Friday Inspiration: Bryant Austin

sperm-whale

I stopped in at The Focus Gallery recently and while I was there saw the image above created by Bryant Austin. The image was awe inspiring – ~ 5ft x 20ft. Truly immersive and a fitting presentation for images of the largest mammals on the planet.

Austin, a California based photographer, has spent over 10 years working out how to take compelling photographs of whales – images that could really move someone, that reflect the experience of being in the water with the massive mammals. To achieve this goal he evolved his approach, from shooting off the coast in the US to more tropical settings, the gear he used, from film to digital, from fish-eye lenses to traditional portrait lenses and built computers able to handle the resulting files. His talk at Google that I’ve included below is a fascinating insight into what it takes to pursue a dream and what you can achieve if you’re prepared to go all in.

Check out the gallery of Austin’s work here and click here for a book of his work.

Friday Inspiration: Chris Jordan

Why do we photograph? There are at least as many answers to this question as there are photographers. Chris Jordan‘s work shines a bright light on American Consumerism and it’s impact on the environment. The work that I most personally connect with are his photographs of the baby albatrosses on the Midway atoll in the pacific. The baby albatrosses’s stomachs are filled with plastic that their parents have mistakenly fed them with plastic from the Pacific Garbage Patch causing them to starve to death. The midway video can be seen below.