It is achieved by placing one light, high at the front and to one side, with another light source placed on the other side, but at about half the height. Rembrandt lighting is characterised by an illuminated triangle under the eye of the subject on the less illuminated side of the face. Finally, I could achieve my lighting using very minimal and very portable equipment – basically two lights on stands with soft boxes, or alternatively, one light on a stand with a soft box, and a reflector. Secondly, I could use the darkness of the night and a clearing in the bush to achieve a perfectly black background. Firstly, I could easily set up everything beforehand. Then, all going well, I would simply wait for Josh to collect a platypus, walk through my in-field studio, get him to stop for few seconds and take a few images – as simple as that.Īs well as giving the intimate feel I was hoping for, choosing Rembrandt lighting had three practical benefits. My strategy was to set up “Rembrandt lighting” between a stream where Josh might collect a platypus and his research vehicle. As such, I decided to try an in-field portrait of Josh with a platypus. Human-driven habitat destruction, pollution, as well as increasing droughts, flood and bushfires now threaten a beloved species that, until recently, has managed to live peacefully in our rivers and streams for millions of years.īecause of this, I wanted to try to create at least one image that portrayed a positive and strong connection between a caring human and a platypus, as well as one that could (potentially) be used in reporting and conservation campaigns. But sadly, I also learned how they had been quietly disappearing from our rivers. Spending time in the field with Josh and other researchers, my love for the platypus grew. A few years ago, when I was asked to take some photographs of platypuses in the field with Joshua Griffiths – one of Australia’s top platypus researchers – I felt like all my career stars had aligned. But it was more than 20 years before I ticked the other one. Soon after I graduated as a zoologist in the 1980s, one of my first jobs was studying the diving physiology of platypus, so I ticked that box pretty early. One was to become a zoologist and work with platypus the other was to be a professional wildlife photographer. When I was young there were two things I always wanted to do.
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