The Pro Interview

Underwater specialist Jem Cresswell talks to David Clark about his photography, his love of the ocean and what it’s like to swim alongside 50ft whales

Underwater specialist Jem Cresswell on the joys of diving up close with whales

Jem Cresswell has spent much of his life in and around water, and that’s still where he does most of his photography. The 32-year-old Australian has shot a wide range of underwater wildlife, as well as lifestyle, boating and even underwater portraits. His personal projects have ranged from underwater nudes to abstract sub-aqua studies of shapes and patterns in sea water.

His biggest personal project to date is Giants, a series of stunning black and white images focusing on humpback whales during their annual migration from feeding grounds in the Antarctic to the warmer waters of Tonga in the South Pacific. Here, he talks about his work and how his fascination with the ocean goes back to his early years growing up on the South Australian coastline…

Did the environment in which you grew up have a big influence on your work?

Definitely. I grew up in Adelaide, but I spent most of my youth camping and surfing along the coast. The coastlines of the Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas in South Australia are both very rugged, barren areas, and are where the desert meets the sea. The years camping, exploring and

surfing with my friends gave me a sense of freedom and a sense of escape. I guess I still search for that in everything I do. I always try to get back to those roots, away from people, in places where you feel small and insignificant again.

When did you start taking photographs professionally?

I bought my first underwater camera when I was 17, then started shooting my friends surfing and sent my photos to surfing magazines. I just kept hounding them with more slides and, in the end, they ran out of excuses and had to publish some. From there, I started shooting for a variety of different surf magazines and ended up working for them for seven years, and was a senior photographer for two magazines. Eventually, I realized I couldn’t take surfing images for the rest of my life, with all the print magazines I was working for slowly shutting down.

How did you develop your career?

I wanted to make a career out of photography and never considered doing anything else. I had to take it more seriously, so I put everything I had in my car and drove to Sydney. I spent the next four or five years assisting, mostly working with four particular photographers. I loved assisting and did my own photography work on the side. After a while, I started picking up more and more commercial work, and it helped that I had this niche skill in underwater photography.

How did you first get into shooting underwater?

I used to be really scared of being underwater. When I put a diving mask on, or went for a snorkel, it just freaked me out how big it was under there. I just would rather not know about it, especially as I grew up on the coast of South Australia, the home of the great white shark. After a while, that intrigue led to me wanting to see more and I turned it around the other way – from being scared to just absolutely loving it.

What did you love about it?

It was a whole new perspective and, for me, like going into a completely different world. With other types of photography, you can control the elements to some degree, but with underwater work, you can only shoot what’s there. It was like learning photography again, I guess. People seem particularly interested in underwater imagery, as it’s something they wouldn’t normally see.

What gave you the idea for the Giants series?

Whales are just incredible creatures. I love all whales, but the humpback whale

i used to be really scared of being underwater. it just freaked me out how big it was under there

particularly is one that people are most often drawn to. I was fascinated by the discovery, in 2006, that the humpback whale brain contains three times the number of spindle cells as the human brain. In humans, spindle cells are responsible for cognitive skills, empathy and social organization. We can’t say that whale spindle cells do exactly the same things as in humans, but a lot of humpback whale behaviour supports the theory. They have intricate social networks and complex songs, and, having spent a lot of time around them, it’s very obvious to me how emotional they are.

You’ve also said the series is “a play on anthropomorphism”…

Yes, for me it’s really interesting that we’re drawn to particular kinds of wildlife. Whenever we look at animals, we subconsciously look at the human emotion that the wildlife seems to be exhibiting, then relate that to how we think it’s feeling. I wanted to see if people would have a human sense of emotion about these images, even though it’s not a human subject. I also wanted to see if you could identify with a whale’s character or tell if they’re conscious creatures.

How did you go about photographing them?

Around the islands I visit mid-season, there are hundreds of whales, but for me it was all about finding interactive whales. They are gentle giants and very curious; you can tell from their behaviour and body language whether they want you there or not. I have a really amazing guide who’s been swimming with whales for around 20 years and, while he’s not a marine biologist, he has a wealth of knowledge regarding their behaviour. I always trust his experience to guide us into the best situations possible.

How do you behave when you’re up close to the whales?

Most of the time when I get in the water, I will act dead and make sure I’ve got a super-low heart rate. The whale knows I’m there and seems to be wondering what kind of creature I am and what I’m doing. It can see I’m not afraid, my heart rate’s not changing and I’m obviously not a threat. Once a whale gets comfortable with me being there, I approach slowly and take my time to move in closer. A lot of the photos where I’m very close to a whale have been taken when it has come over to check me out. It usually maintains eye contact with me the whole time, and that has allowed me to capture the images I was after. By the third year of the project, I was so much more in sync in the water that I had just unbelievable experiences with the whales. I swam multiple times with the same whales. I might swim with a particular mother and calf four or five times over a season.

What made you choose to present the whale images in black and white?

When I convert the images to black and white, the deep blue tropical water goes completely pitch black and just kind of suspends the whales, isolates them. I feel it just draws your eye straight into the subject without any distractions. It also has a timeless quality. Whales are prehistoric creatures, so for me the series just had to go into black and white.

Which photographers in particular inspired your work?

David Doubilet was by far my biggest inspiration. I had never seen images that show both over and under the water until I saw his work. How his images related the world above the water to the world

the Canon EOS 5Ds R is definitely a quirky camera, but i just love it

below amazed me. I also love the work of Nick Brandt and another National

Geographic wildlife photographer, Paul Nicklen.

What were the first cameras you ever owned?

My first underwater camera was just a point-and-shoot 35mm Sea & Sea MX-5. After that, I bought my first proper camera, a Canon EOS-3, which I used for my early surfing work. I had a carbonfibre housing made for it in the United States by Dale Kobitech. After that, my first digital camera was the Canon EOS-1D Mark II.

So, which cameras are you currently using?

I use a Canon EOS 5DS R and a 5D Mk III. Shooting on the 5DS R is pretty much the same as shooting on the 5D Mk III, but you get a file that’s twice as big. The 5DS R is definitely a quirky camera; it’s slow to focus underwater and does a few bizarre things at times, but I just love it. It also fits in the same housing as the Mk III. If I’m doing a commercial shoot and it’s going to be used on a billboard, I’ll use the 5DS R and all my usual lenses, and give them a much larger result. I use Canon’s EF 14mm f/2.8l, which is

great for under/over images, and the EF 16-35mm f/4l IS mainly for swimmers, divers and wildlife underwater. I use the EF 24-70mm f/2.8l II the most. It’s a great all-rounder, which I use for tighter underwater portraits, while still having the option of shooting slightly wider-angle images. Under water, objects appear around 33% larger and 25% closer. Above the water, apart from those lenses, I use the EF 70-200mm f/2.8l, which is great for shooting portraits of someone along the surface – a surfer sitting on a surfboard, for example – and helps isolate them from the background.

Do you prefer primes or zooms?

A lot of people use primes, but I really like the zooms, as they give me more leeway and allow me to frame the subject better. You never know what’s going to happen underwater. It also means all your images from one session won’t look the same.

Which underwater housing do you prefer to use?

I use an Aquatech housing, which is an incredibly simple housing and is really light and easy to use. I’ve modified it to put my own strobes on it. Whilst dive housings have a lot more engineering and allow you to use a lot more buttons, I like the lightness of the Aquatech housing. Most professional underwater photographers would laugh at it because everyone uses the $10,000 dive housings. I just use the $2,000 housing, which does everything I need. Usually I photograph in the top 10 metres of water, so I don’t currently need a deeper dive housing.

What’s your favourite gadget when it comes to photography?

I love the iphone app called Sun Seeker. The path of the sun is overlaid over your phone’s camera. This tells you where the sun is going to be at any time of day, and it automatically updates, wherever you are. It’s an ultra-handy camera nerd app for location scouting and working out the best time of day to photograph a subject.

Do you tend to do much postprocessing on your images?

I just use Lightroom and Photoshop. I also use a few other plug-in programs like Alien Skin, but only if someone needs a particular grade on an image that’s different to what I might do in Lightroom or Photoshop. Mostly I just do standard image editing.

Did you use strobe lighting?

I do have all my own underwater lighting, but I didn’t use anything but natural light for the Giants project. It’s illegal to use strobes with whales. It’s also illegal to

the whale knows i’m there and seems to be wondering what kind of creature i am and what i’m doing

scuba, because when a whale blows out air bubbles, it’s usually a sign of aggression. It’s particularly seen in male courtship battles, known as ‘heat runs’. Using only natural light makes it difficult to freeze them in motion; almost all my photos are taken in the top five metres of water. Once they go deeper, the water is so blue that the exposure and distance to the subject becomes more problematic.

What inspired your two abstract series of images, and

Perpetual Flow Effervescent?

The textures and patterns I’ve seen underwater have always fascinated me. I’ve dived under big waves and seen the explosion and all the bubble trails and patterns that are created. I just wanted to capture that in Perpetual Flow using long exposures, to reflect the fact that the ocean is a constantly moving body of water. In Effervescent, I just wanted to freeze those moments. These images are very chaotic and there are so many things going on that you don’t know where to look. But I kind of like that.

What photographic project are you currently working on?

I’m doing something on the Great Barrier Reef. I’m looking at a particular subject on the reef in a really abstract way, but until I get that completely sorted, I don’t want to say too much about it. The coral bleaching and what’s going on environmentally on the reef is very disturbing to me. I’m really concerned with conservation, but I don’t want to be pushing any messages too hard on to people. Hopefully, the Giants project will encourage people to appreciate and want to protect nature further.

If you were starting out today, what would you do differently?

I would assist much earlier. I had worked in photography for several years and

thought I knew a bit about it, then started assisting on big jobs and felt I actually knew nothing. Assisting was just such a great way to learn from experienced people. I would highly recommend it to anyone who’s serious about photography. You learn things that just can’t be taught on a course.

What has been your greatest moment in photography?

The best thing has been the whole journey – the experiences I’ve had and the people I’ve met through photography. It’s made me look at life in a different way and taught me to appreciate other forms of life and other cultures. I thought by now I might be getting over photography, but the drive and the desire to improve has just got stronger.

the textures and patterns i’ve seen underwater have always fascinated me