Jürgen & Stella Freund
Jürgen and Stella Freund are an intrepid photographer couple who travel the globe on scientific explorations observing and recording some of the most pristine landscapes and admired species.
Find their iconic images of the Great Barrier Reef and Pacific Coral Triangle mapped and projected by Dave Masters onto the Pullman International Cairns, 11 - 13 November, dusk til 11pm.
Jürgen (Yogi) Freund was born in Dortmund, Germany in 1959. He studied mechanical engineering and found out it wasn’t creative enough for his inventive mind. Instead of designing machines, he worked as an industrial photographer in Munich for 7 years. Lured by the challenge of marine wildlife photography, he acquired an underwater camera even before learning how to scuba-dive in 1981 in the cold lakes of Germany. Finally, he answered “the call of the sea” and became a full-time freelance marine and wildlife photographer in 1995, getting his work published internationally. He has traveled all over the world, taking highly acclaimed images published worldwide.
Yogi’s engineering background comes in handy whenever he has to make his own lenses & photo equipment to suit his needs when there are none available in the market. A constant for him is change as he now ventures into land and marine photography using panoramic format cameras – making underwater housings himself. He specialises in wildlife and nature subjects and prefers to tackle photo shoots in a photojournalistic manner. A visual storyteller by heart, he likes showing photo stories about animals and people, working slow and letting nature or events unfold and capturing these in its natural manner.
After years of wandering, Yogi has finally found a home base in Australia and now lives in Tropical North Queensland with his wife, Stella. He works closely with WWF, the World Wide Fund for Nature, and the organisation uses his photographs in many of its conservation campaigns. He is also a regular contributor to GEO magazine in Europe. Yogi is a Senior Fellow with the International League of Conservation Photographers.
Stella Chiu-Freund was born in Manila, Philippines in 1965. She studied anthropology but ended up in advertising, producing radio and TV commercials for 7 years. After quitting advertising, she ventured into the freelance world in Manila producing video documentaries for a publishing house, government agencies, non governmental organisations, and the academe. She now lives in Cairns and produces beautiful photo stories with Yogi.
Yogi and Stella finished an exciting 18 months straight photographic expedition for WWF from 2009 to 2010 through to six Coral Triangle countries: the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste. The images from the expedition resulted in the coffee table book THE CORAL TRIANGLE. Available on their website : http://juergenfreund.com/