Profile
Dan Burton
(40), has 22 years underwater photographic experience and has been a
professional for 16 years; he sold his first picture in 1990.
Having traveled
around the world for 4 years, Dan returned to England to study photography
full time. After 5 years of studying photography and underwater photography
at the Plymouth College of Art and Design Dan was awarded a distinction
for his Higher Diploma and joined the British Institute of Professional
Photography BIPP.
He has remained current with the latest advances in technology etc by
attending many post graduate courses in underwater photography and is
currently working as a consultant with the Marine Biology, Ocean and
Environmental departments at Plymouth University. During his college
years he was awarded a variety of honors, which included gold and silver
at the AMI audio visual awards in New Orleans; Dan (who was the sole
photographer) and his team came ahead of such prestigious entrants as
groups from the Brooks Institute of Photography in California.
On leaving college
Dan was involved with various pioneering, deep-water technical diving
projects using mixed gases. These included the recovery of silver (US$
50 million) from the 'El
Cazador'' wreck in 1993 at 300 ft (100m), the salvaging
of gold and silver artifacts from the thousand year old Intan
Wreck in Indonesia and a team member of the first National
and Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tri-mix
dive expedition to the USS Monitor
in 1995. During Dan's visits to the US Scientific American commissioned
him on numerous occasions. Other major projects include photographing
and filming the HMHS Britannic
- sister ship to the Titanic - resting at 380ft (120m) in the Aegean
Sea.
Since 1998 he has
become heavily involved in freediving and freediving photography, becoming
a member of the British freediving team in the same year. This has allowed
him to capture images of marine life which would not be possible using
SCUBA. Dan has photographed and filmed the following internationally
renowned freedivers: Tanya Streeter, Carlos Coste, Pipin, Herbert
Nitsch, Umberto Pelizzari, Fred Buyle, Martin Stepanek etc.
His photographs
have been published in hundreds of books and magazines worldwide, with
featured work in National Geographic,
Scientific American, WIRED, BBC Wildlife, GQ, FHM, Mens Health, Titanic
Society, Tauchen, AQUA, Illustreret Videnskab, Pour La Science, Geographical
Magazine etc. He has also been involved
in a variety of film work, and has again worked for the National
Geographic Channel, BBC, Discovery Channel and Channel 4's Wreck Detectives
2 (8 part series) and Trans World Sport.
In 2000 he was
the principle underwater photographer on both the final Camel
Trophy in Tonga and Discovery.com.
Shark Week -- which was a live web broadcast. His specialties
cover people, photojournalism, underwater and aerial (he recently did
the imaging for the International Paramotoring Championship in Korea).
Dan has also spent time documenting NASA astronauts training in their
underwater neutral buoyancy tank in Huntsville, Alabama, USA. His images
and video footage are held in photography libraries around the world,
including Nature Pics, Image State, Alamy,
Buzz Pictures, Wildlife GmbH and Seapics.com.
Personal
- Dan custom builds his own
specialized underwater camera and video housings for almost any
camera, and builds custom cameras to depths of 300m+.
- He is a pioneer in high resolution
panoramic and sperical
underwater images and digital underwater photography
starting back in 2000.
- He also runs courses in digital
underwater photography on week long liveaboard workshops in the
Red Sea. Durning the the summer months Dan also runs special weekend
workshops on the Devon coast
Text by
Russell Hawkins,Duc de Lorraine
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