Whether he's photographing a shipwreck at dawn, moss-covered river rocks or a wedding, it's easy to see that Paul Pichugin puts his heart and soul into his work. He has the technical and aesthetic skills of an accomplished professional, but has also retained the enthusiasm and candour of his years as a keen amateur.
Approaching Storm
'I discovered many years ago that I'm not all that good at getting up early in the morning. Actually, to be honest, I'm not good at getting up in the middle of the morning either. So when I decided to go to Caloundra [on Queensland's Sunshine Coast] to do some photography this morning, I stayed up all night... Anyway, the resulting photos were well worth the effort,' he says in a blog on his website (paulpichugin.com) in an account of taking the shipwreck shots in October last year.
'Had an awesome day today, shooting a wedding for a great couple called Stefan and Amy... Photos of the girls getting ready, then back to Strathpine [near Brisbane] for the ceremony.... After the reception we did a photo shoot with the bride and groom. Some great shots from the Maleny Ranges pointing towards the Glasshouse Mountains,' he wrote a couple of months earlier.
Pichugin, 27, apologises for his extensive website's somewhat disorganised state of construction. Life has been hectic lately with commissions, opportunities to work with top professional photographers, a trip to Papua New Guinea, various road trips around Australia, publishing two landscape calendars and a move this year from Brisbane to Perth.
Australia's wide open spaces first caught Pichugin's photographic eye when he was six years old and his parents gave him a snap camera before the family drove across the country when relocating from South Australia to Queensland. 'When I was growing up we'd quite regularly drive to Adelaide and other places,' he says, 'and some of my best memories are of lightning, storms and bushfires on the Hay Plains and the like - the kind of awesome events you don't see when you're living in the city.'
His mother is a painter, which contributed to his instinctual approach to composition. 'I'm pretty much self-taught. We always had art and art books around the house, which made me aware of angles and the way things are composed and framed. I'm always looking to create photos that have one or more lines that draw people in. I've also done a lot of reading and looking at other people's photographs, trying to figure out what they did with apertures and shutter speeds to create certain effects.' The work of Queensland landscape photographer Peter Lik has been especially inspiring.
After leaving high school in Brisbane, Pichugin worked in information technology at a TAFE and got involved with a multimedia team. He was an early convert to digital - 'a couple of 1.5MB cameras - completely useless compared to what we've got today'. He currently uses a Canon EOS 30D and a 'boatload of cool lenses' including a 50mm, 10-22mm, 24-70mm and 70-200mm.
'Most of my work is in-camera, sometimes with on-lens filters, but I might use some colour correction and Photoshop's Healing Brush to get rid of any flaws,' he says. 'My [neutral density] Cokin ND8 filter has a slight red or pink cast and I use that a lot to my advantage.'
S.S. Dicky, Dawn, Caloundra
I arrived at the shipwreck of the SS Dicky nice and early and took a heap of shots before the sun rose, facing towards the brightening sky. I was really happy with them and was leaving when I glanced back and noticed that the shipwreck was nicely lit by the sun peeking over the horizon. So I quickly set up again and captured what turned out to be my favourite shot. I was using a Canon EOS 30D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm at 13mm, neutral density 8 filter and circular polariser. The exposure was five seconds at f13 and ISO 100.
The S.S. Dicky was carrying 11 crew and 40 tonnes of sand when it was forced onto the beach during heavy seas in 1893.
Pichugin's photography has made him acutely aware of how the Australian environment is being transformed by climate change. 'Years ago I used my old Kodak to get a favourite shot of a water supply dam when it was overly full. Now it's less than half what it should be and it has been down to 11 per cent. I've photographed all those stages and it's startling to compare them. Most people won't notice the drought until the water stops coming out of their taps. Even the water restrictions don't make them realise. They just get used to them.' He also cites the loss of a pair of shoes as evidence. 'I was at Alexandrina in South Australia, trying to get a good angle for a sunset shot of an area where the water comes out of the Murray River. The water had receded a couple of hundred metres and I had to leave my shoes behind in mud up to my knees.'
In Perth, Pichugin is looking for IT contract work while pursuing his landscape ambitions with the kind of long drives that captivated him as a kid. A dive under the 1.8km-long Busselton Jetty has whetted his appetite for underwater photography and he has his eye on the Abrolhos Islands and Shark and Coral bays - made a little more accessible because his wife Rebecca's family lives at Geraldton.
He will also be re-establishing his wedding work, which combines dramatic on-location portraits with intimate candid shots. Assisting one of the best in the business, Brisbane's Marcus Bell, has helped him develop his style. 'I don't shoot weddings in the traditional way and neither does Marcus,' says Pichugin. 'Traditional usually stays in the wedding album, but I'm always looking for something that people will want to display on the wall.'
See Photo Review magazine Issue 40 for the print edition of this profile which includes additional images.
To subscribe or order back issue(s):
1. Click here to pay online by credit card, or
2. Order by phone (02) 9948 8600, or
3. Mail or fax - click here
To see more photographer profiles, click here