Underwater Festival 2010 (UF10) dates announced
The dates for the 4th Underwater Festival have been set – we hope to see you all on Christmas Island from 24th to 30th of April 2010.
underwater australasia is hosting the 4th instalment of its hugely successful annual Underwater Festival on Christmas Island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Held for the first 3 year in Byron Bay, the most easterly point of the Australian mainland, the organisers have decided to ‘spice it up’ and take the festival to a new and exciting location in 2010.
Christmas Island diving is endless kilometres of spectacular wall diving, untouched corals, undersea caves, hundreds of species of tropical fish, dolphins, whalesharks, and warm clear water. Truly a dive destination that has it all.
In 2009 close to $40,000 worth of prizes were awarded in the photo & video shootout competition alone and 2010 will again see a massive prize pool. There will be photo and video clinics, outdoor cinema, BBQs, the underwater party and other fun events. This years successful product trials will continue.
On of the most important aspects of the festivals so far seem to be the social interactions between photographers and videographers from all over the world. Although there is competition involved and the prizes are fantastic, previous years have shown that people very freely exchange tips and trick and new ideas for composition of shots and interesting subjects.
As in the last 3 years of the festival, images captured during the event will help build up a database of species for this location and there will be prizes for those who contribute most new records to the Christmas Island records.
Neville Coleman will again be a VIP guest of the festival and he will be the driving force behind the new species database for Christmas Island. In addition he will conduct a series of Underwater Naturalist and Fish ID programs.
Mathieu Meur has promised his participation with his extremely popular underwater photo clinics for beginners and advanced photographers to continue on Christmas Island. In addition to that we are hoping to have video clinics as well for both new and advanced underwater videographers.
New photographers are encouraged to participate and there will be FREE trial cameras for hire during the festival for those that are new to underwater photography and don’t have their own set-up yet.
UF10 will be officially launched at the Malaysia International Dive Expo in Kuala Lumpur 3-5 July at the underwater australasia and Christmas Island booths. Come and see us there and reserve your spot – places will be more limited as boats and tanks ‘on island’ are limited.
Festival packages will be available on-line from July 2009.
For more info please keep visiting this site – join the facebook group – follow updates on twitter (@UWfestival) or subscribe to the RSS feed.
