Commended Eden Shorts 2015
Having dived for 25 years, and with a keen interest in the Menai Straits, it was an obvious choice for a filming location when Neil O'May first started recording wildlife.
Eden Shorts judge Michaela Strachan was blown away by the animals featured:
Delicate Beauty is a really well put together piece with great camera work showing off some wonderfully colourful creatures, all served by Neil's fantastic narrative.
A beautiful nudibranch found in the Menai Straights, Wales.
Neil had quite the task on his hands in filming his subjects with slack water only occurring for an hour twice a day and then only for a few days every month. Wearing his own bodyweight in diving kit, struggling with thick-fingered gloves while viewing everything through a dive mask Neil managed to assemble enough footage to make the beautiful sequence we see in Delicate Beauty.
An experienced broadcaster and fellow judge, Nigel Marven wanted to do after watching the film was head out to Wales to dive with Neil's nudibranchs:
The animals filmed looked fantastic and getting them to look that good is very difficult to achieve. Next time I'm around the Menai Strait I will think of those nudibranchs lurking just under the water.
Having picked nudibranchs as the stars for his film, Neil marvelled at their "fabulous colours", the kind of brilliance normally reserved for tropical waters, and was astounded at being able to "see their hearts beating and food being digested.