“The results of a remarkable quest by two Australian photographers to observe and record the lives and behaviour of some of the world’s whales have just become available in a book, LOOKING FOR WHALES, published by Halstead Press and endorsed by Australian Geographic.
Wade Hughes is not merely a wildlife photographer, but an underwater artist with the camera, who has been diving since his youth. His wife Robyn is also an award-winning nature photographer. They have chosen photos from their black and white collection, taken underwater and above, which illustrate whales being themselves in different moods and phases of life. Nowhere before has there been such an uncontrived and revealing visual presentation of whales in their natural realm, introduced by such well-informed explanations of the experience of associating with them.” Australian Geographic
ANZEC Member - Wade Hughes
Wade was elected to the Explorers Club as a Member in New York in 2004, and reclassified as a Fellow in 2022. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
He has mounted two Explorers Club Flag Expeditions to the Azores #85 in 2007, #204 in 2015 as part of Robyn’s and his 15 year commitment photograph whales above surface and below. He has twice been invited to present public lectures at Club HQ in New York and is a participating mentor in the Club’s mentoring program.
Wade spent thirty-three years gaining practical, managerial and leadership experience in international bauxite mining, refining, smelting, and manufacturing industry. Based initially within Australia, but, from the mid 1990s, internationally in locations such as the U.S, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Jamaica, Trinidad, Brazil, Suriname, Guinea, Brunei, and Saudi Arabia. He was frequently engaged in close collaboration with local, regional, and national governments and local communities to develop strategies for delivering sound economic, social, and environmental outcomes from resource development. Consequently, he worked extensively with scientific and technical professionals in translation of their work and findings for broad public consideration. He was based in the U.S from 2000 to 2008, and in the Middle East from 2008 till he retired from corporate life in December 2015, and returned home to Perth.
He is now able to devote more of his time to conservation writing and photography with the principal aim of contributing art in support of science. Wade’s main topics of interest are whales, and economically sustainable conservation. He is a regular contributor to online magazines and his images feature in books and presentations by authors such as Richard Ellis, Phillip Rothenberg, Wade Doak, and Dr Hal Whithead.
He has consistently been an Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year finalist and earned the 2016 award for the year’s best animal portrait. In 2017 Britain’s Natural History Museum selected his The look of a whale image in the year’s Best 100 photographs for the Museum’s exclusive and acclaimed international touring exhibition. That same image was this year selected by Phaidon Publishing as one of the 300 curated images in the recently released landmark book Ocean.
Wade and Robyn’s fine-art images hang in exclusive collections in the U.S, Australia, Europe, and the UK.
