honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Through the lens of Bruna Stude

By Lesa Griffith
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Stude, now a Kaua'i resident, is moving in new directions.

Photos by Bruna Stude

spacer spacer

THE BOOK

"In-Sight" by Bruna Stude

$40

Available soon at bookstores, and at www.booklineshawaii.com, 877-828-4852

For more on Stude, go to www.artbeneath.com.

spacer spacer
Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

No form of marine life, no matter how small, escapes her eye.

spacer spacer
Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Humans interacting with the ocean are part of Stude's photographic ouvre.

spacer spacer
Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

An Indonesian fisherman's bare feet, dangling from a canoe, became an arresting image for Stude, who loves to dive with her camera.

spacer spacer
Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

An operculum, used by a sea snail to close the mouth, becomes a figure study for the photographer.

spacer spacer
Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

The Hawaiian 'opihi reminded Stude of similar — and similarly delectable — limpets back home on the Dalmatian Coast.

spacer spacer

Twenty years ago, Bruna Stude left her native Croatia for a life crewing on yachts. A law school graduate and a newspaper reporter, in a world where Croatian wasn't the first language, she turned to photography to express herself.

Cruising around the seas to remote areas, she has photographed sharks off Burma and fishermen in Panama. Now the Kaua'i resident has collected some of her most striking images in the self-published book "In-Sight," which will be on bookshelves next month.

Her work focuses on the ocean and the things in it. Growing up in the city of Split, on the Adriatic Sea, water has always been a part of Stude's life. She first went to Kaua'i to photograph whales, and she found a place to settle.

"The waters were filled with whale song. Kaua'i is like a cross between living on the ocean and on land," said Stude. Petite and trim as a gymnast, her makeup-free, angular face brings to mind a young Georgia O'Keeffe.

"In-Sight" includes images from her series on 'opihi. The limpet caught her eye because of its similarity to the Adriatic's prilipak, which people also eat.

"I took a closer look and discovered what a wonderful subject 'opihi could be," Stude said.

The extreme closeup, black-and-white studies of 'opihi reveal a ridged surface as elegant and element-eroded as columns of the Parthenon.

While in Indonesia five years ago, Stude met the owner of the One Big Truth Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif. He liked her work and showed it in the gallery.

"I was encouraged by it," Stude said.

Then last year, her work was accepted for the juried "The Art of Photography Show" at the Lyceum Theatre Gallery in San Diego. "That was the moment I felt photography might be more than my pet project," she said. She also was included in this year's "Artists of Hawaii" show at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and she has long contributed images to the stock-photo agency Omni Photo Communications.

She originally put the photographs included in "In-Sight" together as a portfolio. People who saw it encouraged her to publish it as a book.

Stude pointed to "Two Feet Under," a wavering shot from under water of Sale Alorkeil, an Indonesian fisherman, with his legs dangling over his canoe.

"It illustrates how my life was," she said. "I made images when I could. The owner (of the boat) loved diving. For something like 'Two Feet Under' — it's not just a snapshot."

For Stude, it can take years of going to a place to get that exact moment when light, subject and water conditions are just right. In this case, the fisherman paddled his canoe away from the harbor on Komodo Island. And it's one of the few times, Stude said, that everything aligned and almost every frame was perfect.

"I waited so long," she said. "There are so many elements you have to take care of in the water."

Now she'd like to turn her talents to surf photography. "But I have so much to learn," she said. "I have to improve my surfing first."