Leigh Bishop

Leigh Bishop

Explorer and underwater photographer

Leigh Bishop is a world-renowned shipwreck explorer who specializes in deep-underwater still photography and television camera work.

A known explorer and team member of some of the most significant expeditions which pioneered the use of mixed gas and modern scuba technology to explore deeper and previously unseen shipwrecks globally. His photography alongside his research has led to the documentation and discovery of hundreds of shipwrecks including several famous ones.

Expeditions of note include those to the worlds largest sunken oceans liners; RMS Titanic, six expeditions to her bigger sister HMHS Britannic, the famous RMS Lusitania and the deep RMS Transylvania.

He has explored shipwrecks globally including wrecks lost in the Black Sea off the Ukraine and worked on many expeditions to photograph the rarely dived deeper wrecks of the Japanese Imperial Fleet lost at the famous Truk Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean. He has photographed the Nazi liner Wilhelm Gustloff in the Baltic Sea as well as the gold ships RMS Egypt in the North Atlantic and the Niagara and the sunk off New Zealand. He has been a diver on several remote archeological projects to places such as Sierra Leone, West Africa and was invited to join GUE explorers to dive the Mars Warship sunk in deep water in the year 1564 during battle in the Baltic Sea.

Leigh has also been a photographer on expeditions to the Arctic in search of the lost British Submarine X5 and was with the teams who discovered, explored and documented other significant British submarines such as HMS Vandal, HMS Affray and HMS M1, all lost in deep water. In his home waters during the heyday of technical diving it is estimated he explored no less than 400 un-dived virgin shipwrecks and U-boats off the British coastline.

Leigh is recognized as an innovator of underwater black & White time exposure photography, a concept he developed to captured inspiring and iconic deep-water shipwreck images during the early pioneering technical diving years.

He has worked as an inwater cameraman, appeared on and written treatments for many television shipwreck documentaries including those broadcast on the networks such as National Geographic the History Channel, BBC, ITV, Channel 4, channel 5 and others. He is a prolific speaker and lectures on the subject of shipwreck exploration at conferences and university’s globally. His photographic work has been used in countless books and worldwide newspapers and have featured on over 60 covers of magazines and books. He is a prolific writer himself and has published hundreds of articles and papers that have appeared in major magazine around the world.

Leigh Bishop was also the man behind the original idea and co founded the ‘EUROTEK Advanced Diving Conference’ the largest gathering of the worlds most accomplished underwater explorers, scientists, doctors and manufacturer’s which is held bi annually at the International Convention Centre in England.