Maldives’ first resort marks 45 years with striking picture

The first tourist resort opened in the Maldives, Kurumba Maldives, celebrated its 45^th anniversary on Tuesday. Whilst this was an impressive feat on its own, an aerial photograph that was taken to commemorate the event had garnered much more traction on social media.

The picture of the number ‘45’ written across the deep blue ocean by strategically using speedboats’ backwater ripples that is seen above, was taken from a drone – and according to the resort, it was more complicated to make this “picture-perfect” than anticipated.

The visionary behind getting the message across the pristine ocean surrounding the resort was its Fleet Manager Mohamed Shameem. According to him, the task was not as feasible to achieve in real life, as it was to have imagined it. It took a week, six speedboats and several redoes to achieve the perfect picture.

Shameem revealed that the two numbers had to be shot separately because there were a lot of precautionary measures involved as they were using speedboats.

“We first tried to make the two numbers together to get the whole number in one frame, but it was too risky to do that,” Shameem said.

Their first drawback was that the speedboats used to write the numbers across the ocean had to drive through a busy route that was often used by other boats; so the crew had to be tactical about their timing.

Another challenge was that the speedboats took time to accumulate enough power to generate the backwater ripples needed for the photograph. However, by the time the speedboats garnered enough power, they were steering dangerously close to each other.

The crew had used an area of 1,000 square meters to write the numbers using the speedboats, and the picture was taken from 500 meters above sea level.

Whilst Shameem asked his crew members to drive from random spots in a general area near the resort during odd times of the day for a week, they had no idea why their manager was making them do that. Shameem said that he had not revealed the motive until he got the shot right.

He said that he was very satisfied with the results and that it could, perhaps, be the “coolest thing [he’s] ever done in his career.”

Kurumba Maldives had also gathered its staff on the island’s beach, and an aerial photograph of them standing in form of the number ‘45’ was also taken to mark its anniversary.

The launching of the resort on October 3, 1972, marked the Maldives’ initiation into the tourism industry, which now generates about 90 percent of the country’s GDP. Kurumba Maldives is owned by Universal Enterprises, which operates the largest resort collection in the country.

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