Yes, that time of the year again: 10.000 people taking a dip in the cold waters (8 degree) of the North Sea at the beach town of Scheveningen. A tradition that was sold out this year for the very first time. Only in Holland!

© 2012 Fotograferen net.
Client: Unox

I loooooooove you!

(Photo courtesy of Fototoko)
If you look well you can spot me halfway on the right hand side of this photo…

Yes, it’s COLD!

Really, really COLD….

Braver than his sister…

#winning

Camera failure (error 99) after 5 photos sucks big time, especially at a big photoshoot like this! Three photos came out nice though, these are two of them.

See “behind the scenes” images at my Fotograferen.net Facebook!

The Unox New Years Dive saw 10.000+ people jumping into the icecold North Sea at Scheveningen Beach in The Netherlands. A great and fun event to photograph, especially if your equipment doesn’t fail on you.

Client: Unox
© 2010 Fotograferen net

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While enjoying the beach in Zeeland with our friends Bell & Britt, our two year old daughter Sacha started fooling around in the large tidal pool looking for shrimp, starfish and crabs. I jumped for my camera and got as a low position as possible to get these two enjoying the lot.

To give the photo a warmer feel I used the internal flash (on this Canon Powershot G9) with an Av set at f5 and an exposure of -2/3 of a stop. Later on I found out the flash made the water reflect on their faces giving it an ever nicer feel. Shot quite a few images before Sacha actually pointed at the water, the shot I was hoping for.

This picture is also in a Dutch Water Photo Contest, please click the "thumbs up" if you enjoy the photo and would like to help me out.

Just had to upload these two quickly, taken from the infamous Unox Nieuwjaarsduik 2010 (click here for 2008 and 2009). This year turned out the best from the three tries I’ve done so far in making these images with my drysuit and underwater camera. More shots later today or enjoy me at work (20:21) in this item at the main RTL4 News for January 1st.

Image: © Floris Diemel

Image: © Patrick Savalle

Full Gallery here.

Click here full the full set of scuba wallpapers or click one of these (widescreen) images below. Just remember, they are also available in a normal (non-widescreen) XL hi-res size!

This months view is a truly classic: the Victoria Falls [Google Earth] as seen from Zimbabwe and Zambia. For several magazines and newspapers I have covered “The Route of the African Sun” in the 2005: a route between three of Sun Internationals greatest hotels in the Southern part of Africa. The final one on our route was the Royal Livingstone, a stunning five star hotel at the edge of the Victoria Falls in Zambia. With Zebras and Monkeys playfully surrounding your private hotelroom this is truly one of the most spectacular places to relax. Sipping good wines at the veranda while the sun sets, the African wildlife surrounds you with its noises and the water of the great Zambezi river floats underneath to a certain drop just hundreds of meters away.

However, the only right view is from the Zimbabwe side ,not an easy undertaking with all the horrible problems created by its dictator Robert Mugabe. We managed to get a (quite expensive) taxi-driver who proved his worth right after reaching the border facilities. We were through in minutes in what would have taken us an hour or more if we hadn’t have had him. A lot of money later (the Visa was ridiculously expensive too) we were finally there: Zimbabwe and a stone’s throw away from the falls. Not before spending way too much money again at the entrance to the falls we were finally allowed in and boy was it worth it!

Despite the gruelling 45 plus degree weather (exactly 24 hours later I was on the tarmac on Heathrow at minus 5!) the site was too stunning not too walk around for a long time. And even though it was very much dry-season for the falls, it was still an amazing sight to have experienced!

Finally, three high-res panoramic images to enjoy:

The entrance of the falls.

Nice and big panorama.

Always my first assignment of the year: the Unox Newyears dive in Scheveningen!
Boy, what a great way to start early on January 1st.

With the cold this years edition saw less people joining the dive (about 7.000 instead of the usuall 10.000) but was it a dive indeed: everbody waited to the last second before jumping in en masse! Never saw such a spectacular dive here, altough it was over really, really quickly: just 6 minutes and the Northsea was empty again. Jup, it was cold indeed.

Full gallery here.

This months Duikmagazine opens with a 10-page article on my favorite diving destination, the Barkley Sound [open in Google Earth] in Vancouver Island. The place where you can finde the Dutch/Canadian operator Rendezvous Diving, one of the best places ever!

- In loving memory of John -

Perhaps the Dutch are indeed a bit weird. In any way, we love diving into an almost freezing NorthSea at noon on newyears day. It’s called the Unox Nieuwjaarsduik. So why not bring out the trusty Canon 20D with UK-Germany housing, put on my drysuit and just wait.. till 12?