Underwater News

If you don't know by now, Anilao in the Philippines is one of the best places on the planet for underwater macro photography.
Just two and a half hours drive south of Manila, with over 400 dive resorts to choose from, it boils down to ease of access, dive guides and your budget.
This past April, we selected the Anilao Photo Hotel to host our Underwater Photo Workshop. Owned and operated by renowned Tim Ho, an advocate for point and shoot?no strobe underwater photography and boy if you haven't seen what he can do with an Olympus TG2, go have a look on Facebook Underwater Art! That little camera is enough to make most macro shooters turn in their SLR's.

Of course learning how to get the maximum out of your camera is what Tim professes. Anilao is about the underwater photography. Eat, sleep and dive, upload?download, and get up and go do it again. Most of the dive guides at Anilao Photo Hotel have all won awards for their photography in the Anilao Photo contests. The Anilao Photo Hotel is a simple hotel offering 6 rooms with air conditioning and 6 without, serving typical Philippine fare. It is not fancy, but they do have a great layout, comfortable rooms, dedicated camera rinse tanks, an excellent dive platform, outdoor showers, and dedicated gear rinse tanks with a wonderful photo room with plenty of room to process photos in an air conditioned environment.
The Wifi is superb. Located just south of the famous Pier, your backyard pool offers the overflow of critters from the Pier right outside your door. Their house reef (lovingly names Fugly's Garden) is unbelievable! You could easily spend a week just diving out front, with everything from a wall dive, underwater statues, and even Blue Ribbon eels. We were very fortunate to have Ivan Manzanares as our lead dive guide who proved to be most worthy and helpful with the Olympus and Canon point & shoot users. Besides being an amazing spotter, he understands photography which is certainly a plus when it comes to dive guides.

We also enjoyed Ian Amboy's spotting in finding the nearly invisible Lembeh Sea Dragon at Minilog and Jason Mendoza proved most excellent as well. We enjoyed daily boat dives to Secret Bay, Secret Garden, Mainit, Wreck of the Daryl Laut a favorite of mine, and Sunview was a special place, which we chose to visit more than once. We also ventured to Sombrero, Matu and Coconut. Just to mention, if you do go to Daryl Laut, it is imperative that you get their first thing in the morning, as it is easily silted up when too many divers are there. It is also great for wide angle, as are Kirby and Beatrice sites.
All in all if you are seeking an easy place to hang your hat and get down to some serious diving, without the frills and expense, Anilao Photo Hotel is a great place to bookmark for your next trip to Anilao.