I’ve been diving since 1995. I captured my first underwater photos with a rented Nikonos in 1996. Certainly, captivated by underwater photography as I was an above-water photographer and student at the time, I spent many years dreaming of great underwater photos (as I still do, haha). However, my time and income for travel and settling myself in a career made things very difficult.

An opportunity I took for leading system design and software development for the shipping industry took over, and I’m still here for the most part. As time allowed, I did freelance and personal photography in many spaces, as well as graphic and web design. Over the years, I’ve tried a few systems for underwater photography, but not until the digital era did I start getting more involved and extremely more interested (or re-sparked).

With work projects slowing down, taking on more freelance jobs with photography, and starting a family, things were—and are—always hectic. But diving became more of a priority, as well as underwater photography. So much so that I rarely take on freelance work anymore and have focused on printing my work in some fashion and showing it. The photographer/artist in me wants something in my hand, despite the digital social media age that people can see.

I remember finding Wetpixel and being amazed by the community... I signed right up (maybe 2008ish) and basically just absorbed many things on and off over the years. I think it was in 2019 that I had to sign up again (due to email address change or some issue that could not be rectified) because I had a question or I wanted to sell gear—I can’t remember.

Fast forward a few years... When I read about the decline or dismal future of the forums, I became very concerned. Having the background that I have, I jumped right on in seeing what I could do to help and keep the community alive. Jump forward in time a bit more… A great team materialized, and WATERPIXELS was born.

As a child growing up with TV images of Jacques Cousteau and Hans and Lottie Hass (remember them?!), I’ve always been drawn to the sea and diving - encouraged by holidays with grandparents on the island of Jersey in the British Channel Islands.

I joined a British Sub-Aqua Club at the age of about 14 but a perforated ear drum doing a crazy swimming pool exercise put a halt to an early diving life.

A long career in the British Diplomatic Service had me, at one stage, living in New York in the 1990s. Curiously my morning walk to the Metro North train station took me past a PADI dive shop and into the Open Water course. And so diving began for real. A later move to London also, coincidentally, had me living around the corner from a PADI dive shop! Fate, eh?

Foreign postings then became subject to the dive-ability test. Five years living in Bermuda led to discovering digital underwater photography, Wetpixel and becoming a PADI and BSAC instructor. My fate was sealed.

After many overseas postings and then retirement, I spent a year running the diving at a resort in the Lembeh Straits and teaching underwater photography. However the siren call of wanting to Save The World intervened and I returned to land-locked Afghanistan to work on events there - and gave diving classes in my free time. Bit of a challenge.

A Kodak digital camera and Ikelite housing started me on the road to photography ruin in the late-90s. But I’d always been a Nikon fan (even before I could afford one) and was led by Seaoptics in Australia down the Subal housing path with a Nikon E5000. I then journeyed through various Nikon Dxxx iterations, buying and selling Subal housings along the way, starting with the D100. I flirted with Nikon full-frame D800 and finally settled very happily in 2017 with a crop frame sensor D500. I’ll likely stay with that for some time to come.

I’m now a semi-retired consultant advising on responses to events that most people do not want to experience. Having just moved back to northern Europe from the Caribbean, I’m not diving as much as I’d like but I sell through stock agencies and the occasional private sale a lot of the images that I take. Happily though I don't have to survive on those earnings.

The underwater photography community is one of the most extraordinary group of people I’ve met: super generous with their knowledge, their time, their experience and advice. It’s a pleasure to be involved.

A life long Sydney-sider, I have been taking photographs for nearly 40 years, starting off on land my first subjects included Formula 1 bikes and cars before moving to the more challenging birds, landscapes, and macro as well as dabbling in astro photography many years ago.

I'm self taught in photography and also have been heavily using Photoshop for 20+ years, initially with scanned film and then digital imaging. I had a colour darkroom back in the film days and moved onto inkjet printers with fully colour managed workflows 20 years ago.

Underwater shooting came later in the piece and I started off with an Olympus EM-5 MkII after experiencing the UW world snorkeling in the Galapagos with an action camera. I live in Helensburgh to the south of Sydney a short drive from some really nice dive sites. I learned to dive in Sydney which is blessed with some of the best diving available in a capital city anywhere in the world, with shore dive accessible rocky reefs around the entrance to Sydney harbour and Botany Bay and with offshore reefs and shipwrecks as well.

Sydney shore diving is good training dealing with steep descents to the entry point, swells, variable and sometimes quite limited visibility, it really sets you up well to dive near anywhere and has plenty of unique creatures to find such as weedy sea dragons and giant cuttlefish.

Much of my diving is local and I dive a few times a month on average, all year round, I dive dry for about 5 months of the year and a wetsuit the rest of the time.

I'm a Chemical Engineer by training so doing calculations and such comes naturally and helps me a lot in understanding optics and sorting out port charts and other issues that come up with underwater photography. I've also done a lot of mechanical work over time, fixing cars, including a complete engine re-build many years ago. I also build all my own computers and have done since my first PC many years back now. All handy skills when dealing with underwater photo gear and processing underwater images.

I now shoot m43 cameras currently the EM-1 MkII and soon moving to the OM-1 underwater in Nauticam housings and have now mostly switched to them from Canon cameras for my terrestrial work, particularly when travelling. I find the cameras and sensors are good enough for the photography that I do and the range of lenses available really is complete. For macro work above and below water I find they really are unbeatable.

I joined Wetpixel in 2016 and quickly became a regular and was asked to be a moderator in 2020, I found it incredibly useful and greatly enjoy helping people out with underwater photography issues.

I have had a passion for the sea and diving since childhood. In the summer I practised apnea and spearfishing and avidly read any diving magazine I could get my hands on. Finally in 1991, my job allowed me to take my first diving course. From that moment on, I haven't stopped. I became an instructor and worked as a dive guide. I soon abandoned my teaching career because I simply wanted to dive, dive, dive...

Although I never took a picture underwater, it just so happened that my buddies were all die hard underwater photographers and a lot of my time in the water was spent assisting them in finding new shots or even as a model.

In 2000 I was among the first to be fascinated by the novelties of technical diving and to spread the DIR and GUE training in Italy, certifying myself Tech2 in 2005. From then on, three rebreathers, trimix, and scooters have been the tools that have allowed me to systematically visit the twilight zone, i.e., the bathymetric range between fifty and one hundred and twenty metres, which is proving to be fundamental for investigating the impact of climate and anthropic changes on our seas.

Yet for me, technical diving has always been a means and not an end. A set of tools that have allowed me to extend the duration of my dives, undertake otherwise impossible dives and make them safer and more fun.

The desire to document my explorations materialised in 2010 with a Sony camera and an Isotta housing, but I was immediately captivated by the mirrorless camera revolution initiated by Panasonic. Since then, from the Panasonic GH2 to the GH5MK2, I have followed the entire evolution of the M43 format, which I still consider the best compromise between size/performance for the technical diving I do.

I dive all year round close to home and always take my camera with me. The most beautiful shot? The one I will do next week.

Compact System Moderator

I fell in love with the ocean back in 1994 whilst in hospital. There was an awesome programme called "The Aquanauts" on TV who were following whale sharks to learn about them. I immediately had a dream that if I managed to escape, then I would learn as much as I could about sharks and help to spread the word about how beautiful they were.

I started snorkelling back in 2001 with the tiniest 3 megapixel Sony Cybershot and quickly fell in love with our underwater world. I upgraded to the most incredible Canon d-SLR in an Ikelite Housing with Ikelite strobes which quickly flooded and then side-graded to an Olympus 5050 compact camera which I used to set up REEF's (the Reef Environmental Education Foundation) first Field Station in Latin America which was in Puerto Vallarta.

Fast forward from 2004, I've been addicted to every kind of smaller system you can think of. I've shot with Fuji, Olympus, both the Canon Ixus and Canon G series, Sony RX, Ikelite, Sea & Sea, Sealife with Sealife, INON and Backscatter MF strobes. I also love using my Go Pro and additional Backscatter additional lenses for both stills and video with my MARES EOS-10lrw video lights.

Finally, I've also fallen in love with creating underwater imagery using my Smartphone which I've been shooting with the past 2 and a half years using both Sealife's SportDiver housing and am currently using a DIVEVOLK set-up.

I never ever expected to even take one nice image, let alone win awards or write the world's 2nd best-selling eBook on underwater photography (Underwater Photography for Compact Camera Users) but my passion since I launched PADI's first ever Digital Underwater Photography Course in Egypt with Emperor Divers in 2006 has always solely been on inspiring beginners and helping them on their journey to capture beautiful, eye-catching images. Nothing makes me more happy than to see them doing well and also help give newcomers confidence to experience snorkelling or diving in our oceans too and spread the word about important conservation issues.

That passion still burns in my Ocean Studio today beside the sea in Swanage, Dorset UK.