Congratulations to Wetpixel associate editor Alex Mustard for his Antibes win last weekend!  Alex’s new book, Reefs Revealed won the Prix Mondial Du Livre D’Image Sous-Marine (World Prize for Underwater Photo Book) at the Antibes Festival.  More about the book, from Alex (yanked from the forum discussion on the topic):

I guess the biggest news is that this book won the Prix Mondial Du Livre D’Image Sous-Marine (World Prize for Underwater Photo Book) at the Antibes Festival at the weekend. Books are a lot of work and this is certainly the most satisfying award I have won for my photography. It also means that I join the likes of Doubilet, Newbert, Amsler, Wu and Ballesta whose books have won this one. You can expect some beer to be drunk this Friday in Southampton.

Anyway to the book. RR is a large format, hardback photo book about coral reefs. But I have worked hard to make it more than just photos. All the images have extended natural history captions. Most of this info comes direct from the scientific literature, as during my research I found that most of the coral reef books I read during my research just repeat the same ol’ stuff (sometimes incorrect stuff). That said it is not all dry science - there is quite a bit of what I think in there too! The captions also include location and camera details and settings.

Here are a couple of shots of the happy author when he recieved the book:

(managed to cut my head off here - lucky there are no land photos in the book).

There is a decent amount of text in the book, including a 7500 word introduction and 3 pages of notes on the photography.

This picture from my website, gives you a brief taster of some of the photography:

I will post a gallery of spreads from the book on my website when I get a chance.

I’d also like to mention a couple of other issues I took initiative on with the book. First, I offset all the carbon dioxide emissions required for the air travel for the book. Global warming is probably the most serious threat to coral reefs - and as a lot of travel was required for this book this seemed like an appropriate decision. This is not a perfect solution, I know, but I hope it starts a trend in these sorts of books. And second in this age of digital manipulation I chose to mark with a symbol [M], any images in the book that had had their content digitally manipulated. Again, I hope that this is something that becomes more common in underwater photography books.

Alex

p.s. And in case anyone is interested in buying a copy, I should add that I was commissioned to do this book. So I don’t have a stock of them myself. I have to buy them like everyone else! So I can’t send signed copies. Although I am looking into at getting some adhesive labels printed - that I can sign and post to people who have bought the book.