See the World Through the Eyes — and Lens — of Photographer Krystle Wright

After debuting last week at South by Southwest, National Geographic’s Photographer is available to stream on Disney+, and world-renowned Australian adventure photographer Krystle Wright is one of the subjects of the six-part series. The first-ever female photographer to win the coveted Red Bull Illume Overall title, Wright focuses on a pair of projects: chasing down a tornado to photograph it and shooting an interestingly illuminated rock face in Moab. “I think it’s a beautiful series that celebrates the craft and the process of what it is to become a professional photographer. When I think back to great images that have lingered with me, I can still remember images from when I was a kid,” Wright tells InsideHook. “Only a handful of images have stayed with me, but what a powerful concept to embrace or even to aim for as a creator myself. Could I create an image that I might have that same effect on someone else?” Find out for yourself with some of Wright’s work and her commentary. 

This is an example of what I call a heart explosion moment. Sperm whales are some of the biggest creatures on earth. At this moment, we were diving off the coast of Portugal. We kept trying to see a whale and we couldn’t get a single sighting. On this day, we came across a group of eight and they started to swim away when we jumped in the water. I decided to just enjoy the experience and not even worry about a photo. To my surprise, they came swimming back straight at us. I came to the surface and had no control of my reaction, I just started screaming in joy.

Basically, I rigged this crack on with a series of LED light tape inside so I could illuminate its formation. It’s in Long Canyon just on the outskirts of Moab, Utah. It’s definitely a fairly difficult climb and certainly one someone can’t walk up to and scale, but this was more about trying to find a climb that had the right sort of formation or features that made it feel interesting. When I saw this formation from across the canyon, I just knew. I wanted omething that had a bit more character.

From this distance, you can see the entire structure. The problem is if you get a bit too close, you lose the view of the supercell. It’s pretty cool, because aside from the actual funnel hitting the ground, that next layer of cloud basically sort of goes through the middle of the image. That’s what you call a wall cloud. That’s always the first indication before a tornado drops and sometimes amateur storm chasers will mistake that for the tornado. Thankfully, there was no damage. Most tornadoes I’ve witnessed landed in open empty fields.

I think I took half a day of navigating through somewhat dangerous terrain, crevasses and snow bridges, to get up there to take this shot. It was a lot of effort but worth it. You never look back and think about how many hours or money you spent. That’s my friend Jim Mitchell jumping. Unfortunately, at the end of the trip, we had a fatality and that was Jim. It’s a funny experience to look at an image and feel so much gratitude for the moment but also sad because it reminds Jim didn’t come home from that expedition.

This was the aftermath of that tornado in Morton. Thankfully, it was abandoned and there were no fatalities and no one lost their home. We wanted to walk the field to see if we could find the path of the tornado. Unfortunately, it was pretty barren so there wasn’t really a way. I was hoping to take a drone image so you could see the distinct path. As a photographer and storyteller, you want to tell the whole story, so you have to take that chance.

This was my second paragliding trip in Pakistan. We were in the Himalayas flying in the region where some of the most famous mountains like K2 are. It’s hard to get good conditions in that area for paragliding, but my friends are incredible world-class pilots and they wanted to do some challenging cross-country flights. As you can see, we were flying amongst giants. It’s mesmerizing to be flying against those mountains because you just realize how small you are.

This is what you call a mothership. When you get into storm-chasing terminology, it’s hilarious. Earlier in the day, we had seen a tornado but there was so much moisture in the air that it just disappeared into the rain. At some point, we abandoned that chase. If you can’t see it, don’t chase it. That storm was so powerful, the outflow boundary turned into a supercell and that’s how the mothership forms. It takes on a bit of a UFO shape. That structure is absolutely phenomenal to witness.

This photo is from Teahupo’o in French Polynesia. We’ve seen this image time and time again, but as a photographer t wanted to experience it for myself. Luckily, I scored a swell where it was like eight to 10 feet that day, It’s definitely a thrill.  If you get caught out in the wrong spot in the surf, you will get pummeled by the waves and potentially dragged over the reefs

This is Ben Cossey, an Aussie climber. This is from the beginning of my career and it’s at a place called Taipan Wall in Australia. It was so hot that day that it was not an ideal climbing temperature. It forced Ben to climb even harder. He was fighting the sweat and hanging on to these tiny, tiny clamps. The emotion on his face is definitely the real deal. He was screaming to get through those moves.