I always admired the awesome pictures from critters all over the world. In 2012 I did my first trip to Lembeh and fell in love with the tiny world of critters. Since I live in Germany, I unfortunately cannot dive often in awesome tropical waters around the world. But, I wanted to dive more and take more pictures. Then in the summer of 2014 I did my first dive in a freshwater lake near my home and was fascinated by this stunning world. Of course you cannot expect colorful reefs but my eyes focused on the small and even smaller stuff. Finally I had found my own Lembeh in front of my door!

During that time I got fully equipped with a drysuite, tanks, weights, and started shooting macro from 1:1 until 6:1 with the Canon MP-E 65 and teleconverter. There is so much to discover and even when you’ve found all the stuff you can see, it changes during the year.

During my regular dives I saw how fish spawn, their eggs, and how small fish grow up. When I took a closer look I could see how mites ate the eggs, and even climb into them to eat them.

Even now, I’ve watched mating great pond snails putting their eggs on plants, even on each other. After some weeks, tons of small black spots appear on the plants. Those are the juvenile snails, and are very challenging to photograph.

Sometimes I love to go down above green grass, turn on my lamp and watch through my viewfinder with a magnification of 5:1 and enjoy the show. It is like diving into microcosm where I can see stuff I do not even know what it is. From strange worms to water fleas, all kind of critters.

Perhaps you live near a lake and are going to take a closer look at the small things there. If you see a diver on the ground not moving but breathing, it may be me.

Find more of Martin’s work here.