Primarily focusing on marine wildlife and ocean landscape imagery, Craig Parry’s aim is to offer a unique insight into the world around us. Subjects are presented in their natural environment in a manner which seeks to connect audiences with them.

OCEANOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE (OM): WHEN DID YOU FIRST CONNECT WITH THE OCEAN?

CRAIG PARRY: “It would have been when I was five years old and my father taught me to surf. I’ve been lucky to grow up next to the ocean, so it has always been a big part of my life.”

OM: WHEN DID YOU FIRST PICK UP A CAMERA?

CRAIG PARRY: “My mum and dad bought me a disposable underwater camera from Fuji when I was seven years old. When they saw that I enjoyed using them, they bought me one for every birthday. And I just kept shooting. When I was eight years old, I had the opportunity to go to the Great Barrier Reef with my family. We hired a yacht and I remember going out to a location called the Stepping Stones. There were these big columns of reef that look like stepping stones on the outer reef. I remember snorkelling around when I suddenly saw a turtle. I tried taking a photo but my camera had a wide-angle lens. When I processed the photos, the outcome was terrible. But it was a start.”

OM: WHEN DID YOU FIRST CONNECT THE DOTS BETWEEN YOUR PASSION FOR PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE OCEAN?

CRAIG PARRY: “I think I connected the two passions when I was in my mid-teens. At that time, I constantly photographed my friends who were professional surfers. I used to go out and photograph them and started to sell my photos to magazines and a website called Coastal Watch, which gave out surf reports.”

OM: WAS SURF PHOTOGRAPHY A HARD INDUSTRY TO GET INTO THEN?

CRAIG PARRY: “It was very challenging. It’s a very close-knit community, especially at the professional World Tour level. It was always pretty competitive, which is funny when you look back because everyone is teaching photography now. Back then, photographers would keep their secrets close to their chest. They never really spoke about how they got the shot. I was lucky because my friends here at Lennox Head were getting close to getting on the World Tour. Having the opportunity to photograph them helped me. But I never chased professional surf photography. It was never a full-blown pursuit. I then went into wedding photography to pay the bills and pay for my new equipment that I was purchasing. There was more money in that field.”

OM: HOW DID YOU LEARN THE ROPES? DID YOU HAVE ANY MENTORS?

CRAIG PARRY: “I taught myself. It was trial and error. I did listen to a few professional photographers that I was friends with and asked them questions, but it clicked with me quite quickly. I was lucky because digital photography came into play in my early 20s and I wasn’t exposed to film too much. I think a lot of photographers that were exposed to film for too long, found it more challenging to roll over to the digital era. I used to get frustrated with film because I could never get the colours I was after. I wasn’t doing any of my own processing, so I didn’t have control in that sense. And because I was quite young and I didn’t study photography at school, I didn’t really have that background to manipulate my photos in the dark room like a lot of other guys did. So, for me, it was great when digital came in. It was still in its infancy and none of the photos that I took were able to be blown up for a magazine, but I could see the potential there.”