The Winners Of The 2018 Underwater Photographer Of The Year Contest Will Take Your Breath Away

Escaping the New Zealand winter for a magical week in Tonga's underwater dreamland dancing with whales, my wife and I spent 5 days and nights at sea, sailing the Ha'apai islands & swimming with humpbacks. Not another single boat was in sight all week. The beauty of the encounters that we had are truly transcending. These two adult humpbacks had such a connection with us in the water, literally "dancing" .. it was the most wild & incredible thing I have probably witnessed in my entire life. Humpback whales are such a magnificent species and they need our protection. The entire ocean needs our help. Now is the time more than ever, before it is too late .. before we lose it all. I hope that my photography brings out the ocean conservationist in all of us and helps to spread awareness to help save the ocean!

It was an early morning dive at Adonara Island, Indonesia. Shortly after descending, a coral banded shrimp near a patch of reef caught my attention. She was waving her long white antennae leisurely, confidently advertising her presence. I had seen a number of interesting mirrored images produced by senior photographers and wanted to create my own. My idea was to accentuate the contrast of the translucent body against the opaque ruby head. I slowly closed in down to her eye level and took my shot as my subject continues to wave, seemingly unbothered.

It is not easy to combine blue light in a traditionally lit image.You need to make the subject pop up while integrating the blue light into the photo naturally.

Basking sharks are the world’s second biggest fish: they can grow over 10 metres long. Each year dozens arrive to the rich waters off the Inner Hebrides archipelago as part of their annual migrations. A bloom in plant plankton occurs in the warming springtime waters, which leads to an explosion in the numbers of animal plankton at the height of summer. Just as these tiny animals feed on the microscopic plants, so the basking sharks feed on the zooplankton, pushing slowly forward with their massive mouths open to envelop clouds of their prey before filtering them out through specialised gill structures. It is possible to sensitively snorkel with these gentle giants - if spooked they close their mouths and change direction. I’ve learned that the best method is to place yourself some distance in front, stay completely still and hope for the best.

Male corkwing wrasse can be stunning and I had wanted for some time to take an image that would show off the personality and vibrant coloration of this common UK critter. However, these wrasse are busy creatures, working hard to build a nest of seaweed, and then guarding it fiercely. They move surprisingly quickly and are adept at ignoring a camera lens. I found a corkwing nest on the wall of Bovisand Harbour, a favourite shore dive of mine, and didn’t have to wait long for the proud home-maker to appear with a mouthful of weed. He laid it down carefully and bustled away for the next morsel. This happened over and over again, and the most I got was a disinterested glance as he swept past. Eventually after several attempts I captured the characterful portrait I had envisaged.

It was the first time in my life I had dived with seals. There are so funny. Great memories. Los Cedros is in Baja California, somewhere between Guadalupe and Socorro. We were there specially for the seals. This was shot in the morning and the sun was shining

I went on holiday in Lembeh Strait, Indonesia with the aim of taking pictures of 4 subjects and one of them was the Hairy Frog Fish. I was excited to find one after a few dives. Once I had found it, I dedicated the whole dive to capturing it. I took several shots using two flashes, but the best result was the one using a snoot, as you can see in this picture.

Tritone Alpestre, belonging to the family of salamandrids, fecund and lay its eggs underwater in small lakes, only in this short time of the year can they be found in immersion.

We headed over to Brixham in the hope of spotting an Octopus as it's a species that's avoided me in the UK. There had been lots of reports of recent sightings by local dive guru Baz Drysdale so we were optimistic . The dive turned out to be a classic with three different octopus among many other species. Having not encountered one before I was surprised at how it seemed unaffected by our presence and willingly seemed to pose for photographs. This shot was one of about 30 I took of them that night and it seems to capture the octopus regarding me and my camera with great interest. Taking pictures underwater in the dark is always difficult but it does help if the subject is cooperative and I was really happy with the way this one came out.

It is not easy to combine blue light in a traditionally lit image.You need to make the subject pop up while integrating the blue light into the photo naturally.

I have dived this wreck several times and I never get tired of it! This is a well known subject, a British World War II BSA M20 motorbike inside Hold 2 (port side, upper level) of the wreck. Usually I use strobes for this kind of shoot but I had to try this with two video lights, I think the result works well and the lights are useful, specially when you as the photographer can see how the light is shaping and working.

Me and my guide from the dive centre at Mimpi Resort were looking for some Ghost Pipefish when we stumbled on these two lovely fish (Anthias. pseudanthias squamipinnis). The two fish were fighting; spinning around and around and just ignored us.

For a few years now I had had this image in mind as the motorcycles on this truck inside the Thistlegorm lie so perfectly together, but you can only barely capture it because the wall is very close and you can't move backwards enough to capture the whole scenery. As a result I had to create a panoramic image of the same scene to capture the whole cargo deck, including some lights that give the image more depth.

The Zenobia wreck still contains about 100 trucks that sunk over 30 years ago, when the ferry sunk very near to the city of Larnanca. To capture the truck I placed an additional strobe inside the cabin and into my buddies hand to create some atmosphere of this very special dive site.

I captured this image in Scotland during summer time. Gannets hunt pelagic fish like mackerel by diving into the sea from a height of 30 meters, achieving speeds of 100 kilometres per hour as they strike the water and pursue their prey underwater. With the decline of fish stocks, gannets have to fight against food competition for their survival. They have learned to catch dead fish spilt overboard from fishing vessels and from bird watching boats that take advantage of this to attract them. I was able to realise this image thanks to a fascinating and talented local photographer who shared me his favourite playground in all humility. All honour goes to Richard Shucksmith whom I thank deeply.

Nohoch Na Chich is the name of a cenote which is the entrance to one of my favourite caves in Mexico. I knew this spot from previous dives and wanted to take a picture of a diver in the background, dwarfed by the huge decorated column on the left side. I placed 3 strobes to light the column and model. Another diver, hidden behind the model is helping out in the background with more light, pointing a strobe towards the camera. My two on camera strobes bring only some additional light to the foreground, their main purpose is to trigger all the slave strobes.

Diving off of Hornby Island in British Columbia offers thrilling and highly interactive encounters with stellar sea lions. After spending some time trying to shoot a group of these sea lions directly below the surface, I descended a few feet below the chaos of this group to try and shoot through snell's window. Luckily, one of the sea lions was facing the camera (more, I think, due to the shove of his friend than interest in me), showing the playful nature of these wonderful juveniles.

Fireworks anemones can reach around 30cm in height and live in long tubes buried in the substrate. They are quite rare in the UK but can be found in the silty depths of some protected Scottish lochs. As you swim down into the darkness they loom up out of the silt like fountains. I like to photograph them against a dark background to give them an ethereal quality, so I angled the strobes in towards the camera to create a narrow beam of light, keeping the muddy seabed in darkness and lighting up the anemone’s delicate tentacles.

Creating shadow for underwater images is always challenging. When I found this goby on a halimeda algae on the sand, I knew it would be a perfect subject for my "Project Shadow". I began with slowly placing a white slate behind the subject , shining my torch to get the angle for the shadow and then another torch to light up the subject. Then, patiently wait for the moment.

This photo was taken by in camera double exposure in shallow water around 7-8 meters. The biggest challenge was capturing the moment both needle shrimps faced each other and the sunlight colour and size suited the mood in two consecutive shots. First, I calibrated my camera setting to properly expose the sunlight. This was done by adjusting the shutter speed since the ISO could not be changed between shots. I had to memorise the best shutter speed for the sun at this particular depth and the position of the sunlight for the second shot. It was also important to study the motion of the sunlight; the light rays were moving with its rhythm when observed through the viewfinder, the size and shape of sunlight in picture would greatly vary.