I was born in May 1974 and have been diving since July 2001, passing my Open Water Course in Cornwall, UK. I am now a PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer, completing over 1300 dives and certifying over 270 divers up to May 2008, when I was working full time as an instructor on Koh Tao, Thailand. I am now based in Puerto Galera in the Philippines, working as an Instructor/Dive Guide for Atlantis Dive Resort (www.atlantishotel.com). I am also their Photo Instructor so will be teaching Underwater Photography Courses aimed at various different experience levels. Prior to coming to Atlantis I was the Trip Manager aboard Panunee live-aboard whilst it was in East Kalimantan, Indonesia.
 
I am an avid amature underwater photographer. I started out with an Olympus C50Z compact digital camera and housing, selected due to its small size, convenient for the travellling lifestyle. Whilst in Australia in 2004 I invested in the Inon fisheye and macro lenses, which definately improved my photographs. Upon returning to Thailand to work as a Divemaster on Koh Tao, I upgraded further, purchasing an Inon D2000 strobe, together with a wide angle lens, plus the Olympus C60Z and I think my photo's improved further. I purchased another add on macro lens before my trip to Sulawesi to let me get 'up close and personal' with the myriad of minute critters that I was hoping to photograph.

During my trip to the Bahamas the shortcomings of my camera set-up became more apperent with the faster moving subjects. Even though I am very pleased with my photographs from this trip, I know I missed a lot of excellent opportunities due to shutter lag and slow auto-focus. This trip highlighted the need for an upgrade and I now shoot with a Nikon D200 with a selection of lenses; Nikon 10.5mm fish-eye, Nikon 12-24mm wide angle zoom, plus Nikon 60mm &105mm Micro macro lenses plus a Nexus 'wet' lens for extreme macro. This is encased in the Subal ND20 housing, with twin Inon Z240 strobes attached by Ultra-light arms. I have found this set up to be very well balanced and of top quality enabling me to get photographs that the smaller compact just couldn't manage. The Galleries from Thailand 2006 onwards contain photo's taken with the D200.

Thoughout the different Gallary's I have added titles to each photo, letting you know what you are looking at, where the photo was taken (sometimes the general area, sometimes the exact dive site) and the date it was taken. In most cases I use Reef Fish Identification - Tropical Pacific by Gerrald Allen, Roger Steene Paul Humann & Ned Deloach for fish I.D., 1001 Nudibranchs - Catalogue of Indo Pacific Sea Slugs by Neville Coleman for Opisthobranch I.D. and have recently been using www.starfish.ch for identification of shrimps, crabs and other invertibrates. I have done my best to identify things correctly, but I am not a marine biologist, so there may be some mis-identifications. If you spot any, please e-mail me as I would be very interested to know and would like to correct any errors.

The Weekly Pics page will be updated frequently (maybe not every week) so keep logging on and checking the site out!

If you would like any specific photographs to be set up as a Postcode that I have not done already, please email me and I will try and sort it out.

If you have any questions or would like to leave me a message, click on the link for the Contact page.

Alex Tyrrell