Fiji Photography Workshop Trip Report 2026

By Mark B. Hatter

The current is ripping, stretching the pair of diver safety lines taught, far behind our Volivoli Beach Resort dive boat, the Ra Explorer. Gil Flaherty, Bluewater Dive Travel Trip Co-leader, and I sense the palpable, collective anticipation amongst our Bluewater Dive Travel guests. We are preparing to explore Fiji’s internationally regarded Black Magic Mount, in the heart of Fiji’s Namena Marine Reserve.

Namena encompasses an oceanic area within the famous Bligh Waters. It consists of deep marine channels, submarine canyons, ancient volcanic seamounts, and isolated pinnacles between Fiji’s two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. Black Magic Mount is but one of many pinnacles, rising up like a spine from a dragon’s back, in the center of the reserve.

Currents in the Bligh Waters are infamous and can make sites like Black Magic Mount impossible to dive on the days around the new and full moon. But currents also bring life and tremendous photo opportunities around such underwater structures. Today, we are fortunate as the quarter moon has enabled our Bluewater Travel guests to experience one of the best dive sites in all of Fiji and, arguably perhaps, the world.

Jah, our divemaster, hangs from the safety line at the stern of the Ra Explorer and instructs our guests to make a negative entry, swimming quickly down to the back of the mount where the current is negligible. One by one, we make our way to the protected lee before working our way, up current, along the pinnacle’s spectacularly colored walls, festooned with all manner of hard and soft corals.

Suddenly, the “pop” of underwater flash units above and below me feels reassuring. It signals that our guests are not only comfortable in the challenging conditions, but also settling into their personal rhythm of underwater photography.

We are two thirds of the way through our Bluewater Photo Workshop. This land-based instruction, coupled with our one-on-one underwater assistance at less challenging dive sites earlier in the trip on the opposite side of Viti Levu, is evidently paying dividends. Our shooters are adjusting strobe angles and making camera setting adjustments as conditions dictate, to capture wide angle recordings of this amazing pinnacle, exploding with life.

We began our Bluewater Workshop at the south end of Viti Levu a week earlier, at the beautiful Waidroka Bay Resort, with a late afternoon photo class on shooting wide angle imagery in particular, large animal image capture. Both subjects were germane to our diving agenda for the next two days (and our future diving off the north coast with Volivoli Beach Resort) where we would meet up with the Aquatrek shark dive team to witness, close up and personal, the largest bull sharks on the planet, which reside in Beqa Lagoon.

During our formal instruction, we discussed the virtues of fisheye wide angle capture verses rectilinear wide angle capture, which is dependent upon the distance the subject is from the shooter. At the end of the day, if we were capable of shooting both options with our kit, going fisheye wide on one day then switching to rectilinear on the second was the best of both worlds.

It was the right recommendation as the very numerous, very large, very curious, and very hungry bull sharks (and occasional nurse shark) gave us so many opportunities to explore both methods of image capture as they cruised around the chum can.

By the end of the second day, our memory cards left us scrambling to process images for our daily image review before packing our kits for the next day’s journey north to Volivoli Beach Resort.

The accommodations at Waidroka were superb, from the exceptional food to the family-like staff. We capped off our last evening at Waidroka with a traditional Kava Ceremony and plenty of dancing. It was the perfect touch to finish a wonderful start to our Fiji Bluewater Travel Photo Workshop.

After settling into the beautiful Volivoli Beach Resort on Fiji’s northern coast, we continued our formal workshop instruction and daily image reviews in earnest between dives each day. While diving the Namena Marine Reserve was not an option early on due to windy conditions, we found the diving on the northwestern side of Viti Levu exceptional. It presented fantastic stands of multi-story hard corals, swim-through passages adorned in colorful soft corals and plenty of anemones, replete with clownfish families creating wondrous photo opportunities.

On one dive we even had an extremely rare drive-by of a two meter great hammerhead shark; with proof provided by some our guest’s images! Best of all, the mild currents at sites named Neptune and Hakuna Matata enabled plenty of one-on-one underwater photo assistance, with guests desiring a touch of personal instruction in wide angle shooting.

I visited Volivoli Beach Resort on a personal trip with my daughter in 2022 and was pleasantly surprised to see that many of the staff remembered me by name. This is the type of personal touch which really makes a destination resort stand out from all others.

Besides the engaging staff, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the numerous, sumptuous options provided during breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the full open air restaurant and beach bar adjacent to the dive center. Great food, great accommodations, and great staff are the cake’s icing to spectacular diving in the South Pacific!

Volivoli Beach Resort has a house reef, which proved to be excellent for some of our guests choosing to switch to macro photography. And macro was again an option on the night dive for those guests savvy enough to save their hunger for a late dinner at the restaurant after returning from the night dive.

Of course no Bluewater Travel Photo Workshop is complete without holding a photo contest on the final night. We were fortunate to have a professional photographer within our ranks who graciously offered his services to select winners and honorable mentions in two categories: Wide Angle Sharks and Wide Angle Reef Scenes.

We finished our workshop adventure with another Kava Ceremony, more dancing, and plenty of hors d’oeuvres and cocktails before settling into our guest photo slide show and contest winners announcement.

If you are looking for an opportunity to improve your underwater photography skills, or are experienced and are looking to travel and shoot with other like minded photographers, check out our numerous guided destination trips and photo-workshops at bluewaterdivetravel.com