Results: Our World Underwater 2018

by adamhanlon Sunday, February 18th, 2018

Overall and macro traditional winner: Shane Gross Wetpixel and DivePhotoGuide are proud to announce that the results of the 2018 Our World Underwater International Photography and Video Competition have been announced. Congratulations to Shane Gross for his winning image and to all those among the placings. The entries represent some of the finest underwater imagery on the planet.

Press release

Results of Our World Underwater 2018 announced

DPG and Wetpixel are proud to announce the winners of this year’s Our World Underwater International Underwater Photography and Video Competition, which were officially revealed at the Our World Underwater dive show in Chicago this weekend.

Once again, our celebrity panel of judges—Alex Mustard, Erin Quigley, Keri Wilk, and Lia Barrett—pored over thousands of entries taken by novice to professional photographers from around the world. Some $55,000 in awesome gear and dive travel prizes were up for grabs, including $1,000 cash for the “Best of Show” image.

In the end, it was Canadian photographer Shane Gross who won big, clinching not just “Best of Show” for his arresting first place image of a trio of seahorses from the Macro Traditional category, but also first place in the Wide Angle Traditional category. Clinching Gold in the contest’s two most challenging categories is truly an impressive feat—very well done, Shane! Our congratulations to all the winners—and honorable mentions—in the various categories.

The full set of winning images can be found on UnderwaterCompetition.com.

Wide Angle Traditional Winner

Shane Gross

Wide Angle Unrestricted Winner

Greg Lecoeur

Macro Unrestricted Winner

Songda Cai

Compact Camera

Enrico Somogyi

Black and White Winner

Vaclav Krpelik

Video Winner

Adventure is Calling by Lee Burghard

A HUGE THANKS TO OUR GENEROUS SPONSORS

Great shots here but I have a question - The rules for the two Macro competitions state 'Any image captured with a macro lens, where the size of the subject on the image sensor is life size or greater'. This echoes the traditional take on macro where the subject was captured at least at 1:1 This meant that the subject would have to be no bigger than 36mm across to fill a 35mm format. I don't think any of the winners here are that small and the seahorses, I would guess, are at least 200mm across the three. I don't think anyone is using a full plate camera underwater these days;) They really are 'Close Up' rather than 'Macro' in my book or do I have this wrong?

Posted by Arthur Kingdon on 2018-02-18 09:42:33