about us

We are committed to peacefully inspire change within countries who continue to hunt or harm whales, including our own. We document and communicate whales on their scale, sharing our results with children, adults, and policy makers who have had no reason to be moved by whales or their plight.

Our aim is to shift the debate to protect whales from a heavily polarized dynamic of words, numbers, and statistics, to one that encompasses the profound visual reality of the subject whose fate is being discussed; a reality that defies verbal description and remains outside of our awareness.

We invest entire seasons with specific whale populations up to three months annually. We work at the whales' pace, allowing them to set the terms for each encounter, while documenting them with state of the art imaging technology. The results so far have produced the largest and highest resolution photographs of whales in the world that now tour internationally.

 

Bryant Austin, Founder and President

Bryant Austin is fine art photographer who builds relationships with individual whales which allows him to compose high resolution life-size photographs of his subjects. His work is entirely dependent upon whales who initiate close inspections of him less than two meters away and entire seasons are invested annually in search of these moments. When these rare and exceptional encounters occur the artist composes a series of vertically oriented photographs along the whale’s body later to be made into a life size composite photograph. 

This intimate distance has proven necessary to reveal their true colors and tonal range with all of the intricate detail intact; most importantly the subtle expressions in his subject’s eyes.  The process rests on his complete trust of his subjects not to bring him accidental or intentional harm. During these rare and special moments Austin has experienced the whale’s precision movements around his body, gently repositioning their pectoral fins and flukes where they would have otherwise caused injury. Working this intimately with his seven to fifty ton subjects is a delicate process entirely dictated on the terms set by the whale.

The foundations for Austin’s vision began over forty years ago when the NASA Mariner Space Program brought back humanity’s first high resolution photo mosaics of our planets and moons from deep space. The concept of applying NASA’s approach to imaging large bodies as a mosaic instead of just one indivdual photograph, opend the pathway for Austin to produce his life-size photographs of whales.

His vision was brought to light in 2004 with a gentle tap on his shoulder. Floating motionless on snorkel, he turned to look and was eye to eye with a 45 ton female Humpback Whale. She had reached out with her two ton, 15 foot long pectoral fin to gently touch him and to let him know that she was behind him.

Her eye was fully illuminated from the late afternoon sunlight emanating from over his shoulder. Looking into her eye he saw for the first time the calm mindful expression of a whale looking into his own eyes. In that instant he saw clearly what had been missing in the four decade effort to visually communicate the reality of a whale: moments such as these documented on their terms, and on their scale.

Six years later, Austin has composed the largest and most detailed photographs of whales in the world. To accomplish this goal he sold everything he owned and left his job to carry out 125 days of field work with the whales who gave him the inspiration.  His successes are the result of eight very exceptional individual whales across three species who chose to spend time with him at close distances.

Recognizing the fact that almost every country in the world is contributing to the demise of these creatures, his desired audiences are those who have had no reason to be moved by whales or their plight. Knowing that less than one millionth of one percent of the human population will experience what he has with these creatures, his goal is to find inovative ways to reach a broader audience.

His work is exhibited in public and formal spaces internationally to provide humanity with a profound and intimate glimpse of these creatures in a way never before explored or experienced on such a scale. His wish is to provide whales with the opportunity to evoke unexplored thought and feelings in ways where we have struggled to do so  on our own for the past forty years.