Results: Eilat Red Sea and World Shoot Out 2014
The Eilat Red Sea and World Shoot Outs concluded last Sunday 13 September with an award ceremony held in Eilat. 67 participants from 9 countries competed for prizes in nine categories during the actual shoot out, whilst the World Shoot Out attracted online entries from all over the world. The shoot out also hosted an attempt for the world’s largest live-streamed underwater event.
Press Release
The Annual Eilat Red Sea International Photography Competition which included a Guinness World Record attempt with a mass dive to a shipwreck, a panoramic photograph, the participation of competitors from around the world and elated winners in 9 different categories, ended on Saturday September 13.
The tenth Eilat Red Sea underwater photography competition, the largest and most well known underwater photography competition in the world, took place between 8-13 September. It ended with the awards ceremony for the winners in nine categories for photographs taken during the Eilat shootout, and the winners of the international competition held throughout the year, in six categories.
Eyal Cohen from Israel, who won first place with a portfolio of the five best pictures, went home with a check of $ 10,000. In the team category, the Spanish team won first place and a $ 3,000 prize sponsored by Padi.
The awards ceremony was held on the lawns of the Eilat Prima Music hotel and was broadcast live to websites and mobiles phones.
The winners were:
Amateur category - Yoav Lavi, Israel
The main category - Portfolio of best 5 images - Eyal Cohen, Israel
The Mayor of Eilat’s Prize - Plamena Mileva, Bulgaria
Fish & Fashion category - Yuzuru Masuda, Japan
Fish of the year - Mark Fuller, Israel
Judges favorite - Boaz Samorai, Israel
Macro and Super Macro - Shay Erel, Israel
National Team - Spain.
Wide-Angle - Yoav Lavi, Israel
In the World shootout competition, contestants submitted photos taken all over the world.
The winning entries were:
Shipwrecks - Alfonso Exposito, Spain
Wide-Angle - Martin Strmiska, Slovakia
Sharks - Tobias Bernhard Raff, Germany
Amateur - Marcus Commodore, Thailand
The world’s best dive site - Martin Strmiska, Slovakia
Macro and Super Macro - Martin Klein, Germany
Video clip category - The Ocean Brothers
The attempt to set a new Guinness world record
This year the dive to the Storm included an attempt to set a Guinness world record. The target was to reach half a million viewers, while the dive was broadcast live. Within the next few days when all the YouTube data has been collected and processed, we’ll know if the record was broken or not. Two hundred divers took part in the dive, 26 diving instructors, 32 production staff and 12 professional photographers, diving to a depth of 20 meters to the site of the Wreck. The photography crew was headed by renowned French photographer Christian Patron, photographer of “The Titanic” and “The Big Blue”. The Panoramic image was shot by French photographer Nicolas Baraka, who came to Eilat especially for this event.
Using a complex and challenging technological set up and working with two leading Israeli technology companies: SatLink, and Valens, the historical dive was photographed and transferred live directly from the waters of the Red Sea, allowing millions of people, spectators and owners of smart phones around the world take part in the unique diving event. “The aim”, said David (Pilo) Pilosof, the producer of the competition and the event, “is to reach half a million viewers and ‘It is possible’”.
An interesting detail worth mentioning was that Sony’s smart phone was used as a third camera to shoot the live broadcast.
The competition in Israel, unlike many competitions around the world, is a “real time” competition. Photographers have to come to Eilat, don diving equipment, cameras and lighting equipment, and ‘get’ into the water. It isn’t possible to edit or improve photos and photographers have to rely solely on their photographic skills, cameras, the marine landscape and environmental conditions during shooting. Every year photographers from around the world participate in the competition, including the winners of various international competitions, leaders in the world of marine photography. Pilosof, who organizes the annual competition, said that in addition to the excitement that accompanied the mass dive this year, he was pleasantly surprised by the global mobilization of the international diving industry and especially by the editors of diving and photography magazines from around the world, who offered assistance.
The international media dealing with diving and underwater photography, published articles and interviews with Pilosof before the competition, with the unequivocal message: Everyone is invited to the competition in Eilat.