NAD Photo Workshop 2024 Trip Report

Our 11th Annual NAD Lembeh Photo Workshop was a rousing success!

Over two weeks in July we welcomed 18 people to the wonderful NAD Lembeh Resort in North Sulawesi. This year we were joined a great mix of repeaters as well as first time attendees. We must say that seeing people join our workshop year after year brings us great joy. We have become great friends with many of these people over the years.

This year we welcomed guests from the USA, Australia, the U.K., France, and Thailand. We started out with a “Photo Fun Week” for five days before the workshop in order for everyone to get settled in and some extra days diving in the wonderful Lembeh Strait. One of the key aspects of the Fun Week is to dive the sites to see what creatures are where. This helps the photography instructors build a knowledge base of what subjects can be used as learning tools on the workshop. Of course during the Fun Week we also get the chance to take a few photos ourselves! The vast majority of people joined us for the Fun Week as well as the workshop and we had a full house for almost a full two weeks.

NAD Photo Workshop 2024 Begins

Once our last few participants arrived, we proceeded with our welcome introduction around 6pm on Saturday night. Our 7 night/17 dive package started on Saturday with the first dives taking place on Sunday morning. With everyone on hand, we gathered in NAD Lembeh’s spacious bar area to let everyone know the plans for the week. We also had everyone introduce themselves and we took the time to hand out the welcome gifts to all participants. After a tasty dinner served by the excellent staff at the resort everyone headed to bed early in anticipation of the morrow’s dives.

The first day of the workshop introduced everyone to the pace and style of our events. Our three instructors each joined one of the three boats of participants for two days per boat. What sets our workshops apart is that the instructors don’t use cameras. Instead we carry underwater slates and give one to one attention to our guests underwater every dive. With three boats of divers and three instructors on location this worked a treat. To make it run as smoothly as possible, each instructor spent 2 days in a row with each boat. This allowed enough time underwater for everyone and for the instructors to give detailed coaching both in the water and above.

Our days consisted of the following schedule:

Breakfast starting around 630 and first dive departure at 730
Two dives on the boat with snacks and drinks between dives
Return to the resort around noon and enjoy lunch
13:00 short presentation on camera techniques in the camera room
14:00 depart for third dive of the day
17:00-19:00 evening post processing presentation and one to one time with the instructors
19:00 socialize over dinner, no presentations after dinner

We have found this schedule to work very well over the years as it strikes a great balance of tuition time and also time for relaxation. As we are in Lembeh many people also decide to partake in night dives or black water dives instead. We certainly promote this as its important to maximize your time underwater while on holiday!

Our technical presentations for the week were as follows:

Simple Macro Settings
Creative Lighting
Snooting
Super Macro
Depth of Field
Composition

We also hosted Lightroom presentations each day including:

The Basics of Lightroom
AI Masking
Backscatter Removal Using the AI Healing Brush

Our two hour evening sessions are one of the most important parts of the week as it allows everyone the time to sit with one of the instructors and receive feedback on their photos or ask any questions about photography and post processing. Most participants do take advantage of this time to discuss their photos with the instructors. We also hear that many people find this to be one of the most useful aspects of the workshop. It’s during this time that everyone can really ask the questions about issues they are working on.

NAD Photo Workshop 2024 Critter List

Of course a trip report would be remiss if we didn’t discuss the critters that we encountered. First on the list is the sheer number of blue ring octopus we photographed. We were finding these popular cephalopods on almost every dive site in a variety of environments. The most memorable was a mating pair which two lucky photographers were able to capture on camera. Other octopus were also found including reef octopus, wonderpus, mimic octopus, and even a relatively rare algae octopus.

Of course there were more than just octopus around. Frogfish were a popular subject as were nudibranchs and shrimp. One of the highlights of the week were the hunts for rare gobies. Gobies are a favourite character for many of the guides at NAD and they love finding rare and colourful ones. One of the highlights was the Yasha Shrimpgoby that one lucky group was fortunate to find. Other highlights included rhinopias, coleman shrimp, sea dragons, cardinal fish with eggs, flamboyant cuttlefish and a whole lot more.

Photo Workshop 2025

In total the workshop was a great success with everyone enjoying the amazing diving that Lembeh has to offer. We finished the workshop with a final day BBQ soon followed by a great slideshow of images. It was wonderful to see the images from everyone and how they utilized many of the techniques discussed throughout the week. Soon enough it was time to say goodbye to everyone for another year. We would like to thank everyone who joined us for the 2024 event! Not to worry though, we already have dates set for 2025! If you are interested in joining us the dates for the workshop are 18-26 July 2025. We will have full information about the workshop and Photo Fun Week coming soon but please Contact Us today if you are interested.

Please enjoy this sample gallery of images from our participants!