Undewater Art of Photography – David Doubilet

© David Doubilet
© David Doubilet

Acclaimed underwater photographer David Doubilet was born in New York in 1946. At the age of eight, he began snorkeling off the coast of New Jersey. When he was 12, he began shooting underwater, using a Brownie Hawkeye.

Doubilet graduated from Boston University in 1970. The following year, he shot his first story—on garden eels in the Red Sea—for National Geographic. He has been a contract photographer for the magazine since 1976 and has shot numerous articles for the publication.

Exploring the world’s waters, Doubilet has photographed in the depths of such places as the southwest Pacific, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Tasmania, Scotland, and the northwest Atlantic.

His work has taken him to freshwater ecosystems such as Botswana’s Okavango Delta and Canada’s St. Lawrence River.


He has photographed stingrays, sponges, and sleeping sharks in the Caribbean as well as shipwrecks in the South Pacific, the Atlantic, and at Pearl Harbor.

Doubilet has produced several books, including Light in the Sea, Water Light and Time, The Kingdom of Coral: Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and Fish Face. He is also the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Sara Prize, the Lowell Thomas Award, and the Lennart Nilsson Award in Photography.

Doubilet is a member of the Royal Photographic Society and the International Diving Hall of Fame. He lives in Clayton, New York.