Earlier this year, I had the incredible opportunity to work on and contribute to Ocean with David Attenborough. As an underwater cinematographer, it was a huge honour to be a part of the film. Sir David Attenborough has inspired generations of wildlife filmmakers, and to get the call to contribute to one of his films is the highlight of my professional career.  A true career milestone.

My work for Ocean focused on the Great Barrier Reef, specifically around the 2024 global mass coral bleaching event. At the time the bleaching hit, I had already spent nearly 300 days filming this one particular section of reef for another natural history film I have been working on, a vibrant, bustling ecosystem. Almost overnight, I watched this incredible ecosystem transform into a stark, white landscape. It was devastating.

Alright we need to settle something here. The internet absolutely loves to say that “Gear Doesn’t Matter”, and it’s become a popular trend for photographers and videographers to make videos on why camera gear does not matter. And this may be a controversial opinion, but in my experience working as an underwater and wildlife cinematographer, I can absolutely say that gear does matter, and owning and operating particular systems, and having experience with certain cameras is a prerequisite to many projects.

But this statement of gear not mattering does come from somewhere important for beginners starting their career, and while overall the statement in my experience is wrong, it does come from a place of good advice.

As important as making your first short film is to refining your craft and gaining experience, the reality is that our first film or two is never going to be all that ground breaking, and while it may be well received, looking back on it a year or two later the perfectionist inside you is not going to be all that impressed, as by the time a film is finished and released, we’ve already grown so much as filmmakers.

But here are 5 unique strategies to elevate your documentary cinematography to the next level. If you're looking to break away from the ordinary and make your cinematography stand out, maybe a few of these tips can help.

Anyone who shoots underwater will know just how painful it is when you’ve invested thousands of dollars into underwater camera equipment, and for the first time in months you’ve decided set your rig up to shoot macro. You jump in, and almost immediately you see a train of manta rays swimming overhead, or you encounter your first great white or tiger shark, and there you are unable to capture this once in a lifetime encounter as you decided to shoot macro. It’s a story as old as underwater photography itself, but what if I told you there are solutions available to shoot both wide angle and macro on the same lens.

As a filmmaker, there are a seemingly countless creative avenues to explore. With so many different styles and different worlds of filmmaking, it’s impossible to be able to master them all. But as most of us start out our videography journey, due to practicality reasons we immediately fall into a one-man band type production, you know, we are the director, the topside videographer, the drone pilot, the gimbal operator, the sound recordist, the underwater videographer, the fpv pilot, the editor, the photographer, and the colourist.

With so many hats to wear videographers starting out inevitably spread themselves so thin, that they fall into the jack of all trades, master of none category. This is by no means a bad thing, and it does provide a really good understanding of how the entire process works, and I’d argue that starting here is actually beneficial in the long run, but should you wish to move onto bigger and better productions this is something that almost all of us have had to deal with at one point or another.

The infamous 16-35mm, we all own one, and it is very likely one of the first lenses you ever picked up for your camera, but it’s time to move on. This video is likely going to rustle some feathers, as this lens is a very popular choice in the industry, particularly for videographers and photographers starting their journey, and I used this lens for years as my go to workhorse underwater lens, and this realisation is truly something that I wish I had learnt sooner. The 16-35 is hindering your work, and is producing the most generic look you can capture, hear me out.

As cinematographers and filmmakers we own tens of thousands of dollars of camera equipment, but for most of us, if our house was burning down and we could only save 1 item, I think we all know that we’d save our data and our footage above anything else, as without a doubt, the most valuable thing we own is our work and our files. And this is only made more extreme for ongoing projects that haven’t yet been delivered to the client, and when we’re on set. Our data is our livelihood, and if we lose those harddrives, or we make a mistake on set and format the wrong card the effects on our films, clients, and business would haunt us for years.

Gear acquisition syndrome is a fun past time for any filmmaker, but when it comes time to travel and actually take all our film equipment somewhere exciting for a job, it’s probably something we immediately regret. One of my go to bits of advice for filmmakers looking to travel with their equipment is to get yourself a packmule/ girlfriend or boyfriend who can carry half your equipment for you. But practically speaking for working DP’s you can’t bring them to work with you anyways, so there’s not really any point to getting yourself a partner, so how do you travel with all your kit?

As filmmakers and cinematographers at some point throughout our career we’ve all no doubt encountered a situation that could have completely ruined a shoot and lost us an important client. It’s unfortunately one of those things you likely have to experience and overcome to learn from. But trust me, don’t do that, learn right now from my mistake.

The allure of cinema lenses is undeniable. The promise of superior image quality, precise optics, and creative possibilities beckons filmmakers into this fascinating world. But the big question looms - are they worth the price tag?

The zoom vs prime lens debate is as old as filmmaking itself, but when we start to consider cinema glass the differences between cine zooms and cine primes are magnified. Today we’re talking about the age-old debate of cine zoom lenses versus cine prime lenses and particularly how they impact wildlife and documentary cinematography.

In the world of wildlife filmmaking there’s really nothing that compares to underwater cinematography. Wildlife filmmaking is dominated by telephoto lenses with most cinematographers relying on the Canon 50-1000mm lens, a technological feat that allows cinematographers to capture wildlife footage from the safety of a few hundred meters away.

For underwater shooters, this is like a cheat code. Underwater, we often can’t capture good quality footage if we’re any more than 3 or 4 meters away. Putting this in perspective, if we were on a documentary and were looking to film lions hunting, we would have to be standing right next to them as they prowled through the jungle looking for food, not from the safety of a car 200 meters away. We have to not only be in the action, we often find ourselves as part of it. And this is what makes underwater cinematography so epic.