Leonardo Olmi was born in Florence, Italy, during the summer of 1964. He got his first dive certificate at the age of 15. He started with land photography at the age of 18 (when he first traveled out of his country) and with underwater photography at the age of 22.

Leonardo became a PADI Instructor in 1990. Later on he upgraded to the level of PADI Master Instructor and became also a NAUI Instructor. He has collected a total experience of more than 25 years in diving, including 10 years of teaching in Italy and other countries, such as the Maldives, the Cayman islands, Cancun and Cozumel (Mexico). He has certified more then 1000 divers and has completed more than 5000 dives. His knowledge of the English and Spanish languages has helped him to travel to more then 30 countries.

Today Leonardo Olmi is a freelance photojournalist who specialized in Travel, Glamour, Sport and Underwater photojournalism. He has been on assignment obtaining images and writing articles depicting traveling all around the world, and he is published every month on different European travel, sport & dive magazines.

His images have also appeared on postcards, calendars, posters, catalogues, travel books and advertising material. He is also the author of text and photos for a book depicting the island of Maui (Hawaii). At present time his archives is composed of more than 1 million images and 500 articles/photo-essay.

During 1993, he won an important underwater photo contest, which was held on the Cayman Islands. On Oct. 2006, Mondo Sommerso n. 500 (a worldwide known magazine pioneer in diving) published an historical issue which celebrates the 50 years of its activity, and he received a commemorative medal as part of the best 18 portfolios showing the most famous underwater photographers of the world.

After his experience with Rodney Fox (when during May of 2003 he participated to the Great White Shark Expedition out of Adelaide in South Australia to shoot Jaws) the Italian RAI television interviewed himself.

Today he’s one of the NIKON Professional Photographers (NPS – Nikon Professional – n. 11197) selected worldwide by the Japanese factory to have produced high quality images in the past years, and he’s part of the Professional Italian Journalist Association (license n. 097505) since June 2002.

As a Nikon Photographer, in the past four years, he has been selected to participate at several Outdoor Promotional Campaign in cooperation with the tourism boards of South Africa, Jordan, Slovenia and Argentina.