My underwater photography career began in April 2001 when I was forced by dive guide Grant Searancke to take his underwater photo course… so I now can blame my obsession and bank balance on him!

Shortly after this trip I purchased a second-hand MotorMarine II, but after taking a course with Martin Edge the following year it wasn’t too long before I moved on to the F90x in a Sea & Sea housing. In December 2004, I made the move to digital and purchased a D70.

I am absolutely delighted to have won the open portfolio competition as not only is it considered the most prestigious, but also 5 of the 6 shots were taken in my first year of digital. This last year has been a huge learning curve for me and my approach to photography has changed incredibly. I now work completely in manual and am happier to experiment as I’m not so worried about wasting film.

1). Red Rope Sponge and Pyjama Nudibranch – Canyon dive site at the Taba Hilton, Taba.
This picture is amongst three in the portfolio that were taken during January 2005 on a trip to Taba in the northern Sinai. Longwood Holidays had very kindly sent me there to take some photos for their 2005 dive brochure and I was unsure what to expect from the trip. However after the first dive where we were shown 4 frogfish within the first 10 minutes, all uncertainties were swept away and I realised that the area was fantastic for underwater photography. I was fortunate with this shot in that the nudi was already posed on a perfect diagonal as he crawled along the red sponge. Nikon D70 - 60mm lens. Sea & Sea housing. Twin YS90 strobes. F25 @ 1/100sec.

2). Silhouette of a diver – Inland Sea, Gozo
I took this picture during a work trip to Malta and Gozo in April 2004. The best blue and underwater topography that I have ever seen was around the Gozo dive sites. I dived the inland sea with my dive guide who swam ahead of me. As he exited the tunnel into the open sea he was beautifully framed ahead of me, and I took several shots before he turned around. Nikon F90x – 20mm lens. Sea & Sea housing. Natural light. Aperature priority and bracketed between F4 and F8.

3). Peppered Moray and coral – Black Coral dive site at the Taba Hilton, Taba.
When I first found this subject at Black Coral I was devastated to be set up with a macro lens. There were actually about five morays in the same coral, occasionally peering out at the same time. It looked like some kind of medusa with all the snakes in her hair. With the 60mm lens I could of course only concentrate on one at a time. This actually turned out as a good thing as this picture made the front cover of DIVE magazine in September 2005. Nikon D70 – 60mm lens. Sea & Sea housing. Twin YS90 strobes. F25 @ 1/100th.

4). Red Coral and diver – southern Red Sea.
This picture was taken during a trip on Hurricane to St Johns and Fury Shoal during February 2005. The best thing about the trip was that we didn’t see any other boats for the whole week. This picture is a slight cheat as I took the red coral in the southern Egyptian red sea but the silhouette of the diver was actually taken from a picture of JP looking at the prop of the Umbria in the Sudan. Nikon D70 – 16mm lens. Sea & Sea housing. Twin YS90 strobes. F5.6 @ 1/250th.

5). Anemone Fish in Red Anemone – The Fjord dive site, Taba.
There were two beautiful red anemones at the Fjord site – one had the host anemone fish and the other had several shrimps. This was the first trip with my digital camera and so I was incredibly impressed with the stunning colours that I could achieve with digital. In the past I had given up on red anemones with my film camera as they always seemed to turn out a very boring brown colour. Nikon D70 – 60mm lens. Sea & Sea housing. Twin YS90 strobes. F22 @ 1/50th.

6.) Lion Fish – Kiwi Reef, Aqaba, Jordan
I had a trip to Aqaba in Jordan just a week before the open portfolio competition and swapped this picture on my return. The Kiwi dive site was fantastic and it was literally a case of one subject after another until I eventually almost ran out of air after about 90 minutes. The site was littered with lionfish, scorpion fish, all kinds of morays, shrimps, pipe fish, an octopus, torpedo ray and Spanish dancer. Nikon D70 – 105mm. Sea & Sea housing. Twin YS90 strobes. F20 @ 1/125th.