Below the surface: telling the marine conservation story in stills and video

If you love nature, you logically want to preserve it. So it's no coincidence that wildlife photographers are inevitably also passionate conservationists, dedicated to documenting, communicating and improving the condition of the natural world.

Here we talk to a renowned wildlife photographer and an acclaimed young underwater videographer, both of whom are blending art and advocacy, using their work to inform their audiences and inspire environmental awareness.

Canon Ambassador Chris Fallows is known for his fine art photography of wildlife, but says creating beautiful images is not an end in itself. "I focus on authenticity, trying to tell the story of what's really happening to our planet's most iconic species." Exhibiting and selling prints of his photos enables Chris to convey this story to an international audience. Nicolai Deutsch, also a Canon Ambassador, is an underwater video specialist who undertakes all kinds of jobs including commercial and documentary, but particularly marine life video in partnership with environment and conservation NGOs. His videos are posted mainly on the NGOs' social channels as well as his own, achieving thousands and in some cases millions of views.

Whether it's through stills or video, both are committed to promoting wider understanding of the impacts of human activity on the world's sea life and driving change through their image-making.

Patience and luck also come into play. Some of Chris's most famous images are his Air Jaws series, capturing great white sharks breaching the surface to take their prey. At the time, not only was this previously unrecorded behaviour, but nobody even knew about it. Chris was shooting from a small boat bobbing in the open sea, in the low-light conditions typical in the cloudy winter months in South Africa. The seals, the sharks' prey, were barely visible even when on the surface, and half the time were diving below it. The sharks themselves were of course invisible until they struck – and even then, Chris reveals, a breach lasts just 7/10ths of a second.

The key, Chris discovered, was to focus on the seals, and this was where understanding his subjects proved invaluable. He learned the areas where the seals were most vulnerable to attack around the island location, and watched them for unusual behaviour. "Then, the moment they exhibited something that was irregular, I would just start firing. I hadn't even seen the shark yet."

The lesson: to capture what's really happening, you can't script a story in advance. The authentic story reveals itself to you.

Chris and his wife Monique use the funds they raise through the sale of his fine art photographs to buy land in southern Africa to protect wild habitat and to create wildlife corridors. "But ultimately," he says, "the biggest thing we can do through our very privileged life is to showcase the incredible icons of our planet and tell their story, for better or for worse, to more people."

To that end, Chris has mounted a year-long exhibition at Dubai International Airports (DXB). Travellers passing through DXB can now immerse themselves in a powerful exhibition, covering more than 50 metres of wall space, that highlights the urgent need for conservation efforts to protect our planet's endangered species. "DXB is the world's busiest airport," Chris says, "and this exhibition could reach 90 million passengers. That's a fantastic platform.

"So yes, I try to take beautiful photographs, but ultimately it's about getting exposure and telling the story of our iconic animals and the importance of preserving them."

Unlike most wildlife photographers, Chris prefers wider-angle rather than telephoto lenses. "I like to get closer to my subjects. And when I'm shooting from a boat, I don't want to have long lenses because they exaggerate the movement over distance. So on the boat and in the bush I still probably 80% of the time shoot with a Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS USM lens. Underwater I still shoot with an EF 8-15mm lens."

Shooting underwater, whether it's stills or video, is complicated by the optical properties of water, and wide-angle lenses are a necessity rather than a matter of choice, as Nicolai Deutsch knows. "Because of the density of water, you typically need to get fairly close to your subject," he explains. "Water also has a distorting effect, and to avoid that you need to use a dome or specially designed underwater lenses. To get the highest image quality I use an inexpensive Canon RF 24-50mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM kit lens, in effect filming the rear of the underwater lens. It's a bit complicated, but the combination of lenses gives me the highest quality results, particularly for wildlife."

Much of Nicolai's work is to show people below the surface to document the degradation of underwater habitats, the decline of wildlife populations, and other impacts of human activity on marine life.

"I work with an NGO here in Germany, Mission Erde, which was founded by Robert Marc Lehmann, who's also a Canon Ambassador. Usually Robert takes the photos and I film most of the videos. Mission Erde is about raising awareness of issues such as ocean pollution, plastic pollution, and overfishing.

"In Indonesia, for example, sharks are becoming more rare every year because of overfishing, and fishermen now have to go out further and spend more time at sea, risking their lives. We're documenting that, and also that there are better solutions such as using sharks for tourism. This also helps protect the reefs because, as we explain, sharks play a big role in the ecosystem."

Nicolai is vocal about plastic pollution. "In every dive you do nowadays you find plastic. If you go to dive sites in Indonesia, you don't find so much – because it's a dive site, people pick up the trash. The guides want to keep the reef clean, and it's good experience for the visitors. But we did some cleanup dives just a few hundred metres away from the dive sites. Full of trash.

"Because it's underwater, people don't see it so much. If it lay in the streets, we'd be much more aware of the situation. That's where filming is so important to showcase it. I did some filming with another NGO here in Germany, documenting river pollution. In the last four years, in a very small part of this river, they got over 10 tonnes of trash out. I've been three times now, and every time we dive at the same place, we keep finding more trash. As a colleague of mine said, imagine if the river were as clear as air and we could see all of this. People would go crazy. But it's like, if you don't see it, it doesn't exist. And this is in Germany, where, yes, we do a lot of recycling and so on."

Nicolai believes video is the ideal way to bring these issues to life in people's minds. "A still image is a very good way to communicate, but I think film can do a bit more. It doesn't just capture a moment, or a few moments. With a film I can have music, a voice over, I can explain things. Adding music, the mood and the emotions really come through."

Nicolai notes that Mission Erde has had almost 205 million views on YouTube since it was founded in May 2021, a huge reach that he attributes to its use of video.

"I wish I could take everyone to go and see those sharks in Indonesia in real life, but it can't be done. Instead, video is a way to bring it to everyone. You can show the beauty and the things that are not so good. Video can raise awareness in a way that nothing else can."

With this added dimension, he emphasises, social platforms can be forces for positive change, not just entertainment. "The demand for video content online has just rocketed in the last year or so, and it's great to be part of that growth. But more important is trying not to create silly or superficial content, but actually providing education and trying to do some good."

Through both stills and video, from both below and above the surface, passionate professionals such as Chris and Nicolai are dedicated to documenting marine life and the condition of marine habitats. Both demonstrate how the power of imagery, whether on social media or in exhibitions, can help drive awareness of the state of biodiversity in the world's oceans and, in turn, help promote conservation.