Breaking Free

• Prize
  Bronze in Events/Sport
• Photographer
  Kohei Ueno
• Agency / Studio
  Kohei Ueno Photography
• Technical Info
  1/1250 / F2.8 / Iso400
• Photo Date
  18/05/2022

While the world below is quiet, dark, and peaceful, the world above is loud, bright, and busy. After spending minutes alone in what used to be private and confined, the freediver is now awakened by the familiar sight of people, sound and other sensation of life as he ascends towards the surface. This is a shot of Pepe Salcedo of Mexico coming up from a 91m dive on Free Immersion (FIM), a discipline where you use your arms to pull on the line and dive as deep as you can. The ocean current is so strong as he approaches the surface, tilting everyone including the line sideways.

Kohei is an international award winning photographer from Japan, specialising in freediving and underwater photography based out of Asia. He picked up his first camera in 2014 when he quit his job at Google to travel the world, capturing images along the way that won him 1st place at the 2016 Alpha Awards. Since then, he's taken the camera underwater combining it with his passion for freediving. Since then he’s won multiple awards with numerous work published locally and abroad, including 2nd place at the Sony World Photography Awards, and winning the 2019 IPA Sports Photographer of the Year.