Hey it's Julia and Yang!
We are a wildlife photographer couple from Kuching, Borneo. Ever since we were young we were interested in animals, and how important it is to conserve them before they are all gone. This was the main basis of why we decided...
Ever since we met in high school in 2011, we both had similar interests in animals, and nature in general. I was obsessed with reading about animals, mostly reptiles, but weirdly did not research much on birds. Yang was more interested in the creatures of the sea such as whales and sharks. I even created a scrapbook that was filled with images of interesting animals and their descriptions which I got from the Internet, which Yang loved to read in between classes.
It wasn't until I had my first camera in 2015 that I decided to get into photography at Perth, Western Australia. There I photographed a number of birds, just for the fun of it. Little did I know that it was just the beginning of our wildlife journey, a few years down the road.
I remember very clearly the first time I saw an Australasian Darter gulping down a Yellowtail Grunter fish whole, and an Eastern Osprey feeding on a fish on a nearby tree, but one of the most memorable moments would be when I spotted wild Indo-Pacific Bottlenose dolphins during a short walk along Swan River in February 2016, their glossy fins skimming smoothly across the water surface.
In October 2019, we went through an unforgettable moment together - we saw Humpback Whales for the first time, most probably a mother and its calf, swimming gracefully just a few metres away from our ferry as we were en route to Rottnest Island. We only caught a glimpse of a large fin poking out of the water, but those were the few seconds that we would never forget. That same day we took some photos with the adorable Quokkas that inhabit the island. They were not the least bit afraid of humans.
The Awakening
It was during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 that there was this sudden urge to get into wildlife photography in our hometown of Kuching, Malaysia. It was a weird feeling, picking up the camera that had been sitting there, abandoned and unused. As there was no way that we could go out during the lockdown, it all began with the birds in the backyard. At the time, I had no idea what a Yellow-vented Bulbul was, even though there were plenty of them in the vicinity of my house. So with the lens that I had, I started photographing the common birds I saw out my window, starting with the Yellow-vented Bulbul, White-breasted Waterhen, Asian Glossy Starling, Zebra Dove and Spotted Dove. Some of the more uncommon visitors included the Oriental Magpie Robin, Long-tailed Shrike, Lesser Coucal and Greater Coucal.
This went on for a few months, and as I was thinking that this was probably only going to be a temporary thing, I did not take it seriously. I did not put much effort into learning how to frame or compose a photograph, or how to edit the photograph while still preserving the purpose and meaning behind the image. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? But along the way we became aware that it wasn't all about the photographs we managed to take, but rather the significance of the subject within each image.
In October 2020, we decided to bring the camera out for a real wildlife photography session (from our car, at least). We drove to random places, and this was astonishingly the first time we started noticing the animals around us that had actually been there the whole time. Us, like many others, had been overlooking the things that actually matter.
The Kingfisher
So what triggered us to create our very own space on online platforms for wildlife photography? What caused us to start documenting every wild animal we saw in Kuching, be it a bird, a reptile or an insect, which eventually became our favourite weekend activity?
It was this random and unplanned encounter with a Stork-billed Kingfisher (Pelargopsis capensis) one Sunday on the 25th of October, 2020. The excitement the both of us had when we saw this individual confirmed the fact that this would be something we would be doing for the long run, even if it did not have anything to do with our careers. The rather large kingfisher was calmly perched on a railing near a canal, just a few metres from where we were. We could not stop our car to take some photographs, so I just snapped away from the passenger's seat, in awe of this colourful beauty. It had vibrant orange feathers, blue wings and a bright red beak.
From that day onwards, we decided that we would try to photograph any wild animal where possible, and identify them later on if we had no idea what we had just encountered. Most importantly we started to appreciate the wildlife around us that clearly deserved more attention, and began to raise awareness on their existence and importance on Earth through photography.
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The Birth of @twobehindthelens
In August 2020, we created an Instagram page with the initial purpose of sharing our travel images of landscapes and zoo animals from our recent trips. The main purpose of the page changed within two months, which happened after our encounter with the Stork-billed Kingfisher in October 2020.
The handle @twobehindthelens was created, with the sole purpose of sharing our wildlife encounters and stories as a couple to raise awareness to others, especially to the younger (and even older) generations. Social media can be a great place to learn from others and be inspired, and also inspire others in a good way. We have friends from all around the world with the same purpose, and even though we have never met any of them in person, they have given us some knowledge and exposure to the wildlife that exist in our own country, as well as in other parts of the world. It seems as if the pandemic has successfully uncovered some of these issues that have been buried and unheard for too long now.
Where do we go from here?
We both have our own career paths, and our goals in life, and we could never give that up as it is clear that we have to make some sacrifices to be able to survive in this world. But I can confidently say that our very own passion project has changed my whole perspective of life. Appreciating the things that were previously overlooked, noticing the things that we never even knew existed...it makes you realize how minute we are in this vast world.
Just the thought of nature intentionally being destroyed by humans constantly lingers in my mind. The question is not how do we stop something that has already been going on ever since the existence of mankind, but how do we slow it down and prevent the same thing from happening over and over again. Replanting trees, better awareness of wildlife and their habitats...every small effort counts.
As powerless and as small as we may feel in this world, with time, one small whisper can turn into an echo. That is what drives us to continue this pastime in the long run. We just hope that we can be part of that echo, a sound that can be heard and received from miles away.
