David Bostock has spent nearly two decades as a professional wedding and boudoir photographer, holds fellowships with the BIPP, the RPS, and the MPA, and has been a PADI Divemaster since 2006. He started taking underwater photography seriously in 2022, and at TPS 2026 he gave an honest, technically detailed account of what that transition has involved.
His talk covered the full picture: the equipment required, the diving disciplines that underpin everything, and the photographic principles that translate from land to water alongside those that simply do not. You can see some of David’s work in the slideshow video below.
Slideshow: David Bostock FBIPP
On equipment, David gave us a thorough breakdown. Housing options range from dedicated aluminium units rated to 100 metres, down to polycarbonate alternatives rated to 60 metres, and each has its place depending on how deep and how seriously you intend to work. Beyond the housing itself, the system requires ports specific to each lens, a tray and handle arrangement, strobe arms, and either electronic or fibre optic cables to trigger the strobes. Buoyancy floats on the arms matter too, because a rig that pulls the wrong way underwater makes everything harder. David’s own setup is built around a Canon EOS 5DS in a Nauticam aluminium housing with a vacuum leak detection system, paired with two INON Z240 strobes and three lenses: a Sigma 15mm fisheye, a Canon 16-35mm, and a Canon 100mm macro.
Before any of that, though, he was unambiguous: learn to dive well first. Good buoyancy control is the foundation of everything, because without it you cannot position yourself accurately, you risk disturbing fragile environments, and you will spend your dives managing your body rather than taking photographs. He also covered the practical realities of getting into the water with a camera rig, including clipping it to yourself, managing how current affects a larger housing, and the distinction between diving to take snaps and diving with a clear intention of what you want to capture.
Light is where underwater photography diverges most significantly from surface work. Water is 800 times denser than air, and that density strips colour progressively as depth increases. By 30 metres, white balance has shifted dramatically and warm tones are largely gone. Automatic settings rarely work well in this environment, and David shoots RAW throughout, with manual camera settings and manual strobe power, editing in Lightroom with Photoshop where needed. Visibility depends not just on depth and weather but on the particulate matter in the water, from plankton to silt to what he diplomatically described as fish waste, and that affects how strobes behave and how much backscatter you are working to minimise.
Image: David Bostock FBIPP
Strobes are what restore the colour and contrast that depth takes away. They penetrate roughly one to two metres depending on their power, which means they are most useful for lighting the foreground of a wide-angle composition or fully illuminating macro subjects. David explained the differences between his three shooting modes in practical terms. For ambient wide-angle work, the direction of light relative to camera and subject matters significantly: shooting with the light brings out detail and contrast, shooting across it reveals texture and shape, and shooting into it requires careful handling of the sun itself in frame. Balanced light combines ambient and strobe, which means managing aperture carefully with a dome port to hold focus across the depth of field, and setting shutter speed to control how much blue appears in the water while freezing any movement. Strobe-lit macro is a different approach again, where aperture drives depth of field, shutter speed subdues the ambient light to eliminate distracting backgrounds, and strobe position and power carry most of the creative weight.
The presentation also covered creative techniques that experienced underwater photographers use to push beyond the standard: off-camera strobes triggered by the main units, motion blur through slower shutter speeds and panning, split shots that straddle the surface and show both worlds simultaneously, double exposures, and abstract or reflection work. Post-processing was addressed in practical terms, with Lightroom handling most of the colour and contrast work and Photoshop used selectively for backscatter, where the Backscatter Xterminator plugin was recommended for anything a content-aware brush struggles with.
For those considering starting out, David’s advice was to begin with a compact setup rather than committing to a full DSLR system immediately, to invest time learning your housing and strobes above water before you ever get in a pool, and to look at liveaboard workshops designed specifically for underwater photographers. The British Society of Underwater Photographers is the community he pointed people towards for ongoing feedback, inspiration, and competition work.
You can see David’s slides below. Scroll up/down with your mouse to view the slides.
Thank you to David for taking the time to share his insights and experience at the BIPP stand at this year’s Photography and Video Show.
Website: davidbostockphotography.co.uk
Instagram: David Bostock and Big Blue Images