About

Cathy Church’s Photo Centre and Gallery was established at Sunset House in Grand Cayman in 1988. Her expertise revolves around teaching underwater photography and making sure divers enjoy their underwater experience. She has superb insight into how the students think and works to teach them individually in ways to which each student can relate.

The center offers a variety of products and services that include individual and group classes, photo workshop dive travel, fine art prints and printing services, and equipment sales.

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We proudly support and are members of

DEMA (Dive Equipment and Marketing Association)

The Historical Diving Society

Natural Resources Defense Council

Sea Save

Cayman Islands Tourism Association

National Trust of the Cayman Islands

Divers Alert Network

The Cayman Islands Humane Society

Save our Leatherbacks.org, Shark Trust

Women Divers Hall of Fame scholarships

PAWS

Cathy Church

Cathy has been taking photos underwater since 1965. She is a pioneer of photo techniques and is in six SCUBA halls of Fame. Her work has been published in hundreds of magazines, that include diving titles, travel magazines, newspapers, and scientific journals. She is an expert marine biologist with a keen eye for animal identification and behavior. Her long history with cameras and diversity makes her proficient with the latest models.

Her commercial clients have included Kodak, Nikon, USVI, the cruise industry, and Atlantis Submarine. She works with ad directors to ensure photographs what the client wants, while using her own skills to enhance the image to better fit their needs.

Cathy is also available to travel to other locations, except to dive under the polar ice.

Her latest endeavor was photographing the famed screenwriter J.V. Hart underwater for a chapter in a new book on environmental photography.

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Staff

Lin Fronda

Lin is one of Herb’s retail angels who is also a graphic artist and event photographer. Originally from the Philippines, she spent two years working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia before coming to Grand Cayman in 2006. She has experience shooting weddings, products in studio and outdoor events. Lin knows her way around Photoshop, Pagemaker, Freehand and Illustrator. She looks forward to diving more, learning more and seeing more of the world through her own eyes and camera lenses.

Maria DelasAlas

Maria hails from Manila, Philippines. She came to work in Grand Cayman in 2006. In 2011, she secured a post at Cathy Church’s as a Photo Centre Assistant and her interest in photography was sparked. She earned her Divemaster certification in 2013. Maria is now our expert on how to take stunning photos of tiny creatures that are barley visible using just her Olympus TG6. In her spare time, she enjoys working in her garden.

Wes Richardson

Wes is a multidisciplinary creative and our resident Photoshop wizard. In addition to his graphic design and photo editing duties at the photo centre he is also an accomplished illustrator and recording musician. Wes runs our printers, cuts our mats, and helps with framing.

Originally from Oregon, Wes moved to the island from Canada in October 2021. His wife Stephanie is a professor at St. Matthew’s University.

John Burt Ramos

Originally from the Philippines, JB moved to the Cayman Islands in 2017.

JB, short for John Burt, is passionate and enthusiastic about underwater photography.

Learning to love the underwater world through his interest in underwater photography, JB qualified as a Certified Rescue Diver shortly before arriving in the Cayman’s.

JB is a talented mountaineer and also a close-up magician. He is known as the magic man of scuba divers!

Herb Rafael

Herb Rafael and Cathy were married in 1991. Herb was the backbone of the development of the photo centre from a small basement shop that did not even sell film into a world-class, two-story camera store and photo service centre. He grew up in Brooklyn and studied culinary arts and hotel management before starting a second career in retail.

Although enjoying his retirement years, he cannot help hanging around the photo centre where he enjoys making sure that customers are happy with their experience and is quick to answer questions and how best to fill their needs. You can often find him in the company of his very sweet Labradoodle named Jasmin, in the photo with Herb, although she is no longer this deep brown but is now grey with a few dabs of brown.