MNN - Mother Nature Network

 

Photographers Kristian Schmidt and Shawn Heinrichs have blended the genres of fashion and wildlife with unusual images of models posing underwater with whale sharks. The fresh take on the undersea scenes is intended to draw attention to a huge problem: shark finning.

 

Conservation photographers have worked for years to portray the devastating industry that revolves around shark finning, or the practice of catching sharks only to cut off their fins and abandon the rest of the carcass as waste. The industry has had untold consequences for shark species, many of which are now on the brink of extinction, and the ecosystems in which sharks play such a key role. However, the heart-wrenching images of row after row of fins drying on rooftops or the still-living bodies of sharks sinking to the ocean floor are just one way to tell the story. These photographers have come up with a different way, an otherworldly and compelling view that focuses viewers on the beauty of the living fish.

 

Heinrichs, an environmental and underwater photographer, and Schmidt, a wildlife and fashion photographer, teamed up to create a whale shark fashion shoot, putting beautiful models in flowing costumes in the water with the endangered sharks. The images draw in the reader to focus on the whale shark as a gentle creature — one that is every bit as graceful and delicate as the women posing alongside.

 

The project revolves around the concept that people will protect what they care about. By combining these two seemingly different genres of imagery, the photographers created a different way to draw people in and to care about the species. The two pulled together a team of models, a stylist and a dive specialist, and worked with villagers from Oslob in southern Cebu, Philippines, where there is a thriving ecotourism trade for people visiting to see the world's largest fish. Heinrichs says on his Blue Sphere Media website:

 

 

Heinrichs said the next phase of this project will put models alongside other charismatic marine wildlife.

 

 

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