MOZAMBIQUE

September report back from Fiona Ayerst Underwater Photography Internship run in conjunction with Guinjata Dive Centre, Inhambane Mozambique;  Africa Media and Oceans Campus. 


By Ari Robinson

From amazing macro, mantas, turtles, schools of devil rays, close encounters with humpback whales to whale sharks- this is what Mozambique has been giving our interns this month... 

This month we have 7 interns joining us in Guinjata Bay; Kristen, May, Emmett, Nikki, Megan, Rich and Leena. This month I'm even happier because two of my very good friends are coming to take the internship with us, Kristen and May; Kristen was born in South Korea and was adopted when she was 4 years old by a lovely American family and May is from Myanmar (a country next to Thailand, like she says). 

The other  5 interns became our friends too and since the beginning of this month we have felt a strong connection with them. Emmett is from Ireland, Nikki hails from Scotland, Megan from the States, Rich from England and Leena from Kenya. I can only describe them as an amazing bunch of people from all over the world that couldn't wait to see the underwater beauty of Mozambique!

Pepe started with the photography lessons as soon as everybody arrived. Most of the interns hadn't used a dSLR beforehand, so they played with the settings by taking pictures around the tropical gardens to get to know their equipment.

They learned how to set up the cameras into the housings and  prepare everything for their first pool session with macro settings.

We went to our cultural tour the first week of the program, we visited a local family where they received us with delicious local dishes like matapa (a traditional dish made of the cassava leaf mixed with coconut and cashew nuts), fresh coconuts and the kids toasted some cashew nuts for us.

The kids love to pose for our pictures so this is excellent practice to improve our students photography skills. Kristy brought some presents for them and they got happier than they where before so they danced and posed for us even more!

After the pool practice the interns felt ready to go and capture real subjects in the ocean, so they did their first local dive called Caves, a perfect shallow dive full of macro creatures.

The first dives with the camera they struggled more than they had in the pool as there was a lot of surge underwater and this made taking pictures more of a challenge. But they didn't give up and kept practicing every day and correcting their mistakes after looking at their pictures every afternoon.
The conditions improved and we had perfect days with almost no current. We also made a trip to the estuary and found  creatures in the muddy bottom. The estuary is like a nursery area as there were mini frogfish and lots of other juveniles waiting to get big enough to venture out into the big ocean.

At the end of the two weeks training with macro settings the interns managed to improve their shots dramatically, with perfect composition and exposure, even using their strobes perfectly.

Here is the first macro gallery from our interns this September.

 


 


 

We finished two weeks feeling accomplished with Macro photography and it was time to move on to bigger things. The final two weeks were looming fast and wide angle was beckoning and boy did this come at a good time- I'll be sharing the opportunities we have had with some of the larger creatures we saw, a little later this week.

Ari Robinson
Field Specialist
Fiona Ayerst Underwater Photography 

Mozambique- land of sun and coconuts 

Part 2 

August report back from Fiona Ayerst Underwater Photography Internship run in conjunction with Guinjata Dive Centre, Inhambane Mozambique and Africa Media. 

By Ari Robinson

I thought this program just couldn't get better but this last two weeks have been more than amazing. 

At the beginning of the week we went on a cultural tour to the house of one of the dive centre staff. His name is Franky and he has 3 kids with one of his wives :D yes, polygamy is the norm in Moz.Franky he has 4 more kids with another wife. We got there and immediately all the kids from all around came to climb all over the vehicle to say hi and they welcomed us with huge smiles. 

Franky took us to his house, we met his mom and his wives and we played with the kids, they danced and sang for us (see video below) and they happily posed for all our pictures. 

Frankie's wife made some Matapa for us, a traditional Mozambican dish made from leaves, nuts and coconut milk, this was delicious! One of the kids also climbed a palm tree to get us coconuts with fresh water and crunchy meat. We thought that was it with the delicious food but Franky brought cashew nuts and toasted them on a fire next to us. A true traditional Mozambican experience. 

We dove all week, the students learned about wide angle Photography and took some stunning shots of the marine life of Guinjata. We had one potato bass encounters that came so close to us that one of them even kissed Pepe! The mantas came back to Manta point with crazy amounts of fish everywhere and the conditions were perfect, good visibility and almost no current. The only dive site where we have current is called Pandaine express and we love it because you don't have to swim at all. You just drift enjoying the show as the current takes you along. We usually see many loggerhead and  hawksbill turtles and different kind of rays on that dive site. On one dive we counted more than 20 devil rays on our safety stop, it was amazing! These are some of the pictures from the students taken the first week of training. 

At the beginning they struggle a lot with the strobe positioning and the most hated thing for underwater photographers, the horrible BACK SCATTER! For the non- photographers reading this, the definition of backscatter are particles floating in the water that get lit up by the flash when they are not in the right position creating awful spots on the picture. After a lot of practice, getting over frustrations and studying their pictures with Pepe after the sessions, they managed to take mind blowing pictures! We really admire our students, because some of them had never used a camera before. 

During the week we did a pool photo session with models for the students; Pepe; J3 the dive master from the dive centre and I, were the "models", we thought modelling was an easy job but now we have more respect for underwater models. It's not easy to look pretty while you hold your breath and open your eyes not really knowing where the camera is going to be, but at the end our talented interns made us look pretty enough :)

We did some more fun dives on the weekend and we organised a trip on a luxury catamaran with the interns and all the volunteers of Love the Oceans. We sailed around the estuary and stopped on a beautiful island where we had water sports included, we did some skiing, surf board and tubbing and we ate burgers and had pina colada cocktails next to the pool, what a weekend! 

On Monday we dove in the morning, we went to Extacy reef and later we played in the waves to practice more wide angle photos. It was so much fun and we could hear the whales singing every time we put our head underwater. This is just magic for everyone. The pictures turned out well as you can see here and it was good practice for our ocean safari that we did the next day. 

There was bad weather coming and the dives were cancelled so we went to the local school to help the volunteers from Love the Oceans to paint and to play with the kids. It feels amazing to help to create a better world and to spend some time with the most amazing kids I've ever met. They live a simple life where they create their own toys and use their imagination to have fun, just the way childhood should be.

We went to the ocean safari next day and since the beginning we were so lucky because we saw a leatherback turtle and a shark at the surface. We played with a pod of dolphins for about 10 minutes and we swam with a humpback whale and her baby! This was the best day of our lives for many of us, we were screaming and dancing on the boat on the way back. 

As all the good things come to an end, the first month in Mozambique was over. I couldn't believe how fast it went. All our interns left very satisfied with a very good level of underwater photography and amazing pictures to show to everybody.                                                                              

And I am still thinking that this is a dream I don't want to wake up. I will still be enjoying one more month in this beautiful paradise and I just know it's going to be magical.

Wait for my next report from the land of sun and coconuts... and if you are keen to have as much fun as we are - take a look here for our 2017 season on  the underwater photo internship

Ariane Robinson 

5 September 2016