Photo by David Swift 2013

Photos Of The Year 2013 – published on the news.com.au website (2014)

David Swift: Earlier this year I went to an art exhibition at Observatory Hill in Sydney and saw this amazing sculpture on the wall. After a few phone calls and a bit of bribery I managed to set up a photo of the sculptor. The artist is Bondi local, Paul Trefry who has worked as a special effects artist on several big budget movies. Paul never met the man that owns the face, it was based entirely on a photograph of a homeless man. It was first sculpted in clay and then a rubbery mould was created and painted. Several types of hair were used including yak hair and horse hair and to get the right look, thousands of strands were individually inserted into the face.

IT IS the world’s biggest shark – and it’s on land.

The 7.4m-long beast is at least a metre larger than any great white found in the wild and it has jaws to match.

The only consolation is it’s not real but visitors to Sydney Aquarium at Darling Harbour might find themselves thinking otherwise.

The giant shark, which will be on display from Monday, has been built to look identical to a real one, with model-maker Paul Trefry burying himself in books, images and videos of great whites and then working 24/7 for seven weeks to recreate one.

But the real killer move is that a sensor will be installed near the shark’s head so that as kids walk around it it will suddenly rear up as if to swallow them whole.

The jaws stick out and its eyes even roll back in their sockets in a perfect re-creation of an animal seizing its prey in the wild. The overall effect is about 50 per cent higher than paralytically terrifying.

Trefry said that even while working on the shark’s mouth he suffered cuts and scratches and had a first-hand demonstration of how the angle of the teeth made it impossible for victims to escape a shark’s grip.

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Published July 10, 2010 • click on News logo below to display.