Meet Jane Morgan…

By Phil North

9 June 2015

Meet Jane Morgan, an award-winning underwater photographer and a great friend of ours here at Dive Worldwide. Jane leads our exclusive Photography Workshop in Bali this September.

Here, she give us an insight into her world of underwater photography...

How did you get into underwater photography?

I joined a Red Sea live aboard back in 2001 visiting the Brothers, Daedalus and Elphinstone. For some reason the dive guide, Grant, thought I should take up underwater photography. Well I have to say I was reluctant and managed to wiggle out of doing a course for a good few days, but one evening he dropped a manual in front of me and told me to read it because I was taking in a Sea & Sea Motormarine II the next morning.

Well I think it was more a case of being too tired to argue that I dutifully did as I was told and the next morning he ran through the controls on the camera, loaded it with 35mm film and off we went on a dive on the Brothers. I had spent a lot of time in the late 90's working for Coral Cay Conservation and so was used to being really busy underwater, filling out surveys or setting up special management zones, and I have to admit the lack of jobs to do had left a bit of a gap.

So the first dive I was busy fiddling with the controls and when I looked up I realised that I had drifted off from my buddies and reef and out in the blue something was swimming straight at me. As it got closer I couldn't believe my eyes as a scalloped hammerhead swam into focus. I was thinking that my first ever underwater image would be a full framed shot of a hammerhead shark, so i took my time.. looking through the viewfinder and waiting until the perfect moment when it filled the frame, but lo and behold I pushed the shutter and nothing happened. I thought that I must have locked it, so I then locked and unlocked the shutter, tried again and got a photo of the sharks tail as it swam back into the blue. OK I had missed the shot due to being unable to press the shutter because I was so excited, but I was definitely hooked and I owe it all to that dive guide who didn't give up pushing me.

Were you a natural from the beginning?

I had a couple of cracking encounters on that first trip and had the films processed on board so that I could view them on the light table. On one particular dive I looked up and a school of hammerheads were passing overhead. I took a shot that included 13 hammerheads and a manta silhouetting the sun... I was so proud of that shot, but when I got home and began to mount my images I found that somebody had stolen the image, it had actually been snipped off the end of the roll of film, so I guess somebody thought my photography was ok! I progressed quite quickly after that trip and asked everybody for money for my next birthday and treated myself to my very own second hand motor marine camera. However I was addicted and booked myself onto a course with Martin Edge, then sold my sole to upgrade to a housed camera and the very next year in 2002 I won my first major competition, the BSoUP Beginners Portfolio.

What camera do you use right now?

I have been shooting with a Nikon D300s since 2009, however working as the Dive Technician at Falmouth Uni I have a number of camera systems at my fingertips, so could be spotted underwater with a number of toys, including the Nikon D7100, Panasonic Bridge Systems, Canon compacts or the Olympus Tough. However I have to say that a Nikon D4 is on my bucket list for when I win the lottery!

What subjects do you enjoy shooting the most?

Ooh fave subjects… that's hard.. I love them all! I've done a few big shark trips that I've really enjoyed including Guadaloupe for great whites and Bahamas for Tigers, so I'm as comfortable shooting apex predators as I am anemone fish.. and the sharks are generally the best behaved. But I have to say that as much as I love the excitement of the big animals, my heart has always been in macro. I just love hunting out tiny animals and revealing details about them that are actually invisible to the naked eye. I also love the wonderful colour saturation and the interesting abstracts that you can create when you get really close.

Tell us about your favourite photo

I guess I have a favourite wide angle and favourite macro. The wide angle was taken in the Farne Islands in Northumberland where I was busy taking photographs of big lobsters and sunstars on the reef when I got that feeling that I was being watched. I glanced over my shoulder to see a young female seal stalking me through the kelp. I quickly changed the settings on my camera and turned around really really slowly, and just as I got into position we came face to face. I pressed the shutter, the strobes fired and the seal disappeared back into the kelp, but I love resulting image and curiosity in her eyes.

My favourite macro was taken very early on in my photography career in Nuweiba in the Red Sea. I was on a night dive when I spotted a spanish dancer on the sand. I was struggling to fit the whole animal into the shot as I was equipped with a macro lens, so I started looking really closely at the details and spotted a tiny shrimp peering out from under the gills. It was the first time that I'd seen a spanish dancer and I love the colour red, so this one is still one of my favourites even after all these years.

Tell us about your previous visits to Bali and Indonesia. What do you enjoy most about the diving?

All my past trips to this region had been incredibly productive, especially as far as macro photography is concerned. Of course Bali is inside the coral triangle, which is a hot spot for marine and terrestrial biodiversity, so it shouldn't be so surprising that there is so much to see. On my last visit to Bali one of my favourite dives was Seraya Secrets and I remember thinking to myself how much I'd love to stay at the resort that sat directly behind such an incredible site. So I guess you could say that this trip is a dream come true.. and I can't wait.

You can enjoy a few of Jane's beautiful underwater images below, and many more across our website.