Day 4

It is perhaps ironic on Earth Day, that we spent lots of time under the earth, trying to discover and practicing unique and interesting ways of documenting the amazing landscapes beneath the earth’s surface.

Today took us to two more iconic and superbly photographic sites. Cenote Angelita is a large bell-shaped cenote, with dense hydrogen sulfide at its bottom, with an “island” of dead trees that have fallen from the surface into the cenote. This gives an ethereal and slightly spooky scene that lends itself to dramatic images.

We set out for Angelita, which is South of Under the Jungle’s base, beyond Tulum. When we arrived, the team sprung into action, with Natalie and Lily providing a thorough safety briefing, followed by a photographic briefing from Tom and Adam.

The day was bright and sunny, which made for great light conditions in the cenote and beautiful images.

Angelita is quite deep, so the dives were carefully choreographed to try and deconflict the photographers so that it was not too busy. It also meant that we were limited to one dive each.

We then headed over to the iconic Cenote Carwash. After lunch, we again talked through the safety procedures and dive planning, followed by a photographic briefing.

Carwash has a classic cavern mouth, which provides some excellent opportunities for silhouettes of models, posed in the cavern mouth with the open water beyond. It also has large beds of water lilies, in the open water, which offers some amazing photographic potential.

We packed up and headed back to our base where Adam offered a presentation overviewing strobe lighting techniques. This included chatting through positioning, power, diffusers, and lighting effects.

After dinner, the participants submitted images from the previous day’s diving. The quality of imagery was outstanding, check out some of the images here:

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