For as long as he can remember, Matthew Sullivan has had a camera in his hands. “Every now and then, my mom will discover a photo I took on her old film camera of a puddle on a sidewalk, or a discarded potato chip that I’d somehow managed to get out of focus and only half in frame,” he says.

Matthew became scuba-certified when he was just 10, and after bringing a disposable camera on his first dive trip and capturing a decent picture of a hawksbill turtle, he began a long snowballing into the world of underwater photography.

Today, Matthew continues his water-bound explorations with the Tamron 90mm F/2.8 Di III VXD M1:1, a mid-telephoto macro lens that offers sharp, high-resolution images, beautiful bokeh to help separate subject from the background, and 1:1 magnification that allows Matthew to get in close to the smallest submerged inhabitants.

“Typically I prefer shorter focal-length macros, like 50mm or 60mm, but the Tamron 90mm F2.8 is a terrific addition, allowing images of larger macro subjects as well as itty-bitty ones,” he says. “The 90mm’s image quality, sharpness, and focusing speed are all phenomenal. Normally I go for dramatic lighting with lots of textures and contrasts, but it’s nice to change things up sometimes to keep your images fresh. During the period of time these pictures were taken, I’d decided to focus on softer, more subtle pictures, and the Tamron 90mm F2.8 was perfect for that.”

Matthew notes that macro lenses underwater are typically used behind flat ports, which cause all sorts of optical issues such as chromatic aberration, smeared corners, and the like, especially at wider apertures. “The Tamron 90mm F2.8 handled those problems well, and the ability to shoot shallow depth-of-field images like the seahorse and orange juvenile striated frogfish featured here without losing much image quality was wonderful.”