This week, we dropped a new ‘Ask a Pro Photographer‘ article at Scuba Diving Magazine. This one looks at some of my favorite tips for capturing awesome photos of those beautiful winged giants – manta rays! This one covers a bunch of my best tips to help you get even better shots, including a look at manta behavior and how we can utilize it to capture beautiful photos.  So go check it out and let me know what you think!

You can read the article for free on the Scuba Diving Magazine website here.

Get ready! This past week, I finished up my first article for Outside Magazine. The article is aimed at helping you get started with taking photos of the Milky Way and the night sky. I cover everything from gear to finding the right spots, picking the perfect nights, and even an intro to camera settings. It’s basically a mini crash for nightscape photography, so you can get out there and start chasing stars right away.

I’m super stoked to be working with Outside! We have a few more articles in the works that will be coming out over the next few months, too. So keep an eye out for them here and in my Instagram stories

You can check out the article on the Outside Magazine website here. Give it a read and let me know what you think!

This year has been a wild ride! I’m incredibly grateful for the work and support, but have been so swamped with projects that, unfortunately, I’ve neglected my blog for most of the year. As we move into the new year, I’ll be dedicating a bit more time to getting back to working on this site. I also have some really awesome new ideas in the works that will launch, including a new online photography tutoring platform with one-on-one classes, which will launch in the spring. Followed by an online store coming in early summer, where you’ll be able to purchase limited edition fine art photo prints of some of my more artistic works. But before we dive into 2025, let’s take a look at some of what 2024 entailed.

This year was packed with travel, but so worth it! There are so many new bylines that I need to add to the site as soon as I have a chance. This year, my photos appeared in National Geographic, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Afar, USA Today, Digital Camera Magazine, and many more. It was also amazing to see the IUCN use some of the shots I donated in their Sharks & Rays report, as well as my friends at Manta Trust utilizing some of my images.  I honestly love being able to use photography to support science and conservation. Being able to learn from these brilliant and passionate humans while capturing the incredible hard work they do and telling their story is something truly special for me. So if you or someone you know in the research or conservation space could use some epic images, please don’t hesitate to reach out! I try to fit in at least a couple of pro bono projects each year for research or conservation initiatives.

One of my favorite accomplishments of the year was receiving a PhotoPills award for one of my Milky Way night-scape images, taken at White Pocket in Vermillion Cliffs National Monument this autumn. The award resulted in my image being published in their annual Legacy book, which contains a wealth of highly talented and inspiring photographers from around the world. Getting back to work, though, a large chunk of this year was spent on brand shoots.  I’m incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to shoot for and/or collaborate with so many awesome brands, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the next year brings. I want to extend a special thank you to Sony Alpha, Discovery Channel, Six Senses Resort Laamu, the Maldives Underwater Initiative, Explore Canada, GoPro, PADI (Professional Association of Dive Instructors), Atlantis Dive Resorts, Dive Tutukaka, Aggressor Liveaboards, Evolution Malapascua, ScubaPro, Cressi, DUI, and everyone else who made it such a memorable year.

Where was Jay this year?

The year kicked off with hosting Dive Ninja Expeditions’ annual ‘Ninja New Year’s trip‘ to Socorro and the Revillagigedo Archipelago. Definitely couldn’t ask for a better way to start the year than diving with so many oceanic manta rays while teaching a great group of guests about manta rays, sharks, and photo identification research. However, after that, I was in full moving mode, packing up my house and donating most of what I had accumulated over the past nine years in Baja to prepare for my departure from Mexico. By mid-February, I was back on the road with essentially back-to-back projects in Dominica, New Zealand, the Bahamas, the Maldives, and the Philippines. Then it was off to the Scuba Show in Los Angeles before heading back to Baja to teach at the Above & Below: Mobula Rays & Dark Skies photography workshop with my good friend and epic photographer, Stan Moniz.

After a whirlwind first half of the year, it was time to switch gears and head to Utah to spend a couple of months exploring the mountain west region of the US, shooting nightscapes, adventure travel, and outdoor recreation. Then it was back to the Bahamas for an epic brand shoot with GoPro, PADI, and Aggressor Liveaboards before heading up to the Canadian Rockies! Autumn kicked off with attending the awesome Nightscaper Conference put together by the incredible humans at National Parks At Night in beautiful Kanab, Utah. Then, after exploring the high deserts and mountains of the American Southwest, it was time to hit the road again, with projects in Egypt, the Philippines, and Raja Ampat, Indonesia, to finish up the year. Phew!

Can’t wait to see what next year brings! See you in 2025, fam!

This week, I kicked off the new ‘Ask a Pro Photographer‘ column series at Scuba Diving Magazine. We’ve been building this project for a few months now, so I am super excited to be able to talk about it finally! If you haven’t seen the launch video yet, check it out on Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram. Every month, we’ll be holding a session on Scuba Diving Magazine’s social media to answer your questions about photography, storytelling, and cinematography. If you want composition tips, to learn about camera gear, or even if you just want to finally put to rest if pineapple belongs on pizza – just send in your questions by commenting on the posts or visiting this link. Each month, we will pick our favorite question to answer properly in a full-length article on ScubaDiving.com

For the first article, I answered a question from Kristin, Scuba Diving Magazine’s master content ninja, on one of my all-time favorite tips for getting the best shots underwater. You can check out the full article right here on their website, free of charge. We’ve already seen a bunch of great questions coming in and have been answering them on Instagram and Facebook stories. I can’t wait to see what other questions you ninjas come up with!

Back in March, I flew over to Marsa Alam, Egypt as the lead photographer on a special PADI brand shoot. It was a really amazing week with some awesome humans. The ocean blessed us with dugongs, tons of turtles, beautiful coral reefs, and so much more. Plus, the topside was just as beautiful with great weather, stunning sunrises (check out my shot below that was used for the Eco Center launch), and even getting a behind-the-scenes look at an incredibly sustainable dive resort. Our project had essentially two primary goals: capture the incredible beauty of diving in Egypt for the PADI brand’s marketing and shoot some awesome conservation-focused content for the launch of the new PADI Eco Center rating. And we totally rocked it! I often get asked what it’s like working on commercial shoots or what gear I bring with me, so I thought it would be a great idea to do quick recap articles of some of the projects I’m involved in to give a glimpse into what it’s like working as a commercial photographer. Sound good? Let’s rock!

What Gear Did I Use?

Since this shoot was a mix of underwater and land, as well as both photo and video, coupled with not wanting to travel with an entire cargo container of gear, it took a bit of planning. For camera bodies, I decided on my go-to camera, the Sony Alpha 1, as well as the Sony Alpha A7S III. Lens wise, I brought the Sony 24-70mm f2.8 G Master II and Sony 100-400mm GM for topside as well as the Sony 16-35mm f2.8 GM for both topside and underwater. With those 3 lenses, I can basically cover almost every potential focal length needed for a shoot like this. By only packing 3, it makes my job easier because I won’t need to spend time trying to decide which lens I need for which shot and so on. For underwater, I brought my Nauticam housing and Nauticam’s Wide Angle Conversion Port, aka the WACP-1 , which uses a Sony FE 28-60mm F4 lens. This thing is a beast for wide angle and lets you zoom from almost fisheye into a nice rectilinear crop. It’s kind of like having 2 lenses in one. I also packed my Sony 90mm Macro f2.8 G lens to catch some of the small critters around the area.

Then grabbed my Slik Carbon Fiber Pro CF 834 tripod, a DJI Ronin RS 3  gimble, 2x Sea & Sea YS-D3 Lightning Strobes, 2x Keldan 8XR 20k Lumens video lights and all the other fun hardware and gear that goes with me on shoots. Now to get it all there, I carried on my cameras and lenses in my Atlas Packs Adventure backpack, and all the rest was checked in Think Tank roller bags, so it would arrive nice and safe. If you’d like to learn more about the gear I shoot with click here!