UWP: ROBERT STANSFIELD

facebook.com/robert.stansfield

https://www.instagram.com/bobtec

https://www.instagram.com/blackwatercozumel

Robert Stansfield, multi-award-winning macro photographer from the UK who has been diving and taking photos underwater since 2000. For the last five years, he has been based in Cozumel, where he dives regularly and is now pioneering one of Mexico’s first and longest-running blackwater dives.

Robert started out taking basic underwater images with a small compact camera on a dive trip to Indonesia but was inspired by other photo pros to pursue the activity further and combine his love of image making with scuba diving as a full-time career. He is now a brand ambassador for the new housing manufacturer Marelux, SUPE Scubalamp, a regular contributor to the Spotted Eagle Ray Caribbean Project, and founder of the Blackwater Cozumel Project, which sees him spending most of his time diving in deep water at night in pursuit of unique underwater images. So, it will come as no surprise to find his portfolio teeming with alien-like larval and juvenile pelagic critters that look like they came down from outer space.

When he is not diving, Robert is also a keen volleyball player who is partial to a good cochinita taco. It certainly seems like he is perfectly suited to life as an underwater photographer in Mexico, so if you find yourself in Cozumel and have never tried blackwater diving, be sure to get in touch and let him introduce you to the bizarre creatures of the abyss.

UWP: MICHAEL AW

 

https://awe.michaelaw.com

https://www.ogsociety.org

MICHAEL AW

MICHAEL AW

Michael is a wildlife photographer, explorer and an ocean advocate. He is the principal author of 38 and co-author of eight books about the ocean. His accolades include winning more than 67 international photographic awards and being named as one of the world’s most influential nature photographers by Outdoor Photographer. Michael AW’s essays and pictures have been published in BBC Wildlife, GEO, National Geographic, The Smithsonian, Nature, Ocean Geographic, Asian Geographic, Nature Focus, The Times, and Discovery to name a few.

In 1999, he led a team of 44 for the world’s first 24-hour documentation of a submerged reef, Maaya Thila in the Maldives. The feature-length documentary “24Hours Beneath the Rainbow Sea” was produced for the National Geographic Channel and a commemorative book of the same title was published in 2000. 

From 2010 to 2018 Michael was the project director for the Elysium Epic expedition to the Antarctic and Arctic with 57 and 66 team members respectively. The expedition team comprises some of the world’s most influential image-makers and scientists, to document the biodiversity and climate change report card of the polar regions. His most recent work was in September of 2018; he led a team of 49, using three vessels for an expedition across the heart of the Coral Triangle for a first-ever baseline survey of the biomass of corals and fishes in the region. 

In 2008, Stan Waterman conferred Michael with the Peter Benchley Shark Conservation Award from the Shark Research Institute in recognition of his highly-effective and unrelenting campaign against shark fin soup consumption in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2020, for the second time Michael AW was a judge for the Natural History Museum Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition and as well judge for the Australian Geographic Wildlife Photographic competition.