And once again we chose Sulawesi as the destination for our 2-week diving vacation, this year it should be again the Solitude
Lembeh Resort. After last year's experience with Singapore Airlines/Snoot, we chose the variant with Qatar Air via Doha and
Jakarta. Until then, everything went well, only the change to the budget airlines Batik or Lion Air was associated with several
delays, additional payments for excess baggage and quite a lot of hassle. Especially the return flight via Surabaya with another
delay almost led to the fact that the plane towards Doha took off from Jakarta without us.
At Solitude Lembeh Resort we met our guide Enal, with whom we exclusively did every dive of our vacation. We had again the
garden bungalow No. 3 and have again felt very comfortable there. Food, accommodation everything super, the staff is extremely
nice, what more do you need. Only flaw: During the entire time it was extremely windy, for us rather unusual, who ever has
sensitive ears, must be careful after the dives. Fortunately, the trips with the fast boats have not lasted very long.
Antje spent most of the vacations on the subject of "Creative Lighting", as she took part in a workshop by Lilian Koh. Here,
almost exclusively mini gear lights and no UW strobes were used for the lighting in the dark sand, partly offset with all
kinds of colorful toys to create artificial effects.
The water temperatures up to a maximum of 27 degrees were probably the reason that the coveted macro motifs were not too deep.
We found Blue Ring and Hairy Octopus already on the 1st day of diving, later also Mototi, Coconut Octopus and Wonderpus. In
addition there were many different colored frogfish on the way, among other things also in the house reef (Jahir). Again, the
focus was on photographing the critters while blending out the background as much as possible with different lighting techniques and tricks.
Roland accompanied the whole thing mostly with the video camera, the guides supported us in finding the motifs and holding the
lamps. In the evening, the post-processing on the screen was announced, existing floating particles were removed from the photos
under strict supervision. After dinner, the theme of the next day was given and discussed. For example: Number of light sources /
Natural background / Artificial background / Artificial effects etc.
As always a conclusion at the end: Country and people are very close to our hearts, we enjoyed it again to dive in Sulawesi.
We would be very happy to recommend Solitude Lembeh Resort. We send our best regards to Enal, Hiros, Anna, Patrick and the rest
of the Solitude crew, as well as to Lilian Koh in Singapore.
