Words from Anthony Grote, winner of "Judges Choice" award. Anthony also took first prizes for Digital Advanced AND Video Advanced
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Shootout, yes, was quite a fluke! Certainly did not expect anything like what happened. I came up with the video idea a while back and knew I had to do it. I, however, had a number of hurdles, in that I do not own a video camera, and my editing software was not really suitable to the occasion. Anyway, managed to sort out both, and now all I needed was the weather to play the game, as to do both video and still I needed a break.

Well, for Wednesday (when I could shoot video) the conditions were lousy so the video wasn't the greatest. This put pressure on Thursday a bit. I tried to do both photo and video on Thursday but ended up dropping the photo side and concentrated on the video, got all the main footage I needed, which now left Friday only to get some still photos!!!

I was actually on the verge of forgetting the still photos altogether but then luckily Friday turned out to be a glorious sea day, we found the whaleshark, had 2 great dives, managed to get some shots, although I really did not think I had a winning portfolio, never mind the "judges choice award", so...

Then to add to the drama, I managed to overwrite my working file for my video on Friday evening, which was almost a disaster, as I was then left with a blank project. After much debate and thinking, we managed to do a system restore on my laptop which found a file from the previous day, so luckily I only lost a days editing, but needless to say, I did not get any sleep on Friday night. 

So Saterday was actually a great ending to a couple of days of extra effort. But what a great experience and certainly look forward to next year.

Visit Anthony's website at www.xtremepix.co.za