Nonprofit organization Dive into the Pink announced the winners of the Think Pink photo competition on August 6th. The competition, organized by Dive into the Pink, invited photographers to submit their most exciting images featuring the color pink, with proceeds used to support the fight against breast cancer.
We had a fantastic response again this year, with almost 400 entries raising well over $3,000 for breast-cancer research and patient support. The quality of the entries was exceptionally high, and the judging panel had an incredibly tough time picking the winners, finally awarding first place in the Macro category to Henley Spiers’s blenny peeping from a sponge and first place in the wide-angle category to Eduardo Arribada’s diver surrounded by schooling fish. Spiers won a six-day package to Crystal Blue Resort in Anilao, Philippines, and Arribada will receive a six-day Visayas Safari aboard MV Discovery Palawan, Philippines. Scoring second place spots, Fabien Michenet won an AOI 12.5x diopter with flip-thread adapter for an image of a shrimp on a jellyfish in the macro category, while Víctor Núñez won a Kraken Sports Hydra 3500 lumen light for a perfectly posed over-under of a mermaid.
The third-place finishers are Massimo Giorgetta for his crisp candy crab and Ron Watkins for his scorpionfish perched on a sponge. Each took home a $250 gift certificate towards Saga Dive products. The judges also felt that Elly Wray and David Antoja Mas deserved honorable mentions, and they were awarded a copy of Blackwater and Open Blue by Scott “Gutsy” Tuason, and Secrets of the Seas by Alex Mustard and Callum Roberts, respectively.
Winning images will help promote the third annual Pink Auction, a silent online auction that kicks off on September 30, 2018. Items up for bid include exotic dive trips, dive gear, underwater photography gear, jewelry, and apparel. Auction items are still being added and readers can preview them here.
About Dive into the Pink
Allison Vitsky Sallmon, a breast cancer survivor, veteran scuba diver, and underwater photographer, founded Dive into the Pink in 2016. She wanted to raise money to fight cancer by mobilizing the scuba community through dive charters and dive-related activities. Dive into the Pink is a 501c3 organization, and 100 percent of proceeds are redistributed. Beneficiaries include the Young Survival Coalition (YSC), an international organization dedicated to the critical issues of young women with breast cancer, and the Guise Laboratory at Indiana University, which is investigating whether certain characteristics of the bone-marrow microenvironment can alter/promote the spread of cancer to the bone.
