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Anticipation
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is like no other Natural Wonder of the World I’ve covered. Rather than one specific destination, it spans a massive 1,200 miles, an area the size of Italy along Queensland’s northwest coast. And so much of it is invisible until you literally dive below the surface. Yet few places on the planet give us a better look at the fantastic natural diversity of our world. Our expedition will take us more than 600 miles north to south, exploring not only what lies below the waves, but also the entire reef ecosystem including freshwater rivers that ring the coast, mangrove swamps, and the gorgeous landscape of the Whitsunday Islands. We’ll fly, sail, drive, hike, and snorkel to capture everything from a bird’s-eye view to a fish-eye view. What a challenge—expressing the beauty and magnitude of this epic and largely underwater Wonder. Even more surprising—this is the lightest I’ve ever boarded an airplane for a photography assignment. All I’m taking into the field is my Surface Pro and three Lumia smartphones. Tackling my most enormous Natural Wonder with the least equipment ever—hard to believe the great things this technology lets me do.
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Taken with a Lumia 950 XL
Anticipation
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is like no other Natural Wonder of the World I’ve covered. Rather than one specific destination, it spans a massive 1,200 miles, an area the size of Italy along Queensland’s northwest coast. And so much of it is invisible until you literally dive below the surface. Yet few places on the planet give us a better look at the fantastic natural diversity of our world. Our expedition will take us more than 600 miles north to south, exploring not only what lies below the waves, but also the entire reef ecosystem including freshwater rivers that ring the coast, mangrove swamps, and the gorgeous landscape of the Whitsunday Islands. We’ll fly, sail, drive, hike, and snorkel to capture everything from a bird’s-eye view to a fish-eye view. What a challenge—expressing the beauty and magnitude of this epic and largely underwater Wonder. Even more surprising—this is the lightest I’ve ever boarded an airplane for a photography assignment. All I’m taking into the field is my Surface Pro and three Lumia smartphones. Tackling my most enormous Natural Wonder with the least equipment ever—hard to believe the great things this technology lets me do.
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Taken with a Lumia 950 XL
Planning, Planning, Planning
So many moving parts: The crazy logistics of shooting on land, sea, and air. Complicated routes covering huge swaths of reef. Local experts to locate and book. And all of it coordinated between me in the U.S. and my biologist-guide half a world away in Australia. Technology was a lifesaver. We used Office 2016 to edit schedules, plans, and budgets together online. He’d clip and paste pictures to show me different locations. We’d open a chat window and collaborate on documents, watching each other’s cursors point to things—a really great experience in dual authoring.
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Taken with a Lumia 950 XL
10/11/15 Cooya Beach, Australia
We’ve started up north with an Aboriginal community who for all human time have lived on this coast and foraged out of the mangrove swamps that fringe the reef here. It’s an incredible landscape and these people understand it so deeply because it’s sustained them for 30,000 years. When the tide goes out, the water drops seven to 10 feet, exposing half a mile of tidal flats. The Aboriginal people head out with spears to find mud crabs, a big food source for the community. These crabs are so muscular and aggressive they can pinch your fingers off!
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Taken with a Lumia 950 XL
10/12/15 Moore Reef, Australia
Wow! We had a great day on Moore Reef today. When we took the boat out at 9 a.m., it was raining and terrible, looked like no chance of good weather. But the farther out to sea we got, the more the weather improved. There’s a permanent pontoon on Moore Reef, so it’s a great place to snorkel. Initially I was worried that we wouldn't see much since we weren't scuba diving. But since coral need sunlight to live, most species thrive in the first 16 feet of water. We had bright sunshine and the reef looked spectacular. We’ve fabricated underwater housings for the Lumia 950 smartphone so we can shoot underwater. Its low light performance in this undersea world is just superb. It’s such a colorful environment, filled with blue coral, parrotfish, and fusilier fish with their vivid yellow tails. The second you stick your head below water it’s fantastic, and the Lumia captures all of it beautifully, perfectly. My local Australian biologist guide, Chris Jones, works for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. It’s great to have him in the water with us, explaining exactly what we’re seeing in the midst of this astounding diversity. We watched parrotfish cleaning dead coral to make a place for new coral to land when there’s a coral bloom—the life cycle of the reef is amazing.
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Taken with a Lumia 950 XL
10/13/15 Hinchinbrook Island, Australia
This morning we caught the boat to Hinchinbrook Island. I don’t think I was prepared for just how big it is. Huge! The high peaks generate a lot of rain and the tallest is almost 3,300 feet. We went to this incredible place called Zoe Bay on the seaward side of the island. One of the creeks that feeds it makes a tall cascade—Zoe Falls. We hiked up to the top where the falls form a big pool. There are rope swings and it was fun to jump in and swim with freshwater fish—the clear rain-filled water felt great. So cool to look out onto Zoe Bay with blue sky, warm sun on the rocks, and the falls stretching below. This was such a peaceful break we never wanted to leave, but on we went. On the 40-minute ride back, our guide Joe took us around the bay. We saw brilliant blue water, mangrove swamps, signs of crocodiles, mullet jumping, and a huge green turtle surfacing. We’re in Townsend now on the waterfront watching the sunset. Gulls calling, sky turning orange, and that magnetic Island floating out in the dusk. As the light changes every second, it’s great to be able to let the Lumia make decisions for me. With 20 years of photographic knowledge in my head, I used to constantly use manual controls. But this camera makes decisions about everything from exposure to white balance the same way I would. While it’s getting the technical issues exactly right, I can concentrate on what to shoot and how to compose. Even at sunset I just let the camera shoot a jpeg because the quality is breathtaking. This Lumia is trying very hard to put me out of a job!
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Taken with a Lumia 950 XL
10/14/15 Moore Reef, Australia
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park uses tour guides as citizen scientists to monitor reef health. Since they’re out on the reef all the time, they can see and record changes far more often and effectively than scientists who can only visit infrequently. The outlook is not good. Coral bleaching, runoff from agriculture, and rising ocean pH are all contributing to the reef's demise. So to have the chance to explore parts that are still healthy and thriving is a real thrill. Our Moore Reef guide, Eric Fisher, is a Ph.D. graduate student and superstar recorder for Eye on the Reef. The environment here is really bright, you’re always in full sun. But even in this flood of sunlight, the Lumia display was easy to view. The resolution is much higher than HD, so the detail is terrific. And underwater, looking through a housing and my own mask, I could still see the bright, sharp display clearly.
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Taken with a Lumia 950 XL
10/15/15, 7 A.M., Abell Point Marina, Australia
I'm here this morning picking up a sailboat for a five-day cruise around the Whitsunday Islands. This is one the hardest natural wonders I’ve ever tried to shoot. How do you capture something bigger than Italy that mostly occurs underwater in just 10 days? But the reef here is amazing! Huge fish, complex coral, giant clams. What’s even more extraordinary is how accessible the marine park makes all of this beauty to everyone. Anyone can go to any of the places I’m exploring and experience as much of this world as you want. You can swim through these same intact coral communities, go into the caves, catch a boat out to pontoons anchored to really good reefs. You could leave right now and be doing this 72 hours later. So remarkable.
This morning we set sail from Airlie beach for the Whitsundays. In many ways, this collection of 74 islands is the heart of the Great Barrier Reef. We’ll spend five days exploring remote beaches, coves, and reefs there to experience a combination of island landscapes and underwater areas all at the same time. It started out raining on land, but the farther we got out among the islands, the better the weather became. It turned into a beautiful morning with a 20 knot breeze, so we sailed without motor. I'd forgotten how much I love being on a sailboat. It’s as if all your stress just washes away into the sea. It took about two and a half hours to reach Pearl Bay, a great pace with clear water 10 feet deep, good coral, and fantastic fish. People have been feeding them here for years so when you get into the water they just emerge. Our guide, Taylor Simpkins, and I swam through them for an hour. The most impressive was this big dark wrasse. It looked so different than the ones we saw on Moore Reef a couple of days ago. I had been worried we’d eat up a lot of Lumia battery power shooting underwater with the display on constantly. Isolated on a boat for five days, I could imagine changing batteries all the time. Instead, the battery was so energy efficient it lasted and lasted. We never charged it one time out in the water. The camera just fired and fired and fired. Since underwater shooting is already so technically challenging, it was a really big deal to not worry about running out of power.
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Taken with a Lumia 950 XL
10/15/15, 7:20 P.M., Stonehaven, Hook Island, Australia
The Whitsundays have to be the prettiest islands I’ve ever seen. Gorgeous water, landscape, and light. This evening I shot a photo of our captain, Chris, driving the Zodiak into our mooring at Stonehaven. There was a little sliver of moon at sunset, and the dynamic range of the Lumia’s lowlight performance exceeded anything I’d imagined. Same thing happened with an image I shot well before dawn when it wasn’t even close to being light yet. You’d never know it from looking at the shot with Chris driving and our boat in the background. I can’t believe what I’m seeing as I review these pictures. The Lumia is great in daylight, but when the sun goes down, it really shines. It sees light very much like my eyeball sees light. So shots aren’t blurry and colors look the way I remember, not monochromatic at all. Water absorbs a lot of light and down in the reefs it gets really dark. If the Lumia didn’t work so well in relative darkness I’d have no images.
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Taken with a Lumia 950 XL
10/17/15 Butterfly Bay Off Hook Island, Australia
This may have been my hardest day yet, but also probably the most memorable experience of the whole assignment. We swam with a sea turtle—such ungainly creatures on land, but in the water they are one of the most graceful I’ve ever seen. The video our videographer, John Burcham, shot of this turtle almost moves me to tears. It just flies through the blue, so beautiful. The biologist who was in the water with us followed the turtle when it went deep. It would see her, rise up, and swim within two or three inches of me. It’s one of those times you wish you could breathe water because you don’t ever want to come back to the surface. The Lumia’s 4K video capture lets me extract a still image from each frame of the video. It’s as though I’m shooting an eight megapixel still frame of any part of the video. These still captures from the turtle video are fantastic. Unfortunately, I cut my shin down to the bone as I swam through rocks covered in barnacles. Blood all over the place. But what I’ll remember about this day isn’t slicing my leg, but the incredible experience of swimming with this turtle.
We also hiked up to see the sunset from Whitsunday Peak. The Lumia held all of the shadow detail in the rocks plus all the detail way out into the sunset, keeping the hues exactly right. I’ve been wearing my Band wrist sensor the whole assignment and really like knowing data like how far I’ve walked and how many calories I’ve burned. Climbing up Whitsunday Peak, I always knew how much farther we had to go, very useful when you’re someplace you’ve never been before. It also helps to get notifications on the Band. No matter where I was I knew if emails were coming in that needed an immediate response. Bright enough so it’s easy to read in full sunlight, too. In fact it even monitors UV and reminds you when to put on sunscreen!
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Taken with a Lumia 950
10/19/15 Whitehaven Beach, Australia
We had the most marvelous light last night on Whitehaven Beach. The beach itself is over five miles of perfect white sand and shallow shore, so the water glows with color. It was one of those times when everything just came together. The right place, wonderful warm light on the beach, and a squall line blowing in behind us right at sunset. The sky turned a bruised purple color and the water lit up with those hues. So gorgeous it was hard to believe. I shot a photo of our guide Taylor Simpkins—just a jpeg out of the camera with no processing at all—and her skin tones are perfect. Any camera can struggle to reproduce skin tones, so to get this from a smartphone is just amazing. We anchored off the beach last evening and came ashore this morning for the sunrise. The wind is up and we've had rain and rainbows. Now at the end of our journey, I am overwhelmed by the diversity of life we’ve witnessed. In some places like Hardy Reef, upper parts of the reef are at sea level and waves break right on top, with water channels cutting through, and then great depths below. This mixing together of very deep and very shallow water is what makes the reef so phenomenally fertile. You could spend your entire life studying it and just scratch the surface.
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Taken with a Lumia 950 XL
Final Reflections
Looking back, I am awed by how vast the Great Barrier Reef truly is. As the largest coral reef on earth, the interwoven community of plants and animals it supports is so complex and enormous—experiencing it made me feel like a very tiny part of a very large world. Exploring the double wonder of island landscapes above the sea, and the reef realm below, was extraordinary. And more than ever, the quality images this Lumia smartphone produced simply stun me. Staggering detail, vividly true colors, phenomenal low light capacity—this phone is the future. Having all our technology synch up is the only way we carried off such a complicated assignment so productively. Using Windows 10 across all platforms let me make underwater photos on the same device I used to answer email. Maps I uploaded to my Surface Pro showed up on my smartphone. Getting images from the Lumia to OneDrive was seamless, and knowing everything was backed up in the cloud was a huge relief. Timing, weather, and opportunities change constantly on an expedition like this. So being able to share schedules, OneNote journal updates, and each day’s images with our team—and get instant input—kept us all up to speed. And kept me focused on capturing our most unique Wonder yet.
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Taken with a Lumia 950 XL
