Day 4

Continuing on our balanced light tour of Cenotes, we decided to visit an atmospheric dive site called Angelita. Located to the South, near Tulum, this is a sinkhole with a layer of hydrogen sulfide at around 30 meters that is “trapped” in the zone that exists between the fresh and saltwater layers in the cavern. This appears like a layer of cloud, but underwater, giving some very unique creative opportunities, particularly when combined with the “softbox” effect of the diffuse sunlight percolating from above.

This is combined with some skeletal trees poking up through the hydrogen sulfide and an island with fallen trees and debris that has fallen into the cenote.

Upon arrival, Natalie provided a thorough briefing, and Tom and Adam outlined some ideas about how to get the best from shooting the cavern. Once again, we planned to dive in a 1:1 guide to participant ratio. This gives great freedom, as the guides can double as models when required, and we were able to schedule dives in order to provide fewer divers in the water at any one time.

After the dive, we were attacked by biting Tabanus horse flies, so beat a hasty retreat. This was to the iconic Cenote Carwash, arguably one of the most photographed cavern entrances on the planet.

The open water cenote area at Carwash is also very pretty, with lots of water lilies, and some freshwater turtles.

We then set off back to Puerto Aventuras and once everyone had settled back in, they started selecting appearing images for tonight’s image review. Tom and Natalie then provided a discussion about the use of off-camera lighting. They were both able to provide amazing inspiration for these techniques from their own image libraries.

After dinner, we had an image review session, looking at the participants’ images and discussing possible compositional, photographic, and editing options. The team is producing some amazing images, of which there is a section below:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6