Leigh Bishop ( born 17 April 1968) is an explorer and deep sea diver known for his deep shipwreck exploration and still underwater photography.
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Born in Northamptonshire, England in 1968 he began diving at the age of twenty one where he established himself on the technical diving scene during its infantile years. Utilizing mix gas to explore deep wrecks around the British Isles since the beginning of the 90s his later 1997 expedition to search for the lost King Edward VII class battleship off North Scotland became the first of its kind to explore shipwrecks beyond 100m/330 ft depths in European waters. With little material available on the subject of deep 35mm stills he took to photography specifically for the HMHS Britannic 98 expedition carving his own path in a specialized field. Concentrating towards lost 20th Century Ocean liners steered him to some of history's most famous shipwrecks, photographically cataloguing each one as he explored them.
Examples of his photography have been extensively published on magazine covers in national newspapers as well as countless magazines of varying types. His published works on the subject of shipwreck exploration over two decades clearly dictated his active roll in shipwreck exploration since the late 1980s. He is known mostly for his pioneering ambient light monochrome images of shipwrecks, which use natural light & long time exposures utilizing a tripod to capture images of shipwrecks that are impossible to light using man made lighting effects.
As an internationally renowned deep shipwreck explorer and a fellow member of the Explorers Club he has been involved in many notable & pioneering scientific shipwreck expeditions from famous Ocean liners to sensitive War losses as well as deep and historically important sites of archaeological interest.
Leigh Bishop has worked closely with government departments in finding shipwrecks and over the years published hundreds of periodicals and photographs on the subject of shipwrecks globally as well as lecturing on the subject around the world. He is known to have undertaken extensive research into London archives, which led him to the identification of many dozens of previously unknown shipwrecks around the British Isles. During the 1990s along with his dive partner Chris Hutchison the two men are said to have explored no less than 400 virgin shipwrecks.
Working with the UK Customs & Excise Receiver of Wreck government departments Leigh Bishop worked with various diving teams to legally recover artifacts from deep shipwrecks that went on display in various maritime museums.
Leigh Bishop is a known professional HSE qualified diver and has worked on consultancy for several television documentary's and has been involved in the commissioning of documentary's shown on several major network channels. In addition to this he has worked as an underwater cameraman where his film footage has been cut into countless underwater television documentaries for National Geographic, Discovery Channel, History Channel and most major UK networks. In order to overcome depth & gas logistics of deep exploration he utilized closed circuit technology (rebreathers) from the early days of technical diving to explore deep shipwrecks. His experience with a multitude of various rebreather systems led him to become a development diver for certain rebreather companies.
In 2008 he established the Eurotek technical diving conference with his late diving partner Carl Spencer. Leigh Bishop remains a director of Eurotek, which has established itself as the leading diving conference for advanced, and technical divers in the Northern Hemisphere. The event is held bi-annually at the (ICC) International Convention Centre, Birmingham England.
During several expeditions to the Lusitania he accumulated almost ten hours physically on the wreck building the most extensive collection of images of the wreck to date. At that time he also photographed the liner SS Transylvania (1925) sunk in 135m/445 ft in the north Atlantic. During 2001 along with fellow members of the internationally renowned deep wreck diving team 'Starfish Enterprise' he brought back the first images of the lost gold treasure shipwreck the SS Egypt sunk in deep water off the edge of Biscay (Western Atlantic). Also in 2001 he made the discovery of the Captain Kurt Carlsen famous shipwreck Flying Enterprise lost in 1952. He went on to be involved in countless expeditions more notably as a leading photographer on expeditions to the HMHS Britannic (Titanics sister ship) in 1998, 2003, 2006 & 2009.
Leigh Bishop has successfully published articles, features and photographs in many magazines globally as well as American & English published books and major newspapers. He has written over 200 full feature articles and his creative underwater imagery has been used in many advertising campaigns for the promotion of diving manufacturers equipment and popular publications. He has contributed to all of the UK's diving magazines although specifically contributes to the UK’s DIVER magazine and the US based Wreck diving magazine. As well as the UK market his material has been published extensively across Australasia, United States of America and Europe. Underwater images of shipwrecks and divers taken by Leigh Bishop have appeared on covers of various magazines.
Leigh Bishop has made many public presentations about shipwreck exploration, these include sell out lectures at the Royal Geographical Society in London, The Australian technical diving conference Sydney, National Exhibition Centre, London Arena and several notable conferences in the USA.
Being involved in ground breaking deep shipwreck explorations he has been able to relay the story's behind shipwreck discoveries as a public speaker, lecturer and conference adviser to thousands of people. His presentations were a direct result of successful image creation and as he admitted himself something that made his job as a public speaker somewhat easier to audiences of up to 5-600 people.
His credits as a public speaker to date include the NEC DIVE show on numerous separate occasions, conferences in Scotland and Wales, Warwick University, Imperial College London, Birmingham University as well as many UK dive clubs. In February 2003 he was invited to speak at the International shipwreck conference at Plymouth University and later in 2003 made his first appearance as a speaker at the European photographic seminar 'Visions in the Sea' at King's College London. Today he continues to attend conferences worldwide were audiences continue to enjoy his presentations with evocative images from the wrecks as they are today.
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