Graceful, intelligent and huge, Whales cast a spell over the human species. But their thoughts and ways of life lie beyond our understanding, in an alien habitat.

A few people who’ve dived and made their acquaintance come closer to penetrating the unknowable, biologists for example. However whales and scientists aren’t given to sharing their knowledge and feelings.

Wade Hughes is a writer from W.A., an artist with the camera, who specialises in communicating, and with his wife Robyn has spent decades looking for whales. Their photos, mostly black and white, taken underwater and above, illustrate whales being themselves in the moods and phases of life: uncontrived and revealing views in their natural realm, with text evoking the insights each close encounter produces.

Taking his camera into chilling Arctic waters during feeding season, to tropical Pacific atolls where calves are born, and the tempestuous mid-Atlantic off the Azores, Wade captures fascinating, elusive species in cycles of life and migration: Humpbacks, Sperm Whales, Fin Whales, Pilot Whales, Orcas and False Orcas.