How to become an ocean storyteller

My journey as an ocean storyteller and photographer hasn’t been fast or linear. It has been shaped by years of curiosity, learning and connection, threaded through with salt water, light and a drive to understand the spaces between people, place and planet. This post explores the story behind how this work began, how it’s evolved and how we might rewild our connection to the sea through visual storytelling.

How a love for the ocean started with a camera

The seed was planted when I was a teenager, developing 35mm film in my Saturday job at a local newsagents. For every roll I shot and paid to processed, I earned a free one. That free roll was everything. I wandered with my camera, chasing sunrises and sunsets over the sea, drawn to the fleeting and the liminal.

Born by the sea in Ramsgate, Kent, I spent long summers at my grandparents’ beach hut on Viking Bay. Those days of barefoot freedom shaped a bond with the sea that has never left me. There’s a pressure to know exactly what to do when we leave school, but life doesn’t always work like that. The path unfolds, there are lots of meanders. We figure it out as we go.

The influence of geography and purpose-driven work

I studied Geography at university, drawn to the human side of it, the connection between people and place. After graduating, I worked in recruitment, developing new business, connecting people with meaningful work. This led to adult education, supporting people back into employment and then into higher education where I worked on embedding a new employability strategy and lectured in photography (Book me to speak, here). I created an “Introduction to Professional Practice” module within the photography degree to help students shape their creative voice and story and it was around all of this that my photography career started.

Building a photography business through intuition and story

In 2010, I launched my photography business. It began with love stories, weddings, couples, families, capturing the raw and unscripted moments of connection. Working with only one chance to get the shot honed a storytelling instinct I carry into my ocean storyteller and photography work today.

As the years passed, my work, like the strand line shifted. Very organically, brand storytelling requests grew and in 2020 I retired from shooting weddings to specialise in radically authentic brand storytelling. A shoot experience deeper than ‘just getting a headshot’, it is transformational, about values, voice and importantly, underpinned by working with other souls who have purpose and impact as their north star.

From motion sickness to underwater photography

In 2021, everything changed. A late ADHD diagnosis and the medication that followed finally relieved a lifelong battle with motion sickness (read more, here). I could suddenly be on the water without becoming unwell. That shift unlocked everything. It allowed me to take a camera to places I’d never been and explore ocean photography and so many remote outposts under the surface.

One of the most profound moments that emerged from this newfound freedom was a boat trip to Noss Island in Shetland. It was there that I captured what would become one of the most harrowing and defining images of my career: the ‘Hanging Gannet‘. Suspended in ghost fishing net, its wings splayed and its life taken by something invisible until it’s too late, the bird was caught in a brutal stillness. That moment stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t just see an entangled bird, I saw the cost of human activity laid bare in the body of something wild and free.

It shook something loose in me

That image went on to win second place in the Conservation and Impact category of the Ocean Photographer of the Year 2024, but more than recognition, it became a turning point. It ignited a deeper urgency in my work. It clarified what I was here to do: to bear witness, to tell these stories, to amplify the messages from nature that are so often unseen.

Today, ocean storytelling and photography threads together everything I do. I use underwater and drone photography to document the fragility and resilience of our blue planet. As a trustee of Whale Wise and a Marine Mammal Medic with BDMLR, I work to protect marine life and raise awareness of the threats they face.

My fascination with jellyfish, living indicators of ocean health, continues to inform this work. Their presence, like many species, tells a story about the state of our seas. These messages from the ocean are what drive me as an ocean storyteller and photographer. The goal is to make these stories feel accessible and immersive. Explore more ocean and underwater photography, here.

Representing difference in wild spaces

As an autistic and ADHD woman (read more of my musings, here), I know how underrepresented we are in ocean spaces. Cold water environments, in particular, often feel gatekept, ruggedly defined by endurance, ableism and a narrow view of who belongs there. But the sea doesn’t discriminate. Wild spaces are for all of us. And ocean storytelling and photography has become my way of reclaiming space, rewriting who is seen and whose voice is heard.

There’s deep power in who tells the story. The biography behind the camera shapes what is captured, what is shared and what is left unseen. When the same kinds of people dominate storytelling, whether in conservation, media or the outdoor industry, we risk a homogenised view of the world. The same angles, the same values, the same voices.

Diversity in ocean storytelling and photography isn’t just a nice-to-have.

It’s essential if we want a richer, truer picture of what’s happening in the world. Our different ways of seeing, sensing and relating to nature bring depth and dimension. Being neurodivergent influences how I feel into a moment, how I shoot intuitively, how I’m guided by what feels like a sixth sense connection to the moment: the light, the subject, the emotion and surrendering to the alchemy of it all. It’s a different way of navigating the world and its one that has value.

This work has become a way to illuminate paths for others who may not have seen themselves represented here before. It is about taking up space gently but powerfully reminding us all that wild places are not just for the fastest, fittest, loudest or most extroverted. They are for the curious, the quiet, the reflective, the questioning, for anyone who wants to connect.

By showing up fully as we are, we open up new narratives. And we begin to rewild not only our connection to nature, but also our place within it and show others there is a space for them too.

Conservation through collaboration

As a trustee for Whale Wise and ocean storyteller, conservation isn’t just something I document, it’s something I live and breathe. This work is deeply personal and embedded in every aspect of my work as an ocean storyteller and photographer. One of the most powerful projects I support is Scars from Above, where we use drones to document entanglement scarring on whales. These scars tell stories of harm that would otherwise go unnoticed.

In 2024, I joined the Whale Wise field season in Iceland, where I was part of a team that helped rescue an entangled humpback whale. It was one of the most profound and emotional experiences of my life. Seeing a whale in distress, tangled in fishing gear, brought a new level of urgency and responsibility to my work. It’s one thing to document impact from a distance. It’s another to stand right there, knowing you’re part of its unfolding.

These entanglement stories have shown up in my work as an ocean storyteller time and time again, from that whale to the gannet caught in ghost netting. They are threads I can’t ignore. Conservation is not only about science, it’s about connection, empathy and the power of visual storytelling to move people toward action.

What’s unfolding right now

As an ocean storyteller, right now, I’m focused on cold water snorkelling across the British Isles and Iceland, exploring the wild edges where earth, sea and sky meet, where the extraordinary exists just beneath the surface. The aim is to share how accessible, humbling and awe-inspiring these underwater worlds can be, reminding us that we are not separate from the ocean, but part of it. Through photography and film, we can rewild our relationship with nature and ignite curiosity and awe and awakened action to protect it.

This season of work includes ISLANDNESS, a new exhibition with the National Trust at Scotney Castle. Set within an island in an island country defined by its wild edges, ISLANDNESS explores themes of isolation and connection, permanence and change, and the unseen ecosystems that exist at the margins. The National Trust invited me to bring my storytelling lens to this project to help amplify environmental messages and open up a deeper dialogue about our place within the natural world.

It is an honour to collaborate with an organisation actively seeking to explore the emotional and ecological importance of place. Through this work, we’re asking how islands shape us, what they reveal about our changing climate and how stories rooted in visual truth and wonder can move us toward collective stewardship of these fragile places.

This unfolding chapter is about depth, slowness and vision. Whether I’m snorkelling with jellyfish in Scotland, filming whale scars in Iceland, or hanging prints in a castle, the message remains the same: these wild edges are part of us and their stories deserve to be heard.

What we can change through story

If there’s one change this work can bring, it’s to shift consciousness. Through visual ocean storytelling and photography, we can reconnect to what matters, to ourselves, to nature, to each other. Story cuts through noise. It lands in the heart. And when it does, it has the power to change everything.

Stories tap into the deepest parts of our humanity. They help us unravel what we think we know and gently challenge us to reimagine all that is possible. In a world that often demands certainty and speed, stories invite pause. They ask us to feel. They remind us how to listen.

Curiosity is a potent ingredient in that process. But curious minds have been silenced. Imagination is endangered. We’ve lost the simple thrill of allowing curiosity to give way to awe, to feel joy in the ordinary, to wonder without shame. Storytelling helps us reclaim that sense of wonder, it holds space for the questions without needing to rush to answers.

Change begins with individuals

Story meets us where we are. The hook of intrigue, the pull of an image, the emotional tug of a real moment, they walk us over a threshold. Into the liminal. Into the space where the known dissolves and the unknown opens wide. This is where imagination lives. This is where transformation begins.

Storytelling is utterly remarkable. It transcends generations and culture, time and language. It has the power to spark a remembering, a remembering of our interconnectedness with all life. And in that remembering, it emboldens collective action, rooted in care and fuelled by hope.

Stories are entwined with liminality. They are not fixed, they are alive. Moving with the elements, unfolding in the whispers at the wild edges where earth, sea and sky meet. Existing in the very spaces they reveal. And in that space, in that alchemy of co-creation, our story begins to unfold too.

Advice for fellow ocean storytellers

For anyone feeling drawn to this path, begin with curiosity. Let wonder lead. Learn the ocean like it’s a language, one that speaks in movement, stillness, texture and tide. Spend time observing. Not just with a camera, but with your whole being. It’s in the quiet moments, the seemingly unspectacular ones, where the real stories often begin.

Know your kit inside-out. Practice with it until it feels like an extension of your senses, because once it’s housed or airborne or submerged, you need to move intuitively. But don’t get caught up in perfection. The best time to start is now, with whatever gear you have. A phone. A GoPro. A compact camera. What matters most is the connection behind the lens.

Engage with citizen science. Log your sightings. Document change. Contribute to collective understanding. Our individual stories are powerful, but when woven together, they become something greater, part of a shared narrative that has the power to shape policy, perception and protection.

Share what you see. Even when it feels small. Especially when it feels small. These micro-moments build into macro movements. And in doing so, we shift culture. We make space for new voices. We invite others in.

Remember this: we are not separate from nature, we are nature

Being an ocean storyteller is not about looking in from the outside, it’s about witnessing from within. It’s about belonging. We are part of a collective, bound together by salt, water, memory and movement. The more we lean into that truth, the more powerful our stories become.

And know this, we don’t have to have the full picture at the beginning. We only have to follow the pull. If it moves you, trust it. The story will unfold in its own time and you’ll realise you were part of it all along.

My journey as an ocean storyteller has not been a straight line. It has been a slow, intuitive unfolding driven by love for the sea and the stories it carries. By immersing at the wild edges where earth, sea and sky meet and through the power of visual storytelling with photo, video, drone speaking and writing, there is a chance to rewild our connection to nature and shine a light on the fragile beauty of our planet. With curiosity, compassion and care, this work can invite others to feel the ocean differently, and perhaps, to protect it too.