I’m Tony Wu, an Underwater Photographer, and This Is How I Travel

Tony Wu has received numerous awards for his photography, including the Grand Prix at Japan’s largest underwater photography competition, the Best Book of the Year award at the Antibes Marine Image Festival, and first place in two categories in the annual Wildlife Photographer competition. Annual competition. He devotes most of his time to photographing humpbacks, sperm whales, blue whales and other cetaceans, “and documenting spawning flocks of fish that are essentially orgies involving thousands of sex-obsessed fish.”

However, more than a photographer, he considers himself a “photo-naturalist”. “People ask me what I do and the easiest answer is photography. But actually it is not. I go out and spend a lot of time with animals; I sit there, look, think about them and study what is known about them. So it’s like being a naturalist, but using a camera, not a pen and paper. The challenge I have set for myself is to create images that are aesthetically pleasing, but at the same time have biological and scientific value – more than just a pretty picture. “

We spoke with Tony from his home base in Tokyo, Japan to find out how he travels.

What does your trip usually look like – how often and how long do you travel?

For the past 10-15 years, I’ve been traveling 9 to 11 months a year. I come [home] mainly to take off my clothes and buy new clothes and equipment. This year I traveled a lot in Japan, then went to Alaska, and then ended up in the southern hemisphere. So I would have to return to my home base just to change my equipment and clothes. I usually like to visit somewhere for at least two weeks to a month. In some places [I] will stay longer – two, sometimes up to three months.

Why so long?

If you are trying to understand and even become a part of the life of animals and their communities, timing is really important. You don’t necessarily understand what is happening the first time you see it. In fact, you almost never do this. And sometimes it just takes dozens of times, even hundreds of times, to see something before you say, “Oh, this is what is happening.” And this is interesting not only from an intellectual point of view and from the point of view of curiosity, but also from the point of view of photography.

You are not photographing by reacting to something – for example, something happens and you press the shutter button. You take photographs, knowing what will happen in five, ten, fifteen seconds, prepare everything in advance and you will be there when it really happens. [This is how] you get the best images — you know exactly where to sit, what kind of light will be. In the case of animals, you know what the expected behavior is and what the peak of interest will be. And the only way to truly understand this is to really know your subjects.

Where will you stop?

[Finding] accommodation is sometimes difficult. If you are a tourist and go somewhere and pay $ 120 a night to stay in a hotel for three nights, it is expensive, but you seem to be ok, three nights I can pamper myself. But if I want to stay somewhere for a month, I cannot do it. So I need to find a place that is acceptable in terms of overall safety, cleanliness and everything else, but I don’t care about luxury items and all that – I’m willing to put up with a lot. And everything in every place, in every country, in every situation is individual. Sometimes the options don’t exist, and then you need to get creative and try to figure things out.

What’s always on your packing list?

A large part of the preparation process is trying to imagine in advance what kind of equipment I will need; I will never get it right. So I usually take more than I need. Having too much and not using it is much better than not having what you need when you need it. So I usually have a lot of cameras. Now I mainly use Nikon cameras: D850, D800 and D500. The equipment I use to place and protect my gear underwater is provided by Nauticam and Zillion . My underwater lights are courtesy of RGBlue .

As for other things, I spend a lot of time trying to keep fit because a lot of what I do requires physical effort. I have a folding foam roller and it’s fantastic. Generally, foam rollers take up a lot of space due to their volume, but they fold flat. I tell you, if you are using Styrofoam rollers, you should get them. [I also bring] groups . Everywhere I go, there is no gym per se, so I use everything I have – stairs, trees, balconies, everything I can use to train.

What luggage do you have?

I try to buy the usual stuff – there are boxes designed for travel gear, but they advertise that there is expensive gear inside, and that’s the last thing I want to do. So I try to transform things that look soft and use padding. When I do this, it looks like any other travel luggage.

I also have a lot of waterproof material that is actually hard to find – completely waterproof, so at least if something is dropped or flooded with seawater, the material inside will not get damaged. This is good for things like cameras when you are trying to photograph over water but are on the water – as if you are in a small boat waiting for the whales to break through or do something. And there is splash of water everywhere, and you just want everything to be dry when you are not using it.

There are a few things that I use a lot now. One of them [from the brand] is called Ortlieb and they do things for bikers. And then there is one Japanese called Stream Trail . But I am not completely devoted to them.

Do you bring food or snacks with you?

I always have powdered green tea. I am a big tea lover and I really like green tea and just having a little in the morning is great and very easy to get in Japan.

The fact is that when I am at home, as now, I am very careful about what I eat. Lots of fruits, lots of vegetables – I was lucky in Japan. We have a lot of fresh fish, a lot of fish. I eat all the time throughout the day and exercise a lot. So when I leave, I eat as well as I can. When I travel to Japan, I get almost everything I want. In some places, such as a remote island in the South Pacific, this is not possible. So I’m not really worried about this, because if I did it, I would just go crazy. Over the years, I have found that because I take the time to take care of myself at times when I cannot, I can usually maintain a fairly good level of health until I return.

What do you bring with you for your entertainment?

Back in the days of cinema, I packed a whole bunch of paperback and hardback books because they used a lot less equipment back then. But now all this digital technology has completely increased the amount of equipment [me] needs. So I keep [my books] on my iPad. I always have 40 or 50 books on my reading list, and every time I come across something interesting I add it – for example, today I came across this list at the Smithsonian Institution . If anything seems interesting, I download it and put it in my collection, and then when I sit and wait, I just pick a book and read. When I’m in the field, I have a lot of downtime.

What will you do when you arrive at your destination?

I try to arrive at least 24 hours, if not 48-72 hours before I need to do anything. Setting up equipment, especially underwater equipment, is not difficult, but it requires you to be here mentally, be present at the moment, and know exactly what you are doing. Because if you screw up one little thing, you can destroy all your equipment very quickly – and this often happens to humans. And the main reason is not that something is necessarily wrong with the equipment, but that you are half dazed, half asleep. And you just forgot something or made a simple mistake. And I don’t want to do this. I can not afford it. So I try to come early.

I haven’t looked at my gear for at least a day. I usually have people I know in the field, and I try to spend time with them and catch up, laugh a little before starting. Then I prepare the equipment and think about what I need to do.

This is the perfect scenario. For the most part, I can spend at least a couple of days in front. In the background, this is a little less important, although I try because I found that one of the most important things about it is good relationships with people. So being able to spend even a day after everything is done with the friends I made means that in the future [we] will have a good relationship. I think this is really important.

How to deal with fatigue and jet lag?

Since 1991, I’ve been on the road for a whole year. It was insanely hectic at first – I rode continents every week. So I’m used to it; I know myself very well [and] can tell when I absolutely need to crash, and I know when I can get over it. So this is really helpful. But one of my tricks is to try to arrive wherever I go during the day, if not early in the evening. So [then] all I have to do is get to where I’m going, clean up, eat and go to bed. I was able to quite easily train myself to go to bed and get 7-8 hours. Once I do that, even though my body is still out of sync with the time zone, I am really ahead of the pack and it usually takes another night of sleep and I’m 90% off.

What technologies or applications do you use when traveling?

I’m a news fanatic, so whenever I have access to the internet, I usually read current affairs, slapping my forehead about how messed up the world is – but I need to stay in the loop. I receive news from Flipboard and Feedly . To write I am using Byword . Lately, I have been using Apple Notes more often just because it syncs with the cloud. I’m a big fan of Duck Duck Go as a browser. Simply because you never know which internet connection you are using. I always have a VPN like the one released by CloudFlare, 1.1.1.1 . And I also have one more, private Internet access (PIA) . You never know – I’m not too paranoid, but I use them anyway.

Do you bring home travel souvenirs?

Yes, but these are usually things that I think most people would not consider as souvenirs – for example, the inner shell of a deep sea squid. Or the skin of a whale – something like biology-obsessed things. (Important note: these are items I found. In many places, people collect and kill live animals to sell trinkets to tourists. I don’t want to inadvertently induce anyone to buy shells and the like from trinket shops.)

Sometimes I meet people who do incredible artwork, cetacean stuff or anything else related to my work, and it’s just beautiful, and I want it because it has to do with nature. I usually don’t buy anything in stores except my wife. I buy things for my wife.

Do you have any travel and disaster stories?

Earlier this year, I spent a month visiting one place in Japan, Wakayama Prefecture, [to photograph] a particular event. I spent a lot of time thinking, designing and making special equipment to try and get a stunning photo that has never happened before. I foresaw it all, and it worked, I checked the equipment – high five, along with all the technicians involved. And then: for a month I did nothing … because everything that should have happened in the ocean did not happen.

In this particular case, there is a stream of warm water that reaches the east coast of Japan called the Kuroshio , which keeps parts of the east coast of Japan relatively warm during the cold season. The entire ecosystem is based on this. There are corals, there are tropical fish that come out with this current, and you know they don’t feel good when the current eventually weakens and returns during its natural cycle. But this is all part of the system.

So this year the current did not appear or went somewhere else. And the ocean is frozen over. This became Slurpee. Literally an ocean slurp. Moreover, tropical and semi-tropical fish clearly died. Even the more moderate aquatic fish died. The corals turned white and died. Basically, what I was aiming for didn’t happen at all. It is understandable – because nothing happened. And when that happens, it’s too late for me to turn around and go somewhere else.

But I’m telling you this because almost everywhere I’ve been in the last year and a half has been … disconnected. I’ve been doing nature for over two decades, so there were certainly many variations. But it repeats itself cyclically. What I’ve seen [over the last year and a half] is beyond what I’ve experienced.

Another example is a trip to Alaska this summer. The water has to be filled with plankton and phytoplankton, and then everything else that eats them, and then [it has to] flow with the herring. And there was nothing in the water. It was crystal clear. I spent three weeks with friends and we managed to find something to photograph, but it was not easy. I talked to my science friends and then continued, and since about 2015, the number of whales that visit Alaska has dropped dramatically. Nobody knows what’s going on.

For me, this is a disaster when traveling, but more importantly, it is a disaster for the animals. And I see it everywhere: I mean the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Southern Hemisphere, Northern Hemisphere, Asia, USA, Africa, Southeast Asia. It was like that everywhere.