On The Couch with Darren Jew | Supported by Canon

Canon Master Darren Jew is a nature and wildlife photographer specialising in underwater photography. Darren is an Ambassador for Rainforest Rescue, six-time Australian Professional Nature Photographer of the Year, and was featured in the Netflix series Tales by Light. He has guided numerous photography tours across the globe and been a judge in many local and international competitions, including our own Explorer’s Grant. We caught up with Darren to chat about how he got into photography, his favourite gear to shoot with, and his deep affinity with the ocean and its enigmatic residents.

Inspired by his father’s travels to Antarctica, Darren’s enthusiasm for photography and the natural world emerged early on. As a small child, he would pop his dad’s slides into the projector and wonder at the world outside his backyard. Keen to pursue a career in nature photography, Darren joined a photography club at the age of 12, and upon completing year 10, attended the Queensland College of Art to study photography.

Darren assisted and worked in darkrooms for a couple of years before landing a job with the Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service, where he spent the following eight years working as a photographer. The position allowed him to blend his love of photography and the outdoors and was a befitting launch pad for a career exploring and photographing the far corners of the natural world.

Darren has photographed it all: tigers in India, penguins in Antarctica, brown bears in Alaska, and blue-footed boobies in the Galápagos. But marine photography, in particular whales, has become his greatest passion. Over the last two decades, photographing the ocean’s giants has become a significant part of Darren’s life, spending more time abroad than at home in Australia. From humpbacks in Tonga to orcas in Norway, his exquisite images allow us to peer into the secret life of these magnificent mammals and the hidden world beneath the ocean’s surface.

Since his time with the National Parks Service to the present, Darren has shot with Canon cameras. Beginning his career on film with the Canon F-1 and T90 and working his way through a range of EOS-1 series cameras over the years. The transition from film to digital opened up a myriad of shooting opportunities, particularly in the realm of ocean photography. Darren was no longer limited to only 36 frames per dive, and the low light capabilities of digital allowed him to shoot in underwater locations previously deemed too dark.

‘The thing that I love about digital, and the transition to digital, has been all of the new opportunities of pictures that have been able to be captured.’

Capturing landscapes and a menagerie of wildlife above and beneath the sea requires a diverse range of camera equipment. Today, Darren relies on the Canon EOS 1DX II, Canon EOS 5D IV, and an arsenal of lenses to cover every scenario. Most of his underwater work is done with the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4 L fisheye lens, a go-to for capturing the intense action of a humpback whale heat run; as well as the Canon EF 16-35mm f/4 L, and the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 L macro.

For shooting topside, Darren also has the f/2.8 L III version of the Canon EF 16-35mm lens, which is ideal for all kinds of landscape and environmental wildlife photography. He also uses the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L III and the less common but wildly versatile Canon EF 28-300mm f/4-5.6 L, which is perfect for the unpredictable nature of animals. For many of his wildlife images, Darren has the Canon EF 200-400mm f/4 L with a 1.4 x extender for a bit of extra reach.

When advising photographers new to marine wildlife photography, Darren recommends some basic settings to get started. For photographing whales, a general rule of thumb is to set your shutter speed to 1/250, your aperture to f/8, switch to auto ISO and minus a half stop of exposure compensation. For dolphins, he suggests increasing the shutter speed to 1/500 as they tend to move much faster.

For post-processing, Darren spends most of his time working in Lightroom, with the remainder in Photoshop. After a day of shooting, he will download his images and apply a preset if working with underwater photos to give a base colour correction and contrast enhancement, so the files are easier to read when making his selections. Darren will then go through the day's images and give one star to any picture worth a second look. Once done, he goes through everything that made the cut and applies a second star to anything that deserves a third look, and so on until he has his final selection of four-star images. He will then work on the final cut to fine-tune the colour and contrast, correcting for water's effect on light.

“Nothing gets five stars because that assumes you can't get any better, so you always give yourself something to achieve. One day I’m going to get a five-star.”

An avid conservationist, Darren has dedicated his career to capturing the beauty, allure and majesty of our natural world. Sharing his images with those of us who may otherwise never see these breathtaking scenes, he hopes we may learn to appreciate the many wonders of nature and be inspired to protect it. 

As an ambassador for Rainforest Rescue, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to safeguarding and restoring rainforests and preserving their biodiversity, Darren uses his images and platform to generate awareness about the connection between ecosystems and the importance of conserving them. 

“The wet tropics and all of the rivers along Queensland feed out onto the Great Barrier Reef, so the cleaner the water that gets out to the Barrier Reef, the healthier the coral is going to be.”

Watch the whole conversation here to learn more about Darren and his extraordinary career.

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