Publications

Richard has written hundreds of articles, published internationally, with a primary focus on conservation, marine life and travel.  His work has been published in: Sport Diver UK, where he has had two long-running series: ‘Photographing Behaviour’ & ‘Critter Hunting’ and another long-running column in Sport Diver USA ‘Species’, Sport Diving (Australia), Alert Diver (USA), Asian Diver (Singapore), Scuba Diver AustralAsia, Scuba Diver TTL (global), Australian Geographic, Asian Geographic, Dive Chronicles (USA), FiNS (Singapore), Action Asia, DIVE (UK), Diver (UK), Marine Conservation Society (UK), DivePhotoGuide (online), Tauchen (Germany), Wild Travel (UK), 72 & Rising (Online) and has contributed images to various books as well as contributing images to exhibits in the Monterey Bay and Hong Kong Aquariums. Richard also supports conservation initiatives such as Project Seahorse, The Zoological Society of London, Conservation International’s – Bird’s Head Seascape Initiative and EDGE of Existence (Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered) with images and expertise.

PHOTOGRAPHY | Richard is a widely published and award-winning photographer. In 2019 his image ‘Small but Mighty’ won the Animal Habitat category of the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year, he also had two other exhibiting finalists in the same year, and several others in previous years.  He has dozens of cover shots to his name and image portfolios published with high profile organisations such as Australian Geographic magazine. Richard loves to hunt for rarely seen and seldom photographed marine creatures, in fact some of his images represent the only pictures of living, wild specimens. Explore his online image galleries in the ‘Photo Gallery‘ section.  Richard has also shot underwater fashion.

ETHICAL UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHY | Richard is very passionate that his images are captured in a way that causes as little disturbance to the subject as possible. None of images here, or in his published works have involved the manipulation of animals. Part of his PhD research involved the investigation of diver interaction with pygmy seahorses. Based on his findings, he created a code of conduct for photographing and observing them safely. Below, are some tips for underwater photographers that photographers and divers alike can use to minimise their disturbance of marine animals. This is also available as a pdf download: Underwater Photography tips.

* Please always credit as ‘© Dr Richard Smith – OceanRealmImages.com‘ for use of these codes and guidelines.

Richard is honoured to have been invited as the ‘Head of Ethical Standards Review‘ for the Underwater Tour Awards photo competition in 2020 and 2021.

Read more about his research in the Scuba Diving article ‘How to be an Ethical Underwater Photographer‘.

VIDEOGRAPHY | In addition to shooting still images, Richard also enjoys capturing the moving image.  His narrated documentary video ‘Raja Ampat: Diving the World’s Richest Reefs’ premiered at the Australia International Dive Expo in 2015.  In 2016, he was invited to The Datai Langkawi to film a natural history documentary series about the local reefs, which can be seen on their YouTube homepage.

Please click to explore Richard’s YouTube channel.