There's nothing I love more than celebrating guests' birthdays here at the studio and shortly after The Wild Swimming Festival, it was time to welcome Hefin for his surprise birthday gift! It was truly amazing seeing him walk into the studio and have absolutely no idea what he was doing here in Swanage at all! Well done Alex for keeping such a great secret.
Both Alex and Hefin are BSAC Divers and to say I was nervous about helping them with their snorkelling skills is an understatement. Hefin wanted to develop his duck-diving skills and Swanage Pier really is the perfect place for this. It was also great to help Alex develop his underwater photography skills with this Olympus TG7, AOI wide-angle lens and AOI strobe. I'd already coached him online previously and was so proud of the images that he came back from in Porthkerris, Cornwall.
It was then time to hit Swanage Pier and with just a metre of viz, I wasn't holding out much hope for the snorkel session. But Swanage Pier is always full of surprises and thankfully the winds had finally calmed down and we found so much marine life, and different marine life to what I'd ever seen before.
Hefin turned into a merman and practiced his duck-diving skills and Alex went looking for small creatures nestled in Swanage Pier. We found the tiniest ever edible crab, rockling, the hughest top knot, grey mullet and schools of juvenile whitebait.
It really was the most incredible day, we all emerged with plants all over us in some way or another and to see Alex's images develop beyond belief in such a short space of time made me so very happy. This is what he had to say.
"Couldn't recommend Maria more. We had an amazing time. Even though we're scuba divers, we wanted to spend some proper time getting the hang of snorkelling, we made the right choice. Maria was fab, going through everything before a guided tour around Swanage Pier. Seeing all the life was incredible. The photography course was brilliant too and really looking forward to putting it all into practice."
Thanks so much Alex and I can't wait to hear about your future adventures. Keep taking those amazing pictures!