3rd Place Wide Angle
Martin Broen
“The Blue Abyss“
The Story: The Blue Abyss is a fascinating sinkhole within a cave, located in one of the tunnels of the biggest underwater cave system in the world, Sac Aktun. A beautiful landscape but quite challenging to capture both simultaneous in one frame – the sink-hole itself going down and the cave passage where is located. That’s what the shot represents.
The diver going down into the Abyss illuminating the Sinkhole, framed in the upper part by the cave ceiling and the speleothems that took millennia to form when the cave was dry.
We have done this dive as a 1 hour traverse in underwater scooters through the tunnels to reach the sinkhole and carefully placed a 33.000 lumen light with a float in the ceiling, while my buddy Nico illuminates the downward tunnel with a 15.000 lumen light in his way down.
The composition of the light spot highlighting the abyss, framed by a concentric semi-circular ceiling of the cave, enhanced by the natural blue tone of the Blue Abyss completes the scene.
Location: In-Cave Sinkhole, Cenote Pet Cemetery, Riviera Maya, Yucatan, Mexico
Equipment Used: Sony A1, Camon 8-15mm Lens, Nauticam Housing, Big Blue Lights
Camera Settings: ISO 6400, F5.0, 1/8 sec
