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.

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.

The X-Adventurer Freetracker is going to be a game changer for freediving.The X-Adventure Freetracker following William down. © Daan Verhoeven When Suunto ambassador William Trubridge attempts to break his own freediving world record in July, an underwater drone will follow his dive. He and his team tested the drone, called the X-Adventurer Freetracker, during Vertical Blue 2016 and hope at next year’s competition it will offer live video to audiences around the world. It’s mounted on parallel tracks adjacent to the competition dive line, and descends and ascends with the diver, capturing the entire journey from the surface to the plate and back again. See how long you can hold your breath as William dives! “For this year we just got a proof of concept,” Will says, “but for next year’s Vertical Blue we hope to have it hooked up to a live internet feed, so people can watch from the other side of the world while an athlete grabs the tag at 120 m.” “I think it’s going to be a real game changer for the sport because once people can tune in and be in their living room watching someone dive to 100 m as it happens, then that will really increase the spectatorship of the sport.”© Daan Verhoeven Aside from making freediving more accessible to spectators, The X-Adventurer Freetracker will also improve safety. Never before have safety staff been able to see what’s happening for an athlete at depth before. If anything goes wrong, the safety crew will see it immediately via a live feed at the surface. “It will definitely help with analysis of technique also,” Will says. “Because there's such a logistical difficulty in videographers going deeper than 40 m, a lot of freedivers have never seen what their technique looks like at depth from a good angle.” William is attempting to break his current world record of 101 m this July and the X-Adventurer Freetracker will follow his journey into the depths. Stay tuned!

Shark professional, cave diver, and PADI course director Cristina Zenato is taking over @suuntodive on Instagram for a week, beginning today. Make sure to follow to learn more about the world of sharks!© Victor Douieb Tell us about yourself I am originally from Italy. I grew up in the African rainforest and I have lived the last 22 years in the Bahamas, where I follow my work and passion, which tend to blend into one activity. I am a shark professional and behaviourist; I specialize in human and sharks interactions. I’m also a cave diving instructor and active explorer and a PADI course director. I love to dive and share my diving through teaching it and through my images and presentations. My passion is my work, my work is my passion. Where do you dive? Primarily in the Bahamas, but I am always trying to find places where I can further my experience and knowledge about sharks and caves. I have been in many locations in the world to meet other people who work with sharks and learn more about cave, technical diving and exploration. Among them were Italy, England, Fiji, Rhode Island, California, South Africa, Mozambique, Dominican Republic, Cuba. What inspires you about the ocean? There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the underwater world and from nature in general. The most beautiful inspiration is in how everything seems to connect and flow together, in a perfect balance between beauty, life, death, darkness and light. The underwater world teaches a valuable lesson in the power of now and the power to accept all those around us and learn to coexist. Is there a story you wish to tell with your images? The story I wish to tell is the one of inspiration, I want people to see that dreams do come true, that if we listen and work where our hearts want to go we can get there. It's a story of communications with other animals, specifically with my sharks and one of acceptance and respect. It's a story of discoveries, of imagination, of a life rich of extraordinary mundane events. Visit Cristina’s website and Facebook page for incredible shark images.

Underwater photographer and diver Justin Lewis is taking over the @suuntodive instagram for a week, starting today July 8th. Make sure to follow to see his incredible images and share his love for the ocean. Tell us a little about yourself Adventure and exploration are my passions. Growing up along the wild and beautiful coast of northern California, my family instilled in me strong values of conservation and respect for the natural world. I’ve been diving since I was eight and was certified at 12. On the water, in the water, beneath the water — free diving, scuba diving, surfing, ice diving, kayaking — water has been central to my life and my work. Through visual storytelling, I create rich, eye-catching content for national and international advertising agencies, editorial outlets, and conservation organizations. Where do you dive? I dive wherever my assignments take me, and I feel fortunate I have had the opportunity to dive in some incredible places around the world, including ice bergs in Greenland’s North Arctic, Fiji, the Maldives, Sipadan Island in Borneo, Tahiti and all over the Caribbean. What inspires you in the underwater world? I love working in unique underwater environments that provide a perspective rarely seen and often unexpected. For example, freshwater ecosystems and Mangrove forests. From an outside view you may not expect much is going on inside a mangrove forest, but once you get underwater the immense diversity and quantity of life is often staggering. How would you describe your photography style? I strive to create truthful imagery that moves the viewer and tells a powerful story. What story do you wish to tell with your images? Far too many stories. It seems like every day I think up a new project idea or am pitched a great potential story. Often the stories I feel motivated to work on, are the ones that require self-funding, and I can only do a handful of those each year. But if I could pick one to be funded it would be in the realm of marine conservation. Our oceans are changing at an unprecedented rate, and I am witnessing the changes first hand where I live on the Northern California coast. Visit Justin’s website, Facebook and instagram for beautiful diving images and more information about his projects.

Events like Vertical Blue and the upcoming Return to the Deep promote freediving to the masses. But what contribution have they made to the sport? Record-breaking freediver William Trubridge tells us, read what he has to say here. Image (and feature image) Alex St Jean William Trubridge has been preparing to break yet another world record, he plans to dive to 102m unassisted in a single breath on July 21, 2016. He’ll do this in Dean’s Blue Hole, Bahamas as part of the Return To The Deep event produced by Steinlager Pure. He’s been training hard for the event, and is feeling strong having recovered from a bout of illness. He says: “Training has been going really well recently. I’m in good shape. I got dysentery while trekking in Nepal and it’s taken time to get my health back. This year I’ve had a couple of niggles but nothing serious.” He’s already broken records two years in a row at Suunto Vertical Blue and is clearly ready for this next attempt. These big events, William believes, have really contributed to the progress and development of the sport over the years. Big events lead to revolutions in safety techniques Image Daan Verhoeven He says: “At Vertical Blue there was a lot of innovation we begun that went outside and elsewhere afterwards. Most importantly safety techniques were really revolutionised to make sure everyone in the team is trained to the highest level possible. That has set a standard that is now used in other events and at AIDA.” These safety developments and innovations are key to ensuring athletes are able to push their boundaries and reach deeper and deeper depths. It’s particularly important when breaking records as it can have a big physical and mental impact on the body. William has mentioned previously that when diving he leaves a part of himself behind. He says: “In a freedive there’s a subtraction of the stimuli around you, there’s no sound, very little light, no sensations of points of contact and that allows you to slow the mind through the absence of stimuli, pressure and the narcotic effects of gasses and high pressure add to that.” Freediving is more than record attempts, it frees the mind Image Daan Verhoeven This meditative state is one of the attractions of freediving. “It almost feels like we’re cheating when we freedive because we can get into a meditative flow so quickly,” says William. That’s one of the beauties and attractions of it. Leave the rational, reasoning mind, for sure.” This simple state, using your body, mind and not much else is also one of the reasons freediving is becoming more popular. William says: “There’s definitely a movement that is putting us in more intimate contact with nature and making us able to relate to it more clearly and deeply. Which is important in this age when nature is in such dire straits. I kind of feel that every freediver I teach, or everyone who is brought into the sport becomes a steward of the ocean.” If it sounds like an all-encompassing sport, it really is, especially when record attempts are coming up. William has been dreaming about the attempt, he says: “Most of the dreams are related to the record attempts, competition or stress around the expectation and the whole event! They’re not related to the sensation of being underwater because I experience that so much I guess.” Follow the event live with Steinlager. Learn more about William Trubridge on his website.