Dec 20, 2012

2012 Alor UW photo gallery

hi all,

just manage to put my new photo gallery ( all taken in Alor in 2012 ) on line in our web site at : http://www.alor-divers.com/underwater.php?lang=0&file=content/underwater.json. Enjoy the slide show....

wish you a festive end of the year and happy new year 2013 !!!!

Alor Divers Team

Oct 19, 2012

Recap of summer 2012 diving in Alor

The summer is behind us and it was a lot busy here. This year was not so much waves, sea was mostly flat and diving was great. We had several encounter with Hammerhead shark and even a great Hammerhead swimming around in 10M of water at Karl’s Dream…very unusual indeed…
Macro and muck dives were amazing during the first part of the year , for a few weeks is seems that critter are disappearing slowly while the nudibranch boom is coming again ( we always have more nudi during the second part of the year ).
This winter we will close the resort on the 08 of December to open again on the 17 March. Some major improvement will be made with some change in the kitchen building as well as some bungalow renovation.

May 5, 2012

Alor Divers (AD) Photo Contest 2012

This year (2012) Alor Divers Eco Dive Resort is launching an annual Under Water Photo Competition, reserved for the guests of Alor Divers.
The photographers can submit their UW photos in two categories:
1 Portofolio : must include three (3) wide angle shots and three (3) macro shots. The wide angle photos can also comprise half/half shots.
2 Best photo : includes only one UW photo, which can be of any type and technique.
Prize for each winner will be a 9 night stay with Alor Divers Eco Dive Resort and it can be claimed within 3 years upon receiving the prize.
The competition for year 2012 will close on 31 Dec and the photos can be submitted until 15 Jan 2013. Entries can be emailed to info@alor-divers.com.
Judging will take place for 1 month after 15. Jan and will be done by an experienced photographers. For 2012 it will be Mr. Olivier Isnard you can see some of his work at: www.olivier-isnard.com   & Mrs Muriel Olivier
The winning photos of two categories will be published in Alor Divers Blog, Website and Facebook page.

Rules
1- The photographers can compete only with the photos that were taken in Alor, during a stay at Alor Divers Eco Resort, during the year of the running competition. (for UW Photo Competition  2012 the photos have to be from year 2012, etc)
2 - The images must be owned by the person entering the competition.
3 - The same photographer cannot win the 2 categories.
4 - Please limit your image to a maximum file size of 300 KB per image
-  Before prizes are sent, winners will be required to submit their photo in raw format.
5 - The submits and winner images can be used by Alor Divers royalty free for promoting their services including web site, press releases, magazine articles, brochures, etc without the need for full credit to the photographer .
6 - Of course, the images will be sign with the name of the photographer.
7 - The image will NOT be sold on to any third party
8 - Entries suspected of exhibiting the following behaviour will be disqualified: 

-Divers visibly damaging the environment (e.g. gear dragging or kicking up sand).
-Animals with signs of stress (e.g. puffed puffers, inking octopus).
-Animals moved to an unnatural environment or risky location.
- Animals being fed (especially with artificial food from divers).
- Marine life being touched (e.g. coral polyps, seahorse tails).
- Divers exhibiting poor buoyancy contro


* Image Manipulation Rules:
-No image manipulation is allowed, other than the type of full-frame manipulations which happen during the computer processing of raw images, the creation of in-camera JPEGs, or the scanning of slides or negatives. These include minor full-frame changes to white balance, brightness, contrast, colour, saturation, and sharpening.
-In addition, minor traditional darkroom style manipulations are allowed, including cropping, B&W conversion, and dodging and burning with large, basic brushes. Complex manipulations requiring masks, advanced elements like the healing tool or clone tool, and precise brushes are not allowed. Burning simple backscatter out of a black background with a coarse brush is allowable; precisely healing backscatter in a complex background is not.

Apr 8, 2012

Incredible critter diving in Kalabahi Bay !!!








I usually don’t like list or count of what i see underwater in a particular dive but today I could not resist. This was our first two tank dives in Kalabahi bay muck dive of the season :


Sea horses : 2 yellow, 1 black and 3 mix kind of brown color.

Rinopias: 2 yellow weedy scorpion fish

Cockatoo wasp fish : 3 of them

Devil scorpion fish: 4 of them

Wonderpus octopus

Flying gurnard

Ornate ghost pipe fish: 1 juvenile and 2 adult

Zebra crab: few of them

Reptilian snake eel

Reef stone fish : big guy at least 30 cm

Frog fish: 1 black giant painted, 1 yellow clown frog fish, 1 randall’s frog fish

Winged pipe fish

Fingered dragonet

Cute small cow fish: few of them

Cuttle fish: few of them

Baby mantis shrimp

Few quite rare Nudis…




till next time...safe diving...

Mar 11, 2012

Preparations for 2012



The new season approach and like every year we rush for the final maintenance touch. We always try to improve details, like the kitchen getting a new paint but also more dramatic changes: this year 2 more bungalows have been renovated with brick walls and a bigger terrace. But this is the visible part; my everyday work during the break is mainly around water pump, compressor, speed boat engines, generators and everything else related to technical matter. The idea is to have all in mint condition at the start of the season to minimize the problems during the time with guests.
Also every year we try to improve little things, so this year we will offer WIFI in the restaurant, of course the speed and the transfer rate are very low because we use the hand phone network as a internet connection, so cannot expect much but probably enough for checking emails . 
This year we will welcome a new couple of diving instructor: Daniele from Italia and Jennie from England. They were previously working in Vietnam …