2018 Photo of the Year

2018 Photo of the Year

Congratulations to John Kendall, whose photo was chosen for the 2018 GUE Image of the Year!

About the site:

MV Rozi was a tugboat, built in Bristol, UK in 1958. She was sold and moved to Malta in 1981 and operated in the Grand Harbour until she was decommissioned. She was scuttled off Cirkewwa as an artificial reef in 1992. Lying at 36 meters, but with her stern at around 28 meters and only a few meters away from the reef, the Rozi is a very popular dive site in Malta and attracts thousands of divers annually.

About the photo:

Unusual for the GUE Image of the Year, this image is not a photograph, but instead is the result of 1600 photos as part of a photogrammetric model. The photos were captured on March 20, 2017 during a dive to test alternate ways of capturing photogrammetric images, and in this case, using a GoPro Hero4 in an IQ-Sub housing to capture approximately 30 minutes of 4K video. This video was then processed to give the 1600 individual images used the make the model. While this image is not the end result of the modelling process, it caught my eye as being beautiful in its own right, as it gives the impression of being a ghost of a ship, which in many ways is exactly what a wreck is.

About the photographer:

John Kendall has been diving since 1993 and has been a GUE instructor since 2006. He has been involved with underwater photography and videography since around 1997, but for the last 4 years has been working almost exclusively with underwater photogrammetry. He has been a project diver for many of GUE’s major projects and is the primary author of the upcoming GUE photogrammetry course. While he lives in the UK, he travels often and is regularly found in Maltese waters enjoying the world-class wreck diving.