Cairns-based photographer Jürgen Freund has been pointing his camera at all creatures great and small for several decades now, and with great success.
He won the 2010 PATA Gold Award for Travel Photography with an image of marine biologist Brad Norman tagging a whale shark at Ningaloo Reef. A spectacular picture of a Minke whale’s eye won the Oceans category of the Nature’s Best Magazine international competition. He has also placed highly in competitions including the World Press Photo Award and UK’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
Yogi, as he is widely known, works with his wife Stella Chiu-Freund. They have published some stunning books that aim to focus attention on valuable and fragile places.
The Coral Triangle is the result of an 18-month expedition undertaken for WWF, documenting the wildlife, land and seascapes of a six million-square kilometer expanse of land and sea encompassing the waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste.
For Sulu-Sulawesi Seas they documented some of the millions of species, from marine mammal behemoths to minute micro-organisms, that live in the eco-region encompassing the waters and islands of Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Closer to home in Cairns, Yogi and Stella are inspired by the rainforests of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area and the neighbouring woodlands and savannah.
In June 2012 they will have returned from another Asian expedition to teach a masterclass in nature photography for James Cook University in Queensland’s far north.
The majority of the week’s classes will be held in the field, visiting the lush forests, crater lakes and extinct volcanoes of the Atherton Tablelands. Yogi will help you capture your best shots of the region’s inspiring flora, fauna, landscapes and waterways.