Featured Underwater Photographer – René Weterings

One of the best ways to learn photography is to see other photographers’ work. Mozaik looks for some of the best underwater photographers in the world, and showcase their work, along with the gear they use, to help other aspiring photographers improve, learn new skills and get inspired.

This week we will feature the talented René Weterings!

About René

René Weterings (1978) is an enthusiastic underwater photographer. Married with Cindy, father of Isis and Rowan living together in The Netherlands. His passions are his family, scuba diving, snorkelling, underwater photography and writing stories of his adventures under water. He regularly writes (online) articles for the largest Dutch website on scuba diving, snorkelling and freediving called DuikeninBeeld (he’s also an editor for this website) and ‘Onderwatersport magazine’, a Dutch paper magazine of the National scuba diving union. René loves to share his work and knowledge on underwater photography with other scuba divers to get them excited and to learn himself for continuous improvement.

Together with his wife Cindy he started scuba diving in September 2005 on a holiday on the Canarian island Lanzarote. Soon he bought his first underwater camera and took it on the next scuba diving trips. Since then he has dived in the waters of The Netherlands, Canarian Islands (La Palma, Lanzarote, Tenerife), Ibiza, Maldives, Curacao and Egypt.

Underwater photography became a more important part of his scuba dives. The camera gear grew with his never ending drive to improve his images. In 2012 he bought his first Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera and still uses this brand today. Currently he works with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 mark III in a Nauticam housing with two Sea&Sea YS-D3II strobes and snoots and also loves to work with the Snooty snoot for his macro shots.

Since 2013 René takes part in the Open Dutch Championship Underwater Photography and from 2015 he also regularly takes part in the Open Belgian Championship Underwater Photography. From the start he won at least one medal every year and since then it grew up to 40 plus medals. In 2015 he won the Open Belgian Championship Underwater Photography and in 2018, 2019, 2020 ánd 2021 he was crowned Dutch Championship Underwater Photography. In 2019 René took part in the CMAS World Championship Underwater Photography and won a silver medal in the category ‘Wide Angle’ with an image of a green turtle (see image). His last victory was winning the category ‘Abstract’ in the largest contest for nature photography in the Netherlands with an image of a peacock worm in the Eastern Scheldt.