Turtle Encounters

I took these photos during a trip to Lifou at the start of the year. We were floating along and enjoying the warm waters of the tropics when we stumbled upon two green sea turtles grazing on the sea floor. It was amazing! I have been to Lifou twice before and never had the opportunity to swim with turtles. They were exceptionally calm and unbothered by our presence. My aunt had lent me her GoPro and I was lucky enough to capture the moment.

When I got home, I was so excited to look over my photos and videos. I noticed this photo and thought to myself ‘this one’s pretty good’!

A few months later, I went on my first ever photography workshop where I got to learn about composition and editing from a professional photographer. She was really nice and super encouraging. I had gotten Adobe Photoshop for the session and after editing a few images with her, I was really excited to make some of my other photos ‘pop’ through some post-processing. I never knew the magic of editing, I always thought edited photos would look overdone and unnatural.

I came across the turtle again and decided to play around with the image in Photoshop. I was pretty happy with the monochrome image that I came up with. As I was looking through instagram I discovered the Mono Awards through Australian Photography Magazine. I decided to enter my turtle photo. I have entered competitions a few times. I never win anything but I enjoy looking through my photos to find what I think are the best ones.

Silent Voyager.

Fast forward 6 months and I am going back through some old emails. I noticed one from the Mono Awards that I missed. It says I made the Top 100 photo list! My photo was in the top 8% of those entered! I know that this isn’t much and The Mono Awards are for amateur photographers, but this is the first recognition I have received and I was stoked (apart from getting my sunset photo in the local paper when I was a kid). This process has been an encouragement to keep taking photos!