This review is actually concerning Cathy Church's photo center which is located at Sunset House. Unfortunately I wasn't able to stay at Sunset House as I was the only diver in a family party of six, so we instead rented a 7MB condo through VRBO. As I had recently purchased the $500 E-PM1 bundle which had grown to $2500 with accessories, I was anxious to improve my results as my photos to that point were disappointing to say the least.
Previous to my trip I booked a private lesson with one of Cathy's staff instructors. I arrived early for my morning lesson, so the desk staff invited me to have breakfast in the dining room. Food was good and reasonably priced.
Down in the photo center I was met by Theunis Neethling (Tee) who was my instructor for the day. Tee was friendly and easy to talk to, asking questions about my experience and goals while looking over my equipment. He quickly became familiar with my gear set-up and after assessing my abilities and desired objectives began a lesson that was very entertaining as well as informative... after all I was on vacation, I didn't want to feel like I was back in school.
We spent the entire morning in the classroom before heading out for a shore dive just after noon. We swam out aways before descending to the Landing Craft David Nicholson, where we began the practical part of the lessons. Shortly after we began we were buzzed several times by an Atlantis tourist submarine... Kinda interesting. After thoroughly shooting the wreck we moved over to some reef shots, then over to the 9' bronze mermaid sculpture of Amphitrite, the consort of Poseidon. This provided a good subject for learning exercises. From here we worked our way back through the reefs towards shore, photographing various corals.
After the dive we went back into the classroom where we downloaded my pics to review and discuss the results and the settings and techniques that I used to achieve them. The one obvious weakness to my setup was the very short strobe arm, which was demonstrated by hand holding the strobe. Of course they were able to sell me a much better solution.
Overall it was an enjoyable and very informative day. While it was pricey I felt I got full value as I now had a very good foundation on which to build. Throughout the remainder of the week, diving on my own, my photo results got to the point where I was consistently shooting pics that I was very happy with.
If I was lucky enough to travel with other divers in my family, I would not hesitate to stay at Sunset House, but most of all I recommend that any new underwater photographers take advantage of Cathy's instruction while staying there.