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 & Swimming Great Oceans Adventurers.

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 any camera, and builds custom cameras to depths of 350m.
• 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.