Cherished viewers, welcome to today’s Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants featuring photographer Bryant Austin of the United States, who has produced the world’s first life-size photographs of whales. From World Ocean Day, June 8 to September 8, 2010, his collection of whale photos is on exhibit in Lofoten, Norway.

Mr. Austin hopes that his close-up images will help change people’s perceptions about these ocean giants, particularly in whaling nations and eventually lead to a total ban on whaling activities around the world. Director Kate Miller has produced a documentary entitled “A Short Film: In the Eye of the Whale” about Bryant Austin’s laudable project.

I’ve been an artist most of my life engaged in many mediums, but photography captures a reality that’s beyond our imagination, what nature creates for hundreds of millions of years on this planet. So much of that is beyond our imagination and the camera can just document that without this filter getting in the way. And I think it’s more wondrous than our own imagination, so photography helps with that.

My current project is the production of life-size high resolution photographs of whales to be exhibited in whaling nations. And the way I work with them is about five feet away from them. And it’s all on their terms and it’s very rare encounters and circumstances. It takes months and months to achieve.

With the whales, I snorkel and it’s mostly at the surface. It’s only the rare times when I come across a whale with exceptional behavior that I can dive down.

When I find a friendly or an inquisitive, accepting whale, that’s when you could enter that third dimension of depth and engage them. I’ve only done it twice and it’s incredible. You start to feel… once you lose the surface of the ocean, and enter that third dimension of depth, you really feel like you’re in space and you’re floating with this 50-ton animal, rolling around you, looking at you. It’s just really incredible, sort of a dance, in three dimensions.

In all his trips to the ocean, Bryant Austin is accompanied by his field assistant, Diana Hay, who will now share her thoughts on the wonderful whales.

Encountering whales is very, very special. One of the things I couldn’t get over the whole time is how big they are. They’re really, really big. And you’ll see them in water and they’ll be at a distance, and you’ll be (saying), “Oh, they’re big.” And then they get closer and go, “Oh, they’re really big.”

Dr. Roger Payne who’s one of the first biologists to begin studying whale social biology, talks of this phenomenon called the 10-foot arrier, and that people love seeing whales in the water, but when they come up to about 10 feet; it’s too overwhelming. There’s just something about their presence that’s so overwhelming.

When you’re in the water with the whales, do they actually come up and brush against you or touch you?

I was watching a smaller whale in front of me, and I felt a gentle touch on my back, and I turned to look, and I was eye to eye with a 50-ton female Humpback Whale, who was behind me. She’s bigger than a school bus, and she extended her 15-foot pectoral fin, which was like your arm, to reach out and touch me and let me know that she was behind me, that I ended up accidentally between her and her calf. I was just floating, they swam around me, and the calf swam in front of me so I was in between them. And that’s when I was so struck, I was so close to a whale’s eye, less than 10 feet.

I was so close to her, and her expression in her eye was so calm and mindful. She was no longer a whale to me; she was simply, conscious, very aware. And it was a life-changing moment, and led to all the work I do now.

And what are some of the other touching stories or experiences that you’ve had?

I got into water to photograph a mother calf. And I was photographing the mother below me, she was about 10 feet below me, and she was looking up at me, and as she was looking up at me her eye kind of widened, and I noticed that, and then as that happened, I felt a presence on my back. I was floating at the surface, and her calf swam up right behind me and rested his head on my back, and he gently brought his pectoral fin around my body and held me.

He wrapped it around me, and we just floated together, motionless, while I breathed through my snorkel, and he was breathing through his blowhole. And I didn’t want to move, I didn’t want to startle him, because there is a chance they could hurt you accidentally, they’re so big and powerful. And my friend, my assistant was in the water with me, and she gently pulled me aside. And that was one of those bizarre timing of events that just stays with me till this day.

When we return, Bryant Austin will discuss whale protection and preservation. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants here on Supreme Master Television, featuring Bryant Austin and his amazing, life-size photos of whales, which are now on exhibit in Lofoten, Norway, until September 8, 2010. These photos reflect Mr. Austin’s hope to inspire people to save the world’s dwindling populations of whales.

What is the family life for whales? Can we talk a little about the interactions, for example, between the parents and the children and also the whale communities.

Whale communities, whale social biology has only been studied for the last 40 years so there’s still a lot that isn’t known. And I’m particularly fond of the Sperm Whale and they’re a lot like elephants, in that they’re matriarchal. And so the mother leads the group, the family, and they develop very slowly, the young will stay with the mother until they’re about 11 years of age, and then they eventually will go on their own and form bachelor groups with other males and then eventually the males become solitary animals. They can live to be 80, so they’re very much like us but they’re aquatic and still a mystery.

It’s also interesting to note that the speed at which whales travel depends on their position in the family. Observers at Hervey Bay, Australia, have found that groups of older, juvenile humpback whales pass the east coast of Australia each year earlier than do mature males, and then soon after the mothers follow with their calves as they make their way to their summer feeding grounds in the Antarctic Ocean.

And regarding migration back to the north, Blue Whales have been known to send off the older and pregnant whales first with the father whales staying behind with the older juveniles until they’re ready to migrate. We asked Bryant Austin to talk more about his favorite whale species and his interactions with them.

I love all of them, but the Sperm Whale in particular, they possess the largest brain ever to exist on our planet. It can be seven times the size of our own, 21 pounds. And the Sperm Whale has been in existence 20-million years. That’s a very long time compared to our arrival, which was 200,000 years ago.

And they’re complex social animals, whose communication and social biology we don’t understand yet. And I’ve been closer to them than you and I, eye to eye, and I’ve had them press the front of their head against my body, and acoustically scan me, to where they can see my beating heart inside my body, and then they would lean over to the side and move forward so their eye can meet mine, and there’s something there and the thought of never knowing what’s there and losing that in this century is a devastating thought, it’s one of my motivations to share that worldwide.

What is happening with whale populations worldwide? Are they decreasing?

Some are decreasing, some are on the brink of extinction and may disappear in this century for the first time in recorded human history. Others are stable but they face a lot of uncertainly, with climate change, with fisheries on the brink of collapse in the next decade. There’s a lot that remains to be seen, a lot we don’t know what will happen.

Whaling is the primary reason we have so few whales. In the middle of last century within the span of maybe two human generations, we decimated most large whale species anywhere from 20 to two percent of their original population, so there are very few remaining, and those few now face even far more difficult issues threatening their environment.

You look at the Gray Whale, the Western North Pacific Gray Whale, that travels through Japan and Russia, there are only 100 left and they may go extinct. The Gray Whale’s one of the oldest living mammals alive today. That population could go extinct in this century, easily.

A distressing occurrence that is sometimes seen is whales beaching or stranding themselves on land. What causes them to take this drastic action? We asked Mr. Austin for his perspective.

That’s been observed throughout our recorded history, and there are a lot of reasons. In the modern day, you’ll see whales that will beach themselves from lethal noise pollution, from navy sonar that’s so powerful that their brain will hemorrhage and they’ll bleed through their eyes. And they’re so distressed that they just beach themselves, and they die. There are other reasons, too, that we don’t really understand.

As Bryant Austin explains, it’s now up to us to save the whales for future generations.

We’re the last generation who will ever be in this position to ensure that whales will be around for thousands and thousands of years to come. No future generations will have these opportunities and it’s really what we do right now that’s going to ensure that they will be here. Many may go extinct in this century for the first time in recorded human history if more isn’t done. So it’s really my hope that in my lifetime we’ll be able to achieve the full scope of our mission and bring whales into our collective mind and ensure that they’re a part of our lives for thousands and thousands of years to come.

Thank you Mr. Bryant Austin for taking the time and effort to speak to us about your unique whale photography. The images you have taken are uplifting and beautiful.

For more information on Bryant Austin and his life-size whale portraits, please visit: www.StudioCosmos.com or www.MMCTA.org To view “A Short Film: In the Eye of the Whale” please visit Vimeo.com/7173679

Please join us tomorrow on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants for the second and final part of this series. Thank you friendly viewers for your company today. Up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News. May animals continue to fill our oceans with their magnificent, loving presence!

Honored viewers, welcome to today’s Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants featuring the second program in a two-part series on photographer Bryant Austin of the United States, who has produced the world’s first life-size photographs of whales.

From World Ocean Day, June 8 to September 8, 2010, his collection of whale photos is on exhibit in Lofoten, Norway. Mr. Austin hopes that his close-up images will help change people’s perceptions about these ocean giants, particularly in whaling nations and eventually lead to a total ban on whaling activities around the world.

Director Kate Miller has produced a documentary entitled “A Short Film: In the Eye of the Whale” about Bryant Austin’s laudable project. Having spent countless hours in the water with these tender beings, Mr. Austin now describes the amazing songs he has heard sung by the Humpback Whales in the context of courtship.

Have you had experiences observing the courtship?

I have with the Humpback Whales. And what’s interesting about Humpbacks is the males compose songs, and each population had their own song and it’s different every year. And it evolves during the mating season. And it can be heard up to 15 miles away. And we really don’t understand what it’s for, and reasons for it. But I was with a female Humpback Whale and a male escort and the male escort was right next to her like this.

And instead of booming the song really loud, which is what they do, and it fills your whole body, your body vibrates when you’re above them while they’re singing, it’s incredible, he was whispering the song to her in a very soft (way). And that song I believe lasted 20 minutes, and is composed with all the same qualities of human musical compositions. They rhyme, they do; it’s just amazing. But he was whispering to her.

And I had never seen that before. I was with a biologist at the time who studies whales’ social biology, Libby Eyre, who’s based in Australia, and she was in tears. It was just such a remarkable experience to have the privilege to see that.

And do you listen to recordings of whales, the different songs?

I do and the songs are different every year. And I’ve spent four seasons in the South Pacific, in the Kingdom of Tonga and when I hear a song from that time, I know what year it was. And I have an emotional response to it. I knew if that was a rough year for me, or if we had a really good time that year, it brings back fond memories.

And what is it like to see the interactions of whales among one another within their own family? What does that feel like?

It’s remarkable. They’re very social, and they’re very tactile. Like with the Humpback Whales, I’ve seen them resting together, and one whale will put his pectoral fin, which is like our arm, he’ll put it over another whale and they’ll just rest like this. Or sometimes their pectoral fins will cross and they’ll just touch and rest on each other like this.

I’ve seen a mother Humpback Whale with her calf, her calf would lie on the sandy bottom, and the mother would come down and lie on top of the calf, as if she was helping him practice holding his breath and they would just stay there together. So they’re very social, I see us in them so often.

Let’s now learn how Bryant Austin produces his images of whales.

To make life-size photographs of a whale, I’ve found over the years I have to be six feet away and it has to be on their terms. So I spend up to three months with a specific population and I wait for them to come to me and I’m very slow and passive. Everything about what I do in the water is consistent and predictable for them and that applies to my vessel.

So we encourage them, we find ways to encourage them to come up to me very closely and when they do, that’s when I begin taking the photographs of their eye, and then I begin photographing their body in sections, up to 15 photographs. And so there’s a lot of trust, because at six feet, and with the camera to my face, I can’t really see what’s going on around me. And their pectoral fins that are on the sides, like our arms, they’ll pass underneath my body as I’m making these photographs, we’re so close. So, there’s a lot of trust, mutual trust.

Mr. Austin’s field assistant Diana Hay has a story about an amazing photo of a group of whales taken by Bryant. Here’s Ms. Hay to tell us how the situation unfolded.

When that encounter was about to happen, I could hear my heartbeat. And then to look at that animal in the eye was a deep sense of awe, definitely was a deep sense of awe. What happened is, Bryant kept swimming towards them and I was hoping that they would go towards him, because he’s the one who needs to be close to them. Well, for some reason, they thought I was more interesting. So they swam under him, and then they began to surface and come towards me. Luckily they didn’t surface all the way and that’s when Bryant took that photograph.

When we return, we’ll see more magnificent photographs of whales by Bryant Austin. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants here on Supreme Master Television, featuring Bryant Austin and his amazing, life-size photos of whales, which are now on exhibit in Lofoten, Norway, until September 8, 2010. These photos reflect Mr. Austin’s hope to inspire people to save the world’s dwindling populations of whales.

You take a series of photos along their body to make a full life-size composite. It takes about 100 hours to blend them together. And this whale wanted me to touch him and I wouldn’t touch him. And so he took the front of his head, which is the size of your front door of your house, and pushed it up against my body until I pushed off of him and touched it with my hand. And then I swam over to his eye to look at him and that’s when I began making some close-up portraits of his eye as he was studying me.

And would you tell us about this photograph that we’re now looking at? You said that it is a Minke Whale.

The Minke Whale, yes. It was really important to me to work with the Minke Whales. They’re the most heavily hunted whale in the world. I think probably more than 25,000 have been hunted and killed since the global ban on whaling. It just breaks my heart to think a wild creature that’s so friendly, so inquisitive and so gentle to me, that my species is bringing so much suffering to them.

It was just last year that I received funding to work with them and there is one female in particular that I spent five days with, up to six hours a day. I composed over 300 photographs of her body. I made portraits of her eye. I produced my largest life-sized composite photograph of her. It measures seven by 30 feet And that photograph just débuted in Norway last month. So I’m very grateful for that.

As part of your work in raising awareness about the plight of the whales and also whaling, do you travel to different nations and speak with some of the whaling communities?

I do, I exhibit within whaling communities. Right now, we’re focusing on Norway, and our fourth exhibition is up right now. It’s a public space exhibition, our first one, and it reaches 200,000 people a day. And it began during the opening of the whaling season. And this isn’t something that’s antagonistic or polarizing, it’s a pro-whale campaign. And they have exclusive access, the largest, most detailed photographs of whales premiere in these countries.

And audiences in whaling nations are my teachers, because if I can get through to them in a peaceful way that’s positive, there’s hope that I can create a new model for change, one that can be applied worldwide to the far more difficult issues whales face. So people in whaling nations have become my most important teachers.

What are some of the comments you’ve heard from people glancing at these photos for the first time?

The thing that strikes them most is the closeness of the photographs, that I’m so close to them. And that really draws out their curiosity and fascination about whales. And then I can engage them on that level, and then we could talk about whaling. But the idea that they’re so gentle and they take such great care not to harm me when we’re six feet away from each other, on their terms of course, and that’s had the most profound impact so far in these countries. I didn’t foresee that. I was always concerned about being that close to whales. I didn’t want to be that close. I tried at 10 feet.

I simply wasn’t able to make the photographs life-sized. The detail and tonal range is lost. The color is lost at that distance, so it’s interesting how that transpired. The closeness is what’s captivating my audiences most of all.

There’s a lot about whales that what we may never know and can lose. They’re complex, social animals with communication that we’ve been studying for four decades that we don’t even have a clue, yet. Carl Sagan once said that we are a way for the cosmos to know itself, meaning we’re basically, the cosmos becoming self-aware. I think that’s something we could benefit from, tremendously.

Thank you Bryant Austin and Diana Hay, for your hard work and devotion to producing and promoting images of the true nature of whales to help save these precious beings that bless our planet. May these awe-inspiring photographs continue to reach the hearts of people around the world.

For more details on Bryant Austin and his life-size whale portraits, please visit: or To view “A Short Film: In the Eye of the Whale” please visit

Thank you for joining us today on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News. May the songs of the ocean bring soothing calmness to your being!