“I went to Tonga, doing my own thing. I’d seen people swim with whales over there. I wanted to do it and have taken some of the best pictures of my life since then. 2014 was a great year in my Photography.
It was July 26, 2016, and we heard Migaloo was coming up past Yamba. I sort of calculate the distance between Yamba and Byron Bay, then work out the average cruising speed of a whale which is around about 11 km an hour. We thought he would be in Byron so Dad and I got up and went out off the cape at 6.30am. About 9am we hadn’t seen him and there wasn’t many whales around. We were having a cup of soup and were thinking he’d gone wide out to sea. I looked north and saw a red dot and realised it was the Channel 7 helicopters at Brunswick Heads 10kms north of us. We got up there and it was Channel 7 filming Migaloo. They were our spotter in a way. We were about 400 metres away and we slowly travelled north with him. He was breaching, it was so beautiful. We stuck with him for about 30 mins and then he disappeared. I said to Dad…Just turn the engine off. With my experience with Hump Back Whales in Tonga, if you turn the engine and the echo sounder off and limit the noise they sometimes get quite curious. All of a sudden he came out of nowhere and rested right next to our boat. I stuck my arm over the side of the boat with my water housing. He was only 2 metres away from my camera. It was pretty special. He turns 31 this year. That was definitely a pinnacle in my career, photographing him. I won an award for that image in 2017. It was an International award for underwater photo of the year. It was against 10,000 other photos so it was pretty cool. That image has become a talking point. People come into the gallery to see Migaloo. He’s so symbolic to this area.
I’ve had a few close calls. To take these photos of whales and turtles, I have to free dive. I don’t scuba, I hold my breath. In early 2016, I hadn’t had any lessons in free diving so I didn’t really understand the science of it. I knew there was a danger to it. I went out at Julian Rocks with a friend who was scuba diving. I was above him, diving down, and he would occasionally film or take a photo of me doing some things for one of my sponsors. He was down about 15 metres and I was regularly going down to him, up and down, up and down but I wasn’t recovering properly so the carbon dioxide in my bloodstream would have been quite high. I was swimming against the current and I was trying get down to him as much as I could. I go down to 20 metres a lot but this was only 12 metres. I looked at my watch, it was one of my watch sponsors so he was filming my watch. I knew I had to get up as I was running out of breath. As I was coming up, about 5 metres from the surface I started feeling this unusual, beautiful feeling, so calm and I could feel my legs go extremely weak. My brain triggered, somethings wrong. I had heard about shallow water blackout. I’m saying to myself..Don’t fall asleep Craig! Then my vision started going and the weakness got worse. I got to the surface and it really shook me up as I knew I was right on the brink of shallow water blackout. Sometimes it happens even after a couple of breaths on top so I was taking deep breaths. I floated on my back just in case and luckily I was ok. I went and did my free diving certificate just after that. My wife was pregnant at the time so that was a massive wake up call for me.
I’ve swum with a 15 foot male Tiger Shark in Hawaii for an hour. By the end of that my adrenalin was worn out. Time to get out of the water. I was free diving with it. I had Ocean Ramsay and a team with me. They are the people who swam with the biggest Great White Shark ever recorded in Hawaii. They’re the people who took me out so I was there with experts but still, they can only do so much. I deliberately swam with Tiger sharks because I understood that in my occupation I need to be prepared for anything, to be prepared to not over react. To also know how to react when I encounter a shark. If I hadn’t had that experience I most likely would panic if I saw a shark but now I don’t. I stay calm and I know what to look for in their body language. If they’re skinny, they’re the ones you need to look out for. Sharks that are compromised, either they haven’t eaten for a long time, they’re injured or they are half blind. If a shark’s back is arched up and their pectoral fins are brought inwards it means you are in their territory. Like a dog. If they start coming at you then turning away aggressively you need to leave after that first pass. If you don’t heed the warning it could be a problem. Generally if they are going to attack they will bite on the 3rd pass. You never take your eyes off a shark, always keep eye contact. They love it when you don’t have eye contact. It’a a bit like ..What’s the time Mr Wolf? I practised it with smaller sharks in Mexico. I turned my back and became more submissive and they came much closer.
I’ve had the gallery here in Byron for 3 years now. I’m married with 2 children. My wife Kate is from Melbourne and she’s been here 5 years. We have a one year old and a three year old who come travelling with me now. We went to Europe for a month and swam with the Orcas in Norway. There was a lot of snow and Leo and Isla got to sit on a sleigh pulled by reindeer which was really cool. This year Leo will be 4 years old by the time I get to Tonga again so I’m going to try and get him in the water with the whales. He’s good at swimming now. He can swim underwater so we just have to get him used to a snorkel and goggles and that will be a great experience to share.
Business is going well, the gallery is going strong. My commercial work is strong as well. I’ve been working with Chris Hemsworth a lot on a couple of his projects locally which has been nice. I don’t do weddings anymore, I just stick with nature. I do lots of workshops, I teach people photography. I take people to Tonga to swim with the whales with me. I do Africa trips as well. Last October I took 7 people into Botswana. I love teaching people photography and I get a holiday out of it as well.”