Now that several companies such as PADI, Olympus, Sea&Sea and Scuba Publications are increasing the effort to push the Underwater Photography market and are doing what is needed to put the tools for teaching on the market, the interest of people to learn more about underwater photography is bigger than it was ever before.

With so many divers taking a digital camera underwater, you can expect questions on photo related subjects in your day-to-day work as a dive guide or instructor. To provide you with the knowledge needed to respond to those questions, PADI created the “Digital Underwater Photography Workshop”, which will make you a “PADI Digital Photo Pro”, but not a photography instructor – the intent is just to make you more professional in your day-to-day work, but not to prepare you to teach photography. This workshop takes a full day and includes a practical session in the water.

With the workshop as a basis, it is easy to expand your qualifications to become a “Digital Underwater Photography Instructor”, allowed to teach level 1 and 2 courses. After the workshop we will continue with the instructor part, which will also take a complete day. We will do another practical session (this time in open water) and will use the pictures taken during that dive to learn how to evaluate pictures and how to give hints, tips and advise to improve results in following dives. Both the level 1 and 2 courses use the automatic functions of the digital camera and do not require an enormous amount of knowledge on photography principles – the courses are easy to handle and easy to teach. Divemasters** and Assistant Instructors can become Specialty Instructor for level 1 and 2 and can then teach these programs under the direction of a PADI instructor.

Automatic underwater photography is rather limited with respect to the types of pictures you can take. It is logical to expect that at some point in time divers want to go beyond the (rather big) limits of automatic photography. This is the reason why we are offering a “distinctive” level 3 Digital Underwater Photography Instructor Course. In this course you learn how to teach the use of the manual functions of an underwater camera and strobe. Your training will be a mix of practical sessions in the classroom or in the water and presentations to increase your understanding of the theoretical aspects.

The level 3 Instructor course is supported by an Instructor Kit from Scuba Publications. In this Instructor Kit you have all the tools needed to bring the extensive knowledge needed for manual photography across to your students in a pleasant, structured and easy manner.

As a diving professional, you have hardly any other choice than to improve your knowledge of digital underwater photography – a digital camera is slowly becoming a “standard” piece of diving equipment, just as a BCD or a mask. Your clients will expect knowledge of “all standard equipment items” and will not understand when a professional knows all about a BCD, but little about digital cameras.

You have no choice other than improving your knowledge, but the Instructor Training College is offering you the choice of how thorough you want to expand your knowledge and skills. Here are our options to start or continue your training:

*Assistant Instructors can complete the training for Level 3 Digital Underwater Photography Instructor, but can only be certified as such once they have successfully completed the PADI Instructor Examination.

**PADI Divemaster can become Digital Underwater Photography Specialty Instructors, but to cover their lack of teaching training, they have to add half a day of additional training – the teaching and instruction workshop. This half day program is charged at €55,00. Divemasters who are also EFR Instructors do not have to do this additional training.