A Hong Kong photographer's guide to taking underwater shots
Trained in photography at arts college, Alan Lo's life changed when he went underwater. He uses photography to show how amazing marine life is and to urge people to better safeguard it
Alan Lo did not take to scuba diving like a fish to water. On a holiday to Indonesia in 2008, he became so anxious during his first dive, he spent the whole time checking his mask.
He needed to calm himself and concentrate on something other than the fear that his eyes and nose were about to be flooded with water. So the trained photographer, who graduated from London's Central Saint Martins college in 1993, rented a compact camera from the tour operator and started snapping away.
"If my concentration was on the camera, I acted normal," says Lo.
And thus began a life-changing foray into underwater photography. By 2014, Lo had won a global contest organised by the UN to mark World Oceans Day.
As a commercial photographer, he undertakes assignments from architectural projects to portraits. But underwater, he specialises in macrophotography: close-ups of tiny sea creatures, sometimes as small as a match head.
"Most of my work [underwater] is on animal behaviour," he says.
It involves technical excellence and incredible patience, combing coral and rockscapes for little slices of submarine life.
