Trip Report: Turks & Caicos Photo Workshop April 2019
Words by Trip Leader Craig Dietrich | Photos by Craig Dietrich and Group
Although I only live a short plane ride away (less than hours), I had never taken advantage of diving in the Turks and Caicos before this trip, but was excited for the opportunity to lead this particular photo workshop. Located only 575 miles southeast of Miami, Turks & Caicos is an archipelago of 40 low-lying coral islands in the Atlantic Ocean, a British Overseas Territory southeast of the Bahamas. With so many islands, the diving possibilities had me excited!
There were a total of eighteen of us on the Turks & Caicos Aggressor II, which sailed out of Providenciales, the gateway island of Turks & Caicos. The Aggressor II is 120 feet long, which comfortably housed all of us for the week. The Captain and crew were excellent; the food—which is always plentiful on a liveaboard—was consistently good. The boat also has a nice hot tub, which became a gathering spot for us in the evenings after the final dives of the day.
This was a week packed full of diving—each day had four daily dives plus a night dive, but there was never pressure if a guest felt like they wanted to sit one out, which didn’t happen too often (this was a tough group!). Each dive was right off the dive deck of the boat, which was very easy and convenient.
The range of average temperature of the dives was very comfortable at 75-78 degrees, and our guests wore 3mm or 5mm wetsuits and didn’t complain of being cold. Most of our dives had a minimum of 80-100 feet of visibility, which gave us ample opportunity to see the beautiful corals and sea life. On the majority of the dives, there was little to no current, making it a dream for the photographers of our group as they could take their time setting up their perfect shots.
Turks & Caicos is famous for beautiful sheer walls, so most of our dives were approximately 70-80 feet deep, with the walls extending down hundreds of feet. On almost every dive we saw Caribbean reef sharks, and our guests loved the opportunity to take pictures of sharks! We also saw a lot of green turtles, another guest favorite! Fish were plentiful, and beneath the boat seemed to be the meeting place for schooling jacks on almost every dive. One special night dive was at a site where nurse sharks are known to feed, so the sharks gently bumped some of the guests as they fed—the guests took it in stride and enjoyed the experience.
Love shark diving? Don't forget to check out our Best Shark Diving in the World article!
The photography workshop portion of this particular trip was exciting because I found time to give additional one-on-one instruction with several guests. Guests who had never shot wide-angle finally felt comfortable enough to try, and there were guests who had never shot in raw and used Lightroom for post-production before---they were thrilled to see how amazing their own images could be!
My favorite part of the trip was the last night—“Awards Night”! Our slideshow of guest images was full of “oohs” and “aahs” as everyone saw their work –and fellow guests’ work--on the big screen. Most people were truly surprised at how much their work had progressed throughout our week together. I met with the Captain and the boat’s resident Photo Pro and they were honored to pick the winners of each category of the photo contest: Paul Weers for the Best Wide Angle category and Stuart Berryhill for Best Fish Portrait.
We had an amazing group of guests on this trip--one of our guests did her 500th dive while on the trip, so we all celebrated the milestone with her, and on our last night after the boat pulled in the marina we all had a great dinner together at Mango’s—a favorite local restaurant—capping off a week of great diving, great photography, and lots of fun.
The photo contest winners
Our group photo
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