Finalist - Travel Photographer of the Year.
December 2018

Natural World Portfolio Category.

Each night, billions of organisms move upwards from the abyssal zone, through the water column, to feed in the plankton-rich shallows. All sorts of peculiarities can show up, it’s completely unpredictable.

Of the four images in my portfolio, this one of a pelagic, luminescent (glow-in-the-dark) jellyfish was the most challenging photographically. The dots on its bell are venomous stinging cells.

Blackwater diving involves descending over deep ocean trenches in the dark of night. There are no visual points of reference, just high-powered lights to attract the unknown; it’s easy to become disoriented, it’s hard to focus the lens. In the truest sense, you’re drifting through innerspace waiting for something to happen. Strange new world!

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Shortlisted for the BSoUP / DIVER Annual Print Awards, 2018
Overseas category.

Exhibited at the Dive show (Birmingham NEC), Oct 2018

Location: Blackwater (open ocean), Tañon Strait, The Philippines

Photographer: Laura Storm