The Shot Chat UPY 2021 Primer

The Shot Chat Team · Issue 118, Jan/Feb 2021 · pp. 49–60

With the deadline for the Underwater Photographer of the Year getting close, we decided it would be good to discuss the competition, share advice on how we select images for entry, and personal stories of what happened after winning. The Shot Chat panel brings to the table: 2 title wins, 5 category wins, and over a dozen images awarded in UPY since it was brought back to life in 2015. We also invited Richard Barnden, overall winner of Underwater Photographer of the Year in 2019, as our guest star for this chat. Richard stands out as a man of incredible enthusiasm and passion for the aquatic world’s most adrenaline charged events. He spent years trying to crack the pattern of mass spawning events in Palau, and is now looked up to as the go-to guy in this area. An experienced rebreather diver, he is driven by the exploration of nature underwater, pushing the envelope to witness unique scen…