Brutus Östling was born in December 1958 and grew up in Stockholm but has lived in Skåne for more than twenty-five years. In this time Brutus worked as a full-time publisher at Symposion, which he started himself. He dreamed of becoming a photographer at the age of fourteen or fifteen, but then did not hold a camera for over twenty years.  In 1996 he started diving. A generous award from the Swedish Academy for educational initiatives the following year resulted in advanced equipment for underwater photography, and after almost 100 diving hours in the first year, the first images were taken underwater. Until the autumn of 1999, only underwater pictures mattered, he sold a number of photo reports to dive magazines such as UVM, Dyk and Tauchen. But since 2000, virtually all photography takes place on land.