My journey has been anything but ordinary.

At the age of twelve, I tried a dive mask for the first time and looked beneath the surface of a tide pool. I immediately became hooked. The beautiful sunrays lit up a kaleidoscopic world in a way that was truly fascinating. At that very moment, I decided that I would be a diver!

That was in 1980. When I returned to Lisbon, I bought some cheap rubber beach fins, and that was the only diving equipment I had for a long time. Snorkeling and “free diving” for hours in the cold waters, until the uncontrollable body tremors could no longer be tolerated, thanks to my “wetsuit” (an old T-shirt!). That’s when I would literally crawl onto a rock, trying to warm myself in the sun until the tremors stopped — which took at least 15 to 30 minutes. And if I still had some strength left, I would repeat the process again.

The next 13 years were spent free diving in almost all sea and weather conditions, starting from the shore. I remember looking at nearby scuba divers and thinking that they were “so bad” that they needed a tank to dive to 8 or 10 m. I was far from imagining that, many years later, I would be using a closed-circuit rebreather to dive as shallow as 0.5 m in a very small river!

Underwater photography became my first priority after I got my first amphibious camera, a birthday gift from my sister, which marked a turning point in the way I looked at the underwater realm. That was also the reason I got my first scuba diving certification, in 1995. I just wanted to stay longer and go deeper, to have more time to make some images properly.

After many cameras, years of diving and several certifications, I slowly started to turn my passion-only hobby into a more serious pursuit, through underwater photography competitions, while at the same time giving workshops, presentations and courses, and even writing a book about underwater photography.

With the appearance of digital cameras, photography was no longer enough. I started making timelapses — a strange world where the starting point is photography, but the end result is a video. And that was my entrance into the fascinating world of video, with all the new challenges that it brought. After some years, filming underwater became my new passion — and my job.

But at every step of this progression, I’ve focused on staying true to my life goals: never losing the ability to be amazed by the rays of sunlight in the simplest example of the sea — a tide pool.

This isn’t just a business — it’s a way of life, a reflection of what I believe in.

I’m here to create work that makes a difference, driven by passion and committed to quality.