Every year, Backscatter and Light & Motion organize a Digital Shootout for aspiring underwater photographers. This year, the Digital Shootout was held in Bonaire, which is probably the most diver-friendly island in the world. I really enjoy the annual shootouts because it means that I get to hang out with the regular staff (Berkley White, Dan Baldocchi, and Jim Watt) while giving photography seminars, judging the end-of-week photo contest, and meeting a new crop of participants. For official coverage of the event, check out the daily webcast I posted at Wetpixel.
The staff stayed a day after the official shootout ended and went wandering around the island by car to check out flamingos, donkeys, and the national park in the north. Unfortunately, we arrived at the park just minutes after 2:45pm, the official cutoff time for cars to enter the park, so we had to proceed on foot. All of us were in flip-flops -- a BAD choice; cactus-spine caltrops littering the ground would occasionally surprise us by coming all the way up through the bottoms of our shoes. Those things are sharp.
