Christmas and New Year as an Underwater Photographer

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Christmas and New Year is always a hard time for anyone working in the service industry. Its generally our busiest time of year and the boats are full. Typically the weather is not so great over here, even though its 32 degrees C its often a little overcast and the conditions underwater are not at their peak! Even though we have to work, we have fun and everyone is very helpful and most of the time it doesn’t even feel like Christmas. This is mainly due to the heat, but then every now and again you see a bit of tinsel, some Christmas tunes or the odd diver in a santa hat floating by!

Even though things are not so great topside, we still have lots of fun over this festive period. Its not all doom and gloom. We have fun customers that are out to enjoy themselves and staff that are geared up to take on the Christmas rush.

I am fortunate to work for a Swedish Dive shop – Lanta Diver so I get to celebrate Christmas twice! The Swedes and most other Europeans celebrate Christmas on the 24th and us weird Brits on the 25th! By the 26th I have consumed 2 Christmas dinners and feel very fat!

Lanta Diver are kind enough to put on a lovely traditional Swedish Christmas buffet (Smörgåsbord) on for all the Thai and western staff. This year we held the dinner on the beach and had a local live Thai band singing away through the night. It was a really nice night and with plenty of festive geer!

On the proper Christmas day we of course had to work which was great fun and we had such a cool bunch of people on the boat! Luckily we finished early on both days so we were all back on land by 4pm. That night a whole mix of nationalities joined us for dinner at one of our favourite restaurants on the island – Red Snapper. The last count of total people at very long table was 18! So much fun was had. Luckily I had boxing day off so I was able to recover from all the excess food and drink! Then it was back to work and its been full boats every day since.

Conditions are now at their peak and diving is great. The mantas are back and we have flat seas again and lots and lots of customers.. Now we are into 2018, I am really looking ofrward to the year ahead, developing more photography skills and styles underwater and also conducting more Underwater Photography courses from the end of Jan onwards. Here’s to a fantastic 2018 everyone!