Zebedee Wakely has climbed mountains, swum with sharks and taken a hit in the chest, all for the perfect shot.

“It’s all part of the process,” said the 15-year-old. “If I get the image, it’s worth it.”

This month his efforts paid off when he was named the RSPCA Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

His ornate ghost pipefish taken in the waters off Bohol, Philippines was the winning picture in his age group.

“It was a complex photo to take,” the Warwick Academy student said.

“I was probably down to 90ft when I took it. I had to know how to scuba dive well enough to be confident down that deep and be able to hold still enough, with reduced light and a complex set up. The current was actually swaying back and forth and I was swaying with it so it was quite difficult.”

He flew to London to collect his prize — a £500 voucher for online camera store Wex Photographic.

The British teenager moved to Bermuda when he was three, around the same time he started taking pictures. His first camera was a Fisher-Price with a tiny amount of memory.

“I started getting into photography more seriously when I was eight or nine,” he said. “I had a little Sealife Reefmaster Mini. The buttons were so hard to press. I had it for so long the salt corroded it shut. That was the best era of photography for me. I would take whatever I saw, a fish, or maybe some sand on the floor.”

He started diving at four, encouraged by his father David Wakely, an emergency physician, who teaches scuba diving part-time. His mother, Catherine Wakely, is also a doctor.

“My love for diving and my love for photography developed simultaneously,” said Zeb. “I wanted to take better underwater photos so I had to dive more.”

The sophisticated, expensive cameras he uses now are a far cry from his Fisher-Price. He found the Canon 80D and the Canon G12 online.

“I try to buy equipment off eBay, so I don’t go broke,” he said. “Scouring eBay you can find these for cheap coming out of China and Japan.”

It’s helped him shoot some “crazy stuff”.

One picture required him to lie underneath concrete ledges as friends on BMX bikes jumped over him: “That was really cool. I trusted the riders, but I was terrified.”

Another time, while trying to capture skateboarders, he slipped on a ledge and gashed his shin. He was more worried about the piece of camera that flew off.

“I thought I had broken my camera,” he said. “I was bleeding profusely from my leg. I was like, ‘My camera needs to be fixed’. People were like, ‘Are you OK?’ I was like ‘I don’t know, I haven’t quite assessed myself yet. I need to check my camera out first’.”

Another time he was photographing a snowboarder when the board slid out and hit him full in the chest. “That hurt a lot,” he said. Another photo taken at sunset at the top of Haleakala Mountain in Maui, Hawaii, shows a phenomenon called the Venus Line. The sky is streaked with blue, yellow and red.

“Just after that was taken I took another one of my favourite photos of the stars moving across the skies,” Zeb said. “It must have been sub-zero, and I was just sitting there trying to get the photo.”

His shots are stored on his website, www.zebwakely.com; he has sold a few of them to stock photography companies.

“I get 50¢ from a stock photograph, every now and then,” he said. “I have to really dedicate myself to it to make any money that way. Especially since I am really selective. I can shoot for a day and only get ten photos that I’m comfortable sharing.

“I’m not Bermudian, so I can’t sell my work here. We’ve been thinking of selling my prints online, for some time.”

Zeb also swims competitively. He is on the national training squad and is team captain for Harbour Amateur Swimming Association. He is a little undecided about his future.

“Right now, I am trying to decide whether to do photography or pursue something else,” he said. “Sports and sports science or maybe physiotherapy appeals to me. The only problem is that photography is a dying art. It is a lot harder to make your way as a photographer, but I do love it enough that I think I could try.

“If I keep on going in the direction I am going I will end up quite well. I am going to keep on entering competitions locally and internationally, and keep on trying to make a name for myself.”