10th Annual Laguna Bluebelt Photo Contest Winners!

Blog > 10th Annual Laguna Bluebelt Photo Contest Winners!

Congratulations to our 2021 Photo Contest Winners!

A special thanks to our friends, new and old, who submitted photos celebrating Laguna’s Marine Protected Areas. Each and every entry showed such a great love of our ocean!

Leave it to the Laguna Bluebelt Coalition and their 10th Annual Photo Contest to lift our spirits during these unprecedented times. Many of the images delight us with a kaleidoscope of magical, colorful new visions of our marine life and their underwater habitat being restored within the Laguna Beach Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

The Contest was judged by Mitch Ridder, Patsee Ober and Cliff Wassmann who represent some of Laguna’s best professional photographers. They selected the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Place Winners in two categories: Amateur and Professional as well as 2 Honorable Mentions. Congratulations to ALL!

“Celebrating the ocean is one more important way to bring us all together”, notes Jinger Wallace, Coordinator of the popular annual Photo Contest. Since the Photo Contest began ten years ago, we have received over 500 wonderful images of the joy and inspiration we experience along Laguna’s iconic beaches and dramatic underwater locations.” Charlotte Masarik, Coalition Board Member, reminds us “The ocean and these beautiful images are always with us as a source of comfort and hope reinvigorating us and helping us restore and re-create our lives.”

“We received a fun variety of images this year, thanks to all who entered! By doing so, you help bring awareness to Laguna’s Bluebelt and the importance of protecting the health of our ocean and its marine life. As a panel, we were more impressed with the volume, quality and creativity of the Amateur work. We steered clear from the usual cliches shots and choose images that shared a balance of technical ability, strong composition, good light and had an interesting twist to their point of view.” ~ Mitch Ridder
“The Bluebelt winners showed a lot of creative diversity. Many people are experimenting with new techniques and interesting compositions. They showed the variety of beauty in our MPA very well.” ~ Cliff Wassmann
“The Laguna Beach MPA is such a diamond in our town and much thanks to the Laguna Bluebelt Consortium for sponsoring this annual photo contest. As one who has spent countless hours down at our coastline I was impressed with the number of amateur photographers who were out in our MPA enjoying all that Laguna has to offer. Their creative and technical abilities in presenting their images made it hard to choose though there were definitely several that stood out! Kudos to the winners!!!! I would love to see more professional entries next year as I know you are out there shooting some amazing pictures. Let’s see more and congrats to those who did enter!” ~ Patsee Ober