How a photographer on an unplanned dive swam right into a mass of sardines and captured this breathtaking, ethereal picture

When you first look at this underwater picture, it seems just like the form of shot that might take weeks to plan. In truth, the {photograph} was taken throughout an unplanned morning dive. No script, no moodboard, no dive staff briefing. Just a freediver, an expanse of open water and an enormous faculty of sardines.

The outcome: a churning mass of silver folds itself into an ideal halo round its human topic. No shock, then, that Ben Yávar‘s picture is a finalist on this 12 months’s Ocean Photographer of the Year Adventure class.

The Chilean photographer sees it as reflecting the calm belief that may exist between individuals and marine life. “It is a reminder that patience and respect for the ocean often lead to its most extraordinary moments,” he says.

Secrets of the shot

Yávar is a freediving teacher in addition to a photographer, and so he properly is aware of that sardines are acutely delicate to disturbance. So calmness is vital. But once you use scuba diving gear, the exhaust bubbles, regulator noise and sheer bulk of your package are more likely to scare them off.

In distinction, freediving – the place you ditch the gear and rely solely on the air in your lungs – lets you transfer silently and mix in, getting you nearer to the motion and saving the sardines from getting jumpy.

The shot in question was taken on a Sony A7 IV with a 12mm lens at f/9, ISO 1600 and 1/250 sec; the kind of smaller aperture Yávar favors to hold sharpness across a fast-moving frame. The fast shutter speed did the job of freezing individual fish and stopping them from blurring into streaks, while the high ISO suggests he was compensating for a fill flash.

Yávar pre-sets his camera on land, because underwater there’s no time, plus fiddling about with menus would only disturb the fish. It’s an approach that makes sense well beyond sardine runs: decide what you can beforehand, so that in the moment, all your attention goes to composition and timing.

Of course, even if you do everything right, you’re still going to need a lot of luck to get a shot like this. But Yávar puts in enough hours to know he’ll be ready. He’ll often take multiple dives, sometimes dozens, to get movement and light to align properly.

That’s the real key to getting a shot like this. In the photo itself, the technical preparation, the fitness, the training and the failed dives are all invisible. All the viewer sees instead is the scene that made all that effort worthwhile.

Ocean Photographer of the Year is presented by Oceanographic and Blancpain. You can see all of the 2026 finalists on the Oceanographic Magazine website.

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