The annual Voice of the Ocean Photo/Video/Art Competition celebrates visual representations of the ocean. The best works by underwater photographers and videographers were presented and judged live by a celebrated panel of distinguished experts at ADEX OCEAN MISSION 2023 at the
Sands Expo and Convention Centre on the 2nd April 2023.
The nominations were shortlisted from hundreds of entries and shown to the judges to present their score. Discussions were held and interesting comments were made for each image/video/Art work, appreciating the talent in involved.
Thank you to everyone who participated this year and CONGRATULATIONS to our winners! We look forward to the next competition in 2024!
Entry & Category Winner
Best of Show
Regie Casia (Philippines)
Photo of the Year
XJ Toh (Singapore)
Environmental Photo of the Year
Pasquale Vassallo (Italy)
Compact Camera Photo of the Year
Jules Casey (Australia)
Artwork of the Year
Sally Snow (United Kingdom)
Underwater Fashion Photo of the Year
Plamena Mileva (Jordan)
Video of the Year
Sabrina Inderbitzi – Switzerland
Many thanks to our judges:
Valerie Taylor
Valerie Taylor is a global marine pioneer, conservationist, winner of multiple awards as a photographer and filmmaker, scriptwriter, author and painter, she is also an inaugural member of both the Diving Hall of Fame and the Women Divers Hall of Fame.
Valerie and her husband, Ron, made numerous documentaries and sequences for films such as Jaws and Valerie played herself in the film Blue Water White Death. Her photographs have appeared in National Geographic magazine, and she has twice appeared on the magazine’s cover.
Jayne Jenkins
Jayne was a volunteer diver with the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service in Sydney, worked as a safety diver and researcher for various underwater film, television and photographic expeditions in the Pacific, and remains an editorial contributor to Dive Log and Scuba Diver magazines. She is currently resident photographer and consultant with The Ocean Agency, a fast, game-changing creative scientific project that records the world’s oceans and reefs in high-resolution, 360-degree panoramic vision. Jayne is also a member of the prestigious Woman Divers Hall of Fame and a Fellow International of The Explorers Club, where she is manager of memberships and expeditions for the AZEC chapter.
Renee Capozzola
Renee is a conservation-oriented underwater photographer who has received over fifty prestigious international awards for her work including Underwater Photographer of the Year 2021 in the Underwater Photographer of the Year competition and the Female Fifty Fathoms Award from the 2021 Ocean Photography Awards. Her images have also appeared throughout the world in leading publications, including National Geographic, and she has been featured by multiple news outlets such as CNN, USA Today, BBC News, People, the Today Show, and France 2.
Patti Kirk Gross
Highly regarded as a conservation educator, Patti integrates science into marine conservation practices by developing diving specialty programmes to cultivate, inspire and educate passionate ocean stewards. As a member of the CRF International Team, she installed coral nurseries around the globe and trained “Citizen Scientists”. She crafted the Dive Safety Manual for CRF and Force Blue, and served as their Dive Safety Officer and AAUS Scientific Diving Instructor. Patti is an Officer with the Coast Guard Auxiliary, a boating instructor, a National Member of the Explorer’s Club and serves as Secretary on the Board of the Ocean Agency. She also proudly serves as the Vice-President for the WDHOF Board of Trustees.
Ipah Uid Lynn
Ipah Uid is an underwater photographer and a PADI Instructor from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her work has won her more than 25 international awards and she was a judge at many international photography competitions. She shares her knowledge at many international dive shows, telling stories about her creative photography and her favourite places to be.
Dou Dou
Dou Dou advocates and influences conservation and citizen science knowledge through her social media network and became the world’s first female with 5,100 meters of free diving potential on the plateau in 2018.
She is a certified freediver and has accumulated thousands of dives at locations like the high altitude Himalayan plateau region and the Arctic Qaanaaq Region.
Her incredible career in underwater photography and filmmaking has made her the first female National Geographic Explorer from China, having worked on projects like Planet or Plastic and Extreme China. Additionally, she founded Mumu Nature in 2017, an institution for teaching outdoor sports and citizen science in nature to the public.
Aiko Ohno
Aiko is not just a photographer, she is also an Ama diver, practising the ancient craft of freediving for seafood and pearls in Japan. In 2015, she moved to Toba City to continue what would become her lifetime’s work, literally immersing herself into and chronicling the life of Ama divers through her photography. As an advocate of this practice and culture, she has travelled around Japan, Australia and France to speak about the Ama divers and exhibit her images.