The 5 Biggest Lessons I Learned in Underwater Photography

When I first started out in underwater photography, I was living in Iceland and bought a second-hand DSLR setup with strobes and multiple lenses as my first underwater camera. I didn’t have a clue how to use it, and I was the only person on the island with one. With nobody to learn from, I had to teach myself. It was a tough process—one that I could have accelerated significantly if I had known a few key things sooner.

Here’s a list of a few lessons I learned along the way. I hope they can help others.

1. The Camera Is the Least Important Part of Your Equipment

The number one question I get about my photos is, “What camera do you use?” The truth is, it’s largely irrelevant. Your top priority should be lighting—invest in the highest-quality lights your budget allows. Photography is all about capturing light, and having the best possible lighting will transform your images faster than any camera upgrade ever could.

Once you have lighting sorted, you can buy almost any DSLR or mirrorless camera from the last decade on the second-hand market and still produce stunning images. I currently shoot with the latest Sony A7R V, but the image quality is no better than that of a 10-year-old Nikon D850. The shooting experience is slightly improved, but the actual output isn’t.

What matters far more is having the right lenses—a dedicated macro lens and a dedicated fisheye lens. These have been the gold standard for years, and they still are. Yes, there are countless wet lenses available, and I use some of the best, but the foundation remains unchanged: macro and fisheye lenses are king. You only need to start considering expensive wet lens additions when you’re getting into highly specialized shooting or aiming for portfolio diversity.

Upgrading camera bodies is the most expensive part of your setup since it usually requires a new housing. In most cases, it’s unnecessary and will have little impact on your images. A few extra megapixels and supposedly better autofocus performance are largely insignificant for us as underwater photographers. If you need higher resolution, you can up-res files in post. And since most underwater subjects move slowly, autofocus isn’t usually a major concern.

Save your money—invest in better lighting and lenses instead.

2. Ambient Light Is the Strongest Light—Master It

For a long time, I didn’t fully appreciate the value of ambient light. It wasn’t until I attended a photo workshop with Alex Mustard that I truly began to understand its significance. I had always focused on strobe lighting, without considering how ambient light shaped my images.

Knowing the position of the sun is critical, especially for wide-angle shots. Are you shooting with the sun over your shoulder, using it to enhance your lighting? Or are you shooting against it? Neither approach is inherently right or wrong, but understanding the effect of each is key to controlling your results.

When photographing wrecks, for example, having the sun illuminate the structure is a game changer—it transforms the image. The same applies to reefs; positioning the sun behind you makes them easier to light. But shooting into the sun can be just as powerful, creating dramatic sunballs, silhouettes, and other stunning effects.

Just remember: shutter speed controls ambient light. A faster shutter speed reduces ambient light, darkening the blue water. A slower shutter speed allows more ambient light in, brightening the blues. Mastering this balance will take your images to the next level.

3. Don’t Chase Unicorns—Shoot What’s in Front of You

I’ve long said that underwater photography is all about collecting—we love to capture an image of every subject we encounter. Early in my photography journey, I was obsessed with finding every rare creature in the sea. I’d jump at the chance to do deep dives chasing elusive animals, from 80-meter dives searching for coelacanths that weren’t there to dedicating entire dives to finding Pontoh’s pygmy seahorses.

But what’s the better use of your dive time—spending the entire dive searching for something that may never appear (often at deeper depths) or focusing on what’s right in front of you? I often see divers, especially in macro destinations, spending huge amounts of time at depth searching for blue-ringed octopuses and other rare critters. While I’d love to photograph a blue ring, I don’t want to spend half my dive with nothing to shoot.

That’s why I stay active in the shallower reef, keeping within sight of my dive guide and shooting common subjects. If the guide finds something special—trust me, you’ll know. The sudden flurry of guide communication makes it obvious. At that point, I head down to capture the rare find. In the meantime, I’ve built a solid collection of images while others have spent their dive searching in vain.

From my experience, only about one in five of these “unicorn hunts” actually pay off. My dive time is valuable, and I’d rather maximize my shooting opportunities than spend the entire dive chasing something that isn’t there.

4. Don’t Underestimate the Power of Editing—It’s 20% of the Job, and It’s Not Cheating

When I was new to underwater photography, I spent a lot of time researching other people’s images. They looked so polished, and I was convinced I needed to perfect everything in-camera. I had heard of Lightroom and Photoshop, but I initially thought using them was cheating. It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized the power of editing—and that high-quality images simply aren’t possible without it.

RAW files, which we use to capture the most data, are incredibly flat straight out of the camera. They don’t look good without editing. You will never get a final, polished image directly from a RAW file. Every great photo you’ve seen has been processed—sometimes in as little as three minutes, with just a bit of clarity, saturation, highlight reduction, shadow recovery, and a slight white balance tweak.

Mastering Lightroom, in particular, is a game changer for your images—and it’s not cheating. RAW files are designed to be finished in post-processing. Photoshop, on the other hand, is a different beast and requires more time to master. Personally, I mainly use it for removing backscatter and cleaning up small distractions in the frame. I don’t do heavy manipulation.

If you’re serious about improving your images, Lightroom will take you a long way.

5. Manage Your Photos—Have a Workflow and a Storage Plan

If you're serious about underwater photography—especially with a high-resolution, large-sensor camera—you’ll quickly accumulate a massive number of files. Storing them properly is essential so you can find them quickly when needed. Lightroom is the best way to catalog your edited images, and if you're new to it, I highly recommend taking one of Go Ask Erin’s Lightroom courses. But even with Lightroom, keeping your files organized is critical.

Taking photos and going on trips is by far the most expensive part of this hobby, so trying to save money on storage is a mistake. Losing your images is far more costly than investing in proper backups.

Once your files are organized, follow the golden rule: “If you don’t have three copies, you don’t have them at all.” That means:

• Two physical copies, usually stored on separate SSD drives

• One cloud backup stored online

I also have a personal rule: never take my master and backup SSD drives out of my house. They stay safely stored at home. Instead, I use two separate travel drives on every trip. When I return, I transfer everything to my master drives.

I once had a good friend who learned this lesson the hard way. He was reviewing his images on a flight home, making sure they were backed up. But in a moment of distraction, he left both his master and backup drives on the plane. He lost all of his images from the last five years.

Don’t let that happen to you—have a proper storage and backup system in place.