The single biggest mistake beginners make with ocean wildlife photography is prioritizing gear over technique. A GoPro used well will produce better images than a full camera system used badly. Here's what to focus on before and during your trip.

Get the Encounter Right Before You Raise the Camera

This sounds counterintuitive but it's the most important principle in wildlife photography. The best images come from the best encounters, and the best encounters come from being calm, still, and positioned correctly. A photographer who's frantically chasing the shot while kicking water and breathing hard will get worse photos and a worse encounter than someone who holds position, moves slowly, and lets the animal come to them.

This applies especially to snorkeling encounters. Manta rays will swim toward a snorkeler who's floating motionless on the surface. They'll avoid one who's splashing and diving down repeatedly trying to get close. The paradox is that the best wildlife photography technique is often identical to the best wildlife encounter etiquette.

Light Is Everything

Underwater, light drops off fast. Even in clear tropical water, you lose most of your warm tones within the first few meters and things start looking blue-green and flat. Shooting toward the surface with the subject between you and the light works better than shooting away from it. Midday light provides the best natural illumination for shallow water shots. Red filters on action cameras recover some of the warm tones at depth.

At the surface, early morning and late afternoon light is warmer and more directional than midday. If you're shooting above water, dawn and the hour before sunset produce the best light by a significant margin.

Burst Mode and Patience

Wildlife moves unpredictably. The difference between a great shot and a near-miss is often milliseconds. Using burst mode, taking a sequence of shots in rapid succession, dramatically increases your odds of capturing the peak moment. You'll delete 90% of what you shoot. That's normal and expected. The shot you keep is worth the storage card full of almost-rights.

Get Close, Then Get Closer

Underwater photography in particular suffers from the instinct to hang back and zoom in. Zoom increases the amount of water between you and the subject, which means more particles, more distortion, more blue cast. The correct approach is to get as close as the encounter guidelines allow and use the widest angle setting on your camera. This produces sharper, cleaner images with more natural color and better light.

Simple Post-Processing Changes Everything

Underwater images almost always benefit from basic editing: increase exposure, add contrast, boost highlights, and use the dehaze tool if shooting RAW. This is true even for action camera footage. Most people who say their underwater photos look flat haven't edited them. Ten minutes of post-processing on a mediocre shot often produces a photo that looks genuinely good.