Marine biologist, author and pro photographer Alex Mustard is taking over @suuntodive for a week, beginning today. Make sure to catch his incredible images and the stories behind them! What’s your story, Alex? I’m an underwater photographer and marine biologist from the UK. I have been taking underwater photos since I was nine years old and diving since I was 13. I’ve recently distilled all I have learned into the new book Underwater Photography Masterclass. Where do you dive? All over the world! In salt water or fresh water. In crystal clear blues of the Pacific Ocean to murky green-browns at home in England. What inspires you about the underwater world? The diversity. This can be the biodiversity of life – the ocean is home to such a variety of animals, that getting to know them, watching the different ways they live their lives, is certainly many lifetimes worth. But more than that it’s the diversity of diving experiences I love. One week I might be aiming my lens at a great white, and the next week I am just as excited to be framing up seaslugs back home. Then it is on to shooting in caverns, with cathedral like light beams spilling in through gaps in the ceiling. And next diving deep inside a wreck, searching for secrets that nobody has noticed before. How would you describe your photography style? I would say diverse. The non-diving world sees me as a specialist underwater photographer, of course. But within underwater photography I challenge myself to be able to photograph everything well, from shipwrecks to seahorses. Is there a story you wish to tell with your images? Most of us who dive are very passionate about the underwater world. Yet we all see how humanity is hurting the oceans. Taking out too many large predators, damaging fragile environments with destructive fishing and polluting the seas. I think that all photographers hope that their images will inspire a change in attitude from the general public. Follow @SuuntoDive to see Alex’s images or follow him on Instagram and Facebook. Check out his book Underwater Photography Masterclass.

Jill exploring the Bell Island mine. © Cas Dobbin 2016 Today there are no barriers to entry for shooting underwater video. GoPro cameras have put awesome potential within easy reach both physically and financially. Even with this compact camera, 4K video can be shot, edited and uploaded to social media sites. However, with video capability in everyone’s hands, there are some key things you need to do to separate yourself from the pack. First things first General diving skills are critical with good buoyancy control being at the top of the list. Master this first! Watch Jill's video of devil rays off the coast of Azores Islands. The gear Shooting underwater means you are filming through a filter. Colour and light are gradually absorbed the deeper you go. In many cases, visibility can be minimal. You need good quality, wide-angle video lights to help illuminate the scene and increase colour saturation. The closer you can get to your subject, the less filtering water between you and a great shot. Use a wide-angle lens for shooting or try macro work with a tripod – only if you can avoid damaging the environment.Watch Jill exploring Devil's Ear cave system, Ginnie Springs. Shoot for easy editing Don’t try to edit in the camera. That means you should shoot long sequences with a long “tail” after the action has passed. This gives you room to edit and use transitions. Slowly, slowly! Move very slowly and deliberately and consider holding long stationary shots to let the environment and marine life flow around you. Most beginners get overly enthusiastic and move the camera around too much. They are eager to film the next shot rather than patiently working on the current encounter. That type of footage is not just tough to edit but can give your viewers seasickness!Press play to see the shipwrecks of Bell Island. Capture variety When you shoot, try to capture a wide range of shot types. You need wide establishing shots that show context. You will want to capture things like jumping off the boat or preparing gear. You'll also need an endless supply of shots called cutaways. These short clips of a few seconds in length are the glue that holds longer shots together. When a diver is prepping gear we might see a cutaway of the pressure gauge needle popping up as the tank is turned on. We might see a quick okay signal close up on a hand. You can never have enough cutaway shots in the edit. You will use every single one you shoot. Press play to watch Jill talk about her diving career. Show the tranquillity Remember, the beauty of the underwater world is best enjoyed drifting along rather than frenetically bouncing around from view to view. Let your shots breathe and allow your viewers to enjoy the same peace and tranquillity that you do on a swim along a perfect reef. The marine life will be more likely to cooperate and gracefully participate in your sequence too. Keep it short And finally, when you get into the postproduction phase, keep your edit short. Try to tell a story in less than three minutes. That is about the attention span of most viewers. Nobody wants to see the entire dive and the things you missed. If you only have 90 seconds of great footage, then keep your edit even tighter. You’ll get more hits and shares and enjoy watching your own masterpiece again and again.

Basking Shark, UK. © Alex Mustard Alex Mustard has been taking underwater photos since he was nine years old and began diving when he was 13. He’s the author of Underwater Photography Masterclass, which distils his know-how on this challenging form of photography. “It’s the diversity of diving I love,” Alex says. “One week I might be aiming my lens at a great white, and the following week I am just as excited to be framing up sea slugs back home. Then it’s on to shooting in caverns, with cathedral-like light beams spilling in through gaps in the ceiling. And next, diving deep inside a wreck, searching for secrets nobody has noticed before. It’s all those things that I love.”Kittiwake Shipwreck, Cayman Islands. © Alex Mustard First things first The most important first step is to make sure you are as comfortable and as competent in the water as possible before you take a camera diving. Cameras take a lot of your attention underwater and you may not pay enough attention to your buddy, to your dive computer and remaining air pressure. If you're an experienced diver you will be used to paying attention to all those things. By being a better diver you get better pictures. Get a feeling for it Buoyancy and manoeuvrability are two of the biggest challenges to diving. Taking a camera down totally changes these two things. It’s good to know beforehand how this is going to feel. I always suggest people take an empty camera housing down as a good way to get used to it. Wrap a diving weight in bubble wrap or in a cloth and stuff it inside the underwater housing so it sinks. Then experiment with it in the shallows or in a pool.Kelp Forest, USA. © Alex Mustard The camera isn’t so important The camera is one of the least important parts of an underwater photography set up. It’s actually the lenses and the underwater flashguns that make far more of a difference to your photos than the camera. An expensive camera that’s not being adapted properly to underwater photography will always take poorer pictures than a very simple camera that has the right accessories. Invest in the accessories rather than the camera. The lenses that counts We use two types of lenses almost all the time. One is a close focusing macro lens for taking close ups from within touching distance and the other is an ultra wide-angle lens that focuses very close. Typically we use fish eye lenses a lot because they give us the widest possible view from as close as possible.Jellyfish Lake, Palau. © Alex Mustard Lights, camera … Almost every underwater photo is taken with a flash. We use flashguns on short, adjustable arms on either side of the camera to light up a subject. Water as you go deeper absorbs all the colour so if you don’t use a flash you’ll end up with blue or green pictures. Flashguns take time and skill to get used to. That’s really where the art of underwater photography lies. Up close and personal Almost every underwater photo is taken from within touching distance of the subject. This means you need to be able to maneuverer around a subject and in a way that doesn’t scare it away. If you’re thrashing about or racing around, you’re only ever going to see the tails of marine life. If you’re calm and at one with the environment you will get all the great encounters and that’s what gives you the good pictures.World War II Motorbike On Wreck, Egypt. © Alex Mustard Plan ahead of the dive If you go and speak to whomever is organising a dive ahead of time, they will tell you what you’ll see and where. There’s a huge amount of local knowledge you can benefit from just by asking people a few questions. Sometimes an advertisement will say it’s a great shark dive, but in reality they don’t come within five meters. But the coral scenery might be nice so you set up for that. One dive, one lens The only way to change your camera lens is to come up to the surface, change it and then go back down and that’s not very convenient. Usually it’s one lens for one dive. One of the big steps you make as an underwater photographer is when you realise the best photos come by realising the strengths and weaknesses of the particular lens your diving with and focusing your attention on the subjects that suit it.Diving Between The Continents, Iceland. © Alex Mustard Don’t be rude Underwater most marine life doesn't fear man. However you need to get within touching distance of it. Most wildlife doesn’t like heavy eye contact so try not to stare. Most wildlife doesn’t like you approaching fast so take your time to approach a subject. Don’t just race in as fast as you can because that’s bound to scare things away. If you see a subject slowly swimming along, swim parallel to it, and slowly close the gap. Dive with a photographer Diving with another photographer is a really good way to dive. You’ve got twice as many eyes. If you’re shooting scenery you can pose for each other. After the dive you have a friend who will be interested to see your pictures and talk about photography. For more incredible images by Alex Mustard, like his Facebook page. Lead image: © Alex Mustard

Underwater photographer George Karbus is taking over @suuntodive starting tomorrow, May 26th. Make sure to follow! Who is George Karbus? I'm a wild ocean free soul photographer based on the west coast of Ireland. I love to dive in Ireland with our friendly bottlenose dolphin. Where else do you dive besides Ireland? I follow my favorite marine mammals around the world and have been diving in the Bahamas, Hawaii, Galapagos, Arctic Circle, Maldives, Azores and many more. I'm inspired by dolphin movements, energy, intelligence and social structure. Also the silence of the big blue inspires me. How would you describe your photography style? I always want to capture unleashed raw energy of Mother Nature and its excellence in beautiful light or dramatic clouds. I try to capture beauties of our fragile world and show everyone the real treasures of life. It may inspire people to live in harmony with nature. Follow @SuuntoDive and @georgekarbus to see more of George’s work. Check out also georgekarbusphotography.com and George Karbus Photography on Facebook. Main image: George Karbus captured Fernando Stalla diving waves in the Maldives.

“Scuba diving saved my life,” says cancer survivor Leo Morales. He’s living proof that diving is for everyone.Flying underwater – Leo's happy place. On the shore of Mexico’s Playa del Carmen, 43-year-old Leo Morales does what he lives for: sharing the joy of scuba diving. But his scuba school has a particular focus.“We’re making diving accessible for everyone,” he says. “We focus on teaching people with disabilities, people who use wheelchairs, and also the visually impaired. We want to break the old concept that you have to be tough for scuba, that it’s better for men. “The most incredible reward is the look in their eyes when they discover they’re free from the wheelchair, from the crutches, from having to drag their weight. You show people they are able to fly. They’re always so grateful.”Leo aims to show people with disabilities can do amazing things. Leo’s passion for diving began after a close call with cancer. He was 28 years old, enjoying a successful career as a bank manager. At the office one day he felt a strange pain in his back and went to the doctor. The diagnosis rocked him: he had a cancerous tumor growing on the inside of his right leg and buttock – it weighed 3kg and was two years old. Having the leg amputated was his only chance of survival. And even then, doctors said he would only live for another five years. After 12 hours of surgery, Leo woke up and looked down and saw flat bed sheets where his right leg had once been. Out of hospital he had to learn to walk again, how to use the toilet, get in and out of bed – everything was hard work. After losing his job for simply having a disability, Leo fell into depression. He felt like his life was over. But then a friend invited Leo to join him on a scuba dive. The first dive was “a nightmare”. Leo sunk to the bottom and fought with the water. On the second dive, his friend grabbed him underwater and swam along with Leo until he worked out how to propel himself. “That moment changed my life,” Leo says. “After that experience I became addicted to the ocean.”Now Leo is a dive master, scuba instructor and technical diver. And he also holds two world records: for the deepest dive (125 m) by a person with a disability and the longest dive (16km in 8h16m) for a person with a disability. His next goal is to set a world record for the deepest cave dive by a person with a disability. “The main point is to send a powerful message that people with disabilities are no different than people who are physically normal,” Leo says. “We can achieve amazing things with the proper training and equipment.”

Kate Middleton lives on a tiny island in the Indonesian archipelago and spends her days exploring the ocean and doing yoga. The two “conscious practices” completely changed her life and her relationship with herself. Now she has nothing to prove.Kate teaches yoga and freediving on Gili Trawangan. © Kate Middleton Before visiting the sun-spoilt shores of Indonesia, Kate Middleton was a hard driving overachiever. But there she became a yoga teacher and freediver, and it changed everything. “Before, I had this drive to prove I was worthy enough by achieving different things,” says the 27-year-old. “It was super exhausting and it’s a vicious cycle because even when you do achieve things you always feel it isn’t enough and you need to do more. “Now, I don’t do anything out of force or out of striving.” Most days Kate trains and plays in the ocean. © Kate Middleton With parents from Canada and New Zealand, Kate grew up between the rugged wilderness of Victoria, BC and the peaceful east coast of Auckland. As a teen, she struggled with eating disorders and low self-esteem, which led her to yoga as form of self-therapy. “It was my own secret practice,” she says, “and gave me a connection back to myself.” After finishing high school, Kate went travelling and while in Bali she trained as a yoga teacher. She also trained as a scuba instructor, but soon found scuba didn’t satisfy a longing for a close connection to the ocean.Press play to listen to Kate's poem about why she freedives! While in Bali, she visited Gili Trawangan, a tiny two by three kilometre island 35 km to the east. It was there she discovered freediving – and love. She met her business partner and boyfriend, fellow freediver and 13-time British record holder Mike Board. Kate expected to stay a few weeks, but eight years later they’re still there, running a retreat center, an organic café and a yoga and freediving school.Partner Mike Board is also a competitive freediver. © Kate Middleton Kate likes to think of yoga and freediving as two among a number of “conscious practices” that are growing in popularity, along with an increasing interest in holistic, healthy living. For her, teaching both is a privilege. “When teaching either there is a lot that comes up for students in terms of thoughts, beliefs and emotions, it's very psychological, so it creates an intimate connection between a teacher and a student,” she says. “Helping someone to learn to trust their body is such a special thing.”© Kate MiddletonKate is currently in the Bahamas competing in Suunto Vertical Blue 2016, perhaps the highest profile depth diving competition in the world. This week she set a new national record for New Zealand in the Constant Weight discipline by diving to 85 m, beating her last record by 10 m. In 2015, she won silver at the AIDA Individual Depth World Championships. Hit play to find out more about Suunto Vertical Blue! It might sound like she’s still an overachiever, but her motivation comes from a different place now.“I still enjoy progressing and challenging myself, but I’m also happy with where I’m at now,” she says. “Freediving and yoga are transformational. Both are tools that teach us to observe and return to the simplicity of the here and now, the fact there’s just one breath in this moment and you can always come back to it when you’re stressed. “It’s amazing to witness how they both completely transform people’s lives.”