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Creatures of the
SeaChapter 5ACCURACY IS WHAT DRIVES husband-and-wife team Stanley and Kaisa Breeden to point their lenses at Australia’s native plants and wildlife. The couple specialises in macro photography, producing intricately detailed images of the natural world. “We try to take photographs that make people look at
nature differently and, hopefully, then think about their relation-ship with nature differently,” says Kaisa. “Macro photography brings you closer.”born in the Netherlands, and Kaisa, who grew up in the Blue Since they met nearly two decades ago, Stanley, who was
Mountains, New South Wales, have lived in far north Queens-land. They are based on the eastern edge of the Atherton Tableland. Their admi-ration of the region’s tropical rainforest ecosystems inspires much of their work. “The forests there are the country’s old-in the rainforests behind Mt Bartle Frere,
est,” says Stanley. “They are the botanical blueprint of all the diverse habitats now covering Australia.” The couple recently documented the region in their book, motivates us is the sense of wonder we feel when we contem-plate nature,” Kaisa says. “Every time you look, you can discover Rainforest Country. “What
something new. It’s very exciting.” writer, photographer and filmmaker. He has more than 20 books and countless awards under his belt and has worked Since the late 1950s, Stanley has worked as a natural history
on photography and documentary film projects all over the world, including in India, where he had a close encounter with “a cranky tigress” while photographing wild tigers for National Geographic. Kaisa specialises in digital image processing and colour management. “Kaisa’s approach is more experimental,”
says Stanley. “She likes to push the boundaries of what cameras can capture and the photographic process.” Together, the couple make a dynamic team who have pioneered ground-breaking photographic techniques in Australia. “It’s great bouncing ideas off each other,” says Kaisa. “Neither of us could do what we do
without the other.”to capture “the essence of a place or animal; the rocky-ness of rocks, the mothy-ness of a moth, the flowery petally-ness of a field of flowers”. They use their cameras to try to transport Their approach to photography is shaped by their desire
people into wilderness environments. “We want our pictures to give people the feelings that we had when we were there,” says Stanley. To do this, they spend hours at a time in the wilderness with their cameras perched on tripods, shooting and reshootingtheir subjects in natural light. They also aim to produce precise, realistic representations of their subjects. it can be unpredictable,” says Kaisa. Nowadays, she and Stanley achieve high levels of detail using a photographic technique “Natural light is important for realism and subtlety, though
known as focus stacking. This involves superimposing up to 35 frames on top of one another, to produce a single, very sharply focused picture. They combine this technique with dynamic-range photography). To do this, they capture and combine a number of exposures. The technique allows them to (high-
produce pictures that are well exposed and possess deep depths of field, which means they in the frame. “Our aim is to produce pictures that are so clear and detailed, so true to human vision, that you feel you could reach out and touch them,” says Kaisa. are clearly focused at many points
shots. However, capturing their subjects in minute detail is not always easy. “Our challenges are mostly to do with light – light is much harder to handle than snakes,” says Kaisa. The pair have often found themselves in situations where they have needed They also enjoy producing more traditional, single-exposure
to chase shifting shafts of light through the rainforest or race the clock in an effort to complete a set of photographs, “praying we get that last drop of light before it dips below the horizon”. Throughout their careers, they have produced many vivid
photographs of Australia’s plants and animals. Particularly nota-ble are their single-exposure shots of native seed pods. “Seeds are usually good subjects because they tend to stay still,” says Kaisa. “They can also be fabulously coloured.” For their 2006 picture of a Boyd’s rainforest dragon, Stanley and Kaisa were awarded
the 2006 significant to us because it was taken during the time when we felt we were really making some progress in digital photogra-phy, after years of research and experimentation,” says Kaisa. “ Winning the award was a wonderful validation.” top prize (page 39). “This photograph is
to use their work to share their love of the natural world. “It’s very encouraging to have recognition for all your hard work,” says Stanley. “But we also feel very rewarded when our photography is brought to the attention of a wider audience, opening up Competitions such as are valuable opportunities
conversations with all kinds of people from the public to fellow photographers,” he adds. “In all our work, our raison d’être is to encourage people to look differently at nature, and to think about it more closely.”PROFILE
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