Wayne Quilliam calls himself a dreamer, storyteller and documenter of history. The Tasmanian photographer has an innate ability to capture Indigenous culture in Australia through his camera lens. Wayne’s newest book Culture Is Life captures Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders through a prism of modern Australia. Through protests, celebrations and sport, almost every photo pairs moments of joy or anguish with the harsh Australian landscape. Wayne calls this ghostly, layered image of Yolngu dancers in North-East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory “an artwork within an artwork,” where painted bodies twist and move to the sound of the didgeridoo.
175mm ISO 1600, f/4.5, 1/4000 sec.
Photography Wayne Quilliam
Todd Thimios is an award-winning Australian underwater photographer who has spent his life piloting submarines for Russian billionaires and chasing migratory animals through the Arctic Circle with a camera. This pod of orcas were photographed while Todd was freediving in Norway. He says it was timed to coincide with a stock of herring entering the fjordlands to breed. While cocooned inside his custom made nine-millimetre thick wetsuit, he says there is nothing more magical than freediving Norway’s fjords during winter with little-to-no light and the surrounding mountains lashed by a blizzard of snow.
15mm ISO 3200, f/2.8, 1/300 sec.
Photography Todd Thimios
Brumbies have a complicated place in Australian culture and history, but not for French-born adventure traveller Aliénor le Gouvello, who fell in love with them while living in a remote community near Uluru. This love would lead her to tame three brumbies and take them on the iconic Bicentennial National Trail from Healesville in Victoria to Cooktown in Queensland. This extraordinary trail stretches for 5,330 kilometres along the east coast, and only one woman before her had completed it alone. Sections of Aliénor’s trip – including this one on Bump Track outside Port Douglas – were captured by adventure photographer, Cat Vinton. The book on Aliénor’s journey, Wild At Heart by Affirm Press, is now on shelves.
54mm ISO 2000, f/8, 1/125 sec.
Photography Cat Vinton
Travel photographer Elisha Donkin spent several months exploring Ladakh, a remote part of northern India. On this day she was driving through the Nubra Valley, a high-altitude corridor in the Karakoram Mountains near the Pakistan border. Stopping to enjoy the late afternoon sun among the sand dunes, a group of monks riding double-humped camels (which are only found in this part of India) wandered past. Rare moments like this must be captured.
ISO 200, f/6.3, 1/125 sec.
Photography Elisha Donkin
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