it!

On Friday evening I wandered through the streets of Luxembourg -City in search of the lightening trees and sculptures hidden all over the place. All in all it had an atmosphere of Christmas.

Upside down!

Behind the Cathedral a majestic tree was covered in waves of rainbow colours.

Michel Rodange monument in the tree light

In front of the Cathedral it was summer time as the butterflies were out!

Papillon-Butterfly-Schmetterling-Paiperleck

It was a great experience to walk though the city with all these lights…

Constitution place

Finally we walked down to the lower idyllic part of the city to meet the Silvermen and mermaids.

Walking through the air

The mermaid

some dandelions in the end

Dandelions

Gëlle Fra - The Golden Lady

The festival “Arbres & Lumières” takes place every year in Geneva and for the very first time in Luxembourg this year. Those of you in and around Luxembourg should take the opportunity to wander through the streets until October 30. As I said it’s Christmas in October!

More photos here : Luxembourg : Arbres et Lumières

Official link : www.festivalarbresetlumieres.lu/

Stumble it!

This week-end we had great weather around here. Chilly temperatures but lots of sunshine. All in all a great autumnal week-end. After a couple of dives with OW students I decided to go for a dusk dive with Rocky. A great occasion t o try out my new Woody’s diopter which arrived a couple of days ago. Visibilty was great during the day but had now dropped dramatically to less than a mere meter at times!!!

European perch

Nevertheless the outcome was better than reality. That’s often the case when I take photos here in the lake. While watching the pictures Rocky said that he would have loved to be on the same dive than me. LOL

Dark angel - crayfish

My bed for tonight

It really depends on how you are looking at things and very often they look much nicer through the lens.

I love the sand!

here comes my Ocotber wallpaper, again with some delay

I chose this beautiful gorgonian fan. I hope you enjoy

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Sometimes the greatest encounters are the unexpected ones. We  all went on a late afternoon dive in Alona to watch the mandarin fish mating. I spent quite a while lying on old broken corals watching these colourful little fish. The dive then became a night dive and suddenly on the reef I came across this scene. This little yellow fish was hiding in a dark red crinoid. In the end it was my favourite picture of this mandarin fish dive!

I hope you enjoy.

BTW : only 75 days to go to get into a plane with destination Singapore-Manado

Red crinoid hide away

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Our dive boat slowly got closer to the coast. We were travelling for a couple of hours already from busy Alona beach towards Dauin, a sleepy town on Negros Island. I only remembered this place as a convenient departure point to famous Apo Island which I had the pleasure to visit a couple of years ago. Eleven more couple of eyes were looking at the dark sandy beach and its huge palm trees. It was our last stop on our Visayan diving trip. Would the place meet the expectations of all?

Beach in front of the resort

After a refreshing welcome drink served by a smiling young lady we checked in our garden bungalows.  No a/c, but a huge fan and a wonderful terrace. The bungalows were great and everyone liked them

Garden bungalow Pura Vida Resort

Some of us went  on a late afternoon dive on the house reef, which happens to be a protected area called “Luca Sanctuary”. The place was renamed soon after by my friend Cath who thought “Alice in Wonderland” was more suitable. How to explain this dive? We entered the water in front of the resort. The dive starts on a sandy slope where we encountered the first residents : a hairy frog fish, some cuttlefish and robust ghost pipe fish. It couldn’t have started better. Then from one moment to the other we came to the coral reef…colours exploded in front of our eyes in the middle of this dark sandy spot and fish were all around. Sometimes I had problems to figure out my buddies through the compact fish walls. Upon that we met a turtle having its dinner and a nice sea snake. We hid behind the coral rocks to take a rest from the strong currents and watched the party. It was unbelievable. As we exited the water and the rest of our group asked about the dive we saw in their incredulous eyes that this dive couldn’t be explained with words…

cuttlefish on Luca Sanctuary

couple of ghost pipefish

Luca fish bowl

Strong currents were always around as we were diving during full moon. Night dives were amazing with such a variety of critters around.

praying crab

digging

All these strange bebaviours were amazing to watch.

tiny, tiny

eye to eye with a skeleton shrimp

Then came Apo. Known for its strong drift dives and amazing schools of jacks. The coral reef is in a gorgeous state as the area is one of the most protected in the area.

giant frog fish

There was still this pier on top of our list. Everybody who has dived it told me : You have to dive it. It’s a must! So we organised 2 dives for our group at the DuCoMi Pier. From the topside, nothing appealing really. Huge ugly boats and lots of noise. After the briefing we jumped in the water. What a show! I’ve never seen so many different nudibranch on a single dive. Every leg of the pier hid its own residents : seahorses, froggies, lionfish just to name a few. If you were able to focus from macro to wide angle you noticed the sunrays bursting through the water and the pier legs.

Yves under the pier

resident yellow seahorse

nudibranch under the pier

couple of resident giant froggiescolourful dragonet

I am always amazed to see that you find such amazing creatures in the least expected spots.

Life has been busy these days. I haven’t posted much around here last month.

For this new wallpaper I decided to go back topside. It’s a picture of a flower in the desert taken in Los Cardones NP in Argentina. It’s amazing to see how these beautiful flowers get along without much water. Nature is amazing.

Wallpaper August

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Good morning everyone!

here you’ll find my latest wallpaper. I hope you like the colour Yellow !

I came across this little school at a dive spot called “Carwreck” in Dauin, Philippines.

It’s a great place to “loose” some time and go diving, diving, diving

I hope you enjoy. I did!

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I heard quite a lot of different opinions on dive guides. Some people don’t want them around, seeing them as policemen watching them. Others don’t care about them or worse ignore them. Others again want them around to show them the way back to the boat. Sometimes people are surprised when I tell them that the guide makes the dive. Of course it depends on the person. How can you define a dive guide? The answer is simple : Pamping! He dives in Bohol (Philippines). When you meet him at the shop he seems a bit shy, but he is always smiling. You discover his real personality once you’re underwater. He loves diving and he loves people. It’s as simple as that. What a feeling to dive with someone who knows every single feather star, sponge or elephant ear! No, never you get the feeling he’s bored . He’s searching for treasures which he offers you as a present. I don’t know how many critters I encountered, watched for a while and photographed only because he “offered” them to me with his smiling eyes as if it was the first time ever he encountered that special creature!

hairy squat lobster on sponge

imperator shrimp on sea cucumber

But that’s not all. I’ve seen many guides on my trips who want to please especially photographers by “presenting” them critters by all means. Digging out on octopus, pulling a lobster, replacing a nudibranch, teasing a peacock mantis shrimp or feeding a muray… who hasn’t already seen that?

Pamping did none of all the above. I always watched him when he spread delicately a feather star’s arms, checking a gorgonian fan, without touching it in search of pygmy seahorses.

Would I ever have found this wonderful nudibranch and all other critters above all by myself? I have some doubts.

Now some of you might think that this perfect dive guide only exists in my dreams. No, he’s real and you’ll find him on Bohol, Alona beach. My stay in Alona would never have been so rewarding without his presence.

Thank you, Pamping

Pamping, me and Chris

all photos HERE

www.sea-explorers.com