"Patience, practice, persistence," suggests Jürgen Freund for the diver considering a career as a marine wildlife photographer. Jürgen, better known as "Yogi" (easier to pronounce) understands the desire of many amateur underwater photographers to forsake dry land and take up a career at sea; but how do you make a living?

Yogi plunged into international freelance photography over 20 years ago - and survived. He recently received two highly honored commendations from Nature's Best Photography Awards in the US and has won many other accolades including first prize in the Nikon Photo Contest International. But getting your work accepted by such magazines as BBC Wildlife UK, National Geographic World USA and Reader's Digest Germany, has meant a lot of hard work and coping with uncertain times.

Yogi's career in photography began as a hobby while he worked full-time as a mechanical engineer and designer in Germany: "making some very ugly machines." As his love for the marine world and his photographic skills increased, he began taking unpaid leave to experiment with photojournalism. Seven years after deciding to become a full-time photojournalist, he gathered his savings (enough to live on for two years) and quit his regular job.

"It's important to build networks, research your subject matter and know your camera gear well," says Yogi. "A major turning point for me was meeting John Rumney from Undersea Explorer during BOOT - Europe's major dive show held annually in Germany.

"We got talking about my work with the World Wide Fund for Nature in the Philippines and the conservation of Whale Sharks. The discussions lead to the idea of doing a photographic story on the Great Barrier Reef. Getting access to your subject can be a challenge with wildlife photography. I shoot photo stories based on particular species or eco-systems and need repeated access to my subjects. Undersea had the lot - ongoing marine research sites and repeated dive access to some of the most pristine and remote areas of the reef.
"When John said 'conservation is my religion', I knew I'd met a kindred spirit.
"My wife and I traveled to Australia and began photographing the reef with Undersea in 2002. It was spectacular - remote, wild and full of life. The project was successful - so much so that we moved to North Queensland permanently in 2003 to be centrally located to coral reef diving in the Asia-Pacific region.

"Living off nature photography is a very complex thing. Once your camera gear and access to your subjects is sorted out, there's still a lot to contend with. There are not many formal assignments available in the freelance industry. You sometimes need months to get the right picture and not many magazines can afford that. So you work and get paid afterwards, and then it can then take up to two years to get the money for a photograph.