White Faced Heron.

Canon 1D IIN with 100-400mm 4.5-5.6 IS USM lens.

This morning before sunrise, the outback photographer found himself in a small open boat quietly drifting along the banks of the Murray River just checking out the abundance of bird life that inhabits the river banks early in the morning. Every few yards there was another species of bird, having a drink, fighting over the best tree limb, waiting patiently for breakfast, or preening themselves in preparation for another busy day of survival.

Every photographer knows that the great light happens first thing in the morning or just before sun set. Funny thing is you rarely run into another photographer out and about before day break. Which is a good thing for those of us who are out there doing it. Anyway this morning was quite special, and I was able to bag a couple of nice shots for our stock collection.

The White Faced Heron, above was happily waiting for breakfast when I turned up. Slowly drifting up on his position, hoping all the time that I wouldn't be noticed. As if he wasn't going to noticed a great big photographer, sitting in an open boat, moving toward him. Anyway the inevitable happened before I got close enough to get the shot I wanted, but in leaving he gave me the opportunity to get some panning practice in, which I badly need.

The onlookers...

Canon 1D IIN, 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 USM IS lens.

Photographers often attract a group of onlookers when they're shooting. Last night we had lots of people checking out the three beautiful young women we were photographing in the streets of a local outback city. This morning the outback photographer was shooting a small commercial job from a boat on the Murray River. While drifting downstream to get the shot, I noticed another group of onlookers. One seemed to be really interested in what I was doing, while the rest may have had a hard Saturday night out, as they seemed more inclined to just doze while I fiddled around in a boat below.

For those of you not familiar with our Australian bird life these guys go by a common name of Little Corella. They flock in large numbers together, spend the day foraging for seed on the ground, or high up in the tree canopy, doing their level best to rip every leaf from the tree.

Destructive little buggers, and did I mention noisy. Continuous high pitched screeching and chatter while they feed and play which rises to an almost deafening crescendo when they take flight on mass. Forming swirling and twisting clouds of white and soft yellow as they demonstrate their amazing aptitude for aerobatics and obstacle avoidance, while flying wing tip to wing tip continually changing direction in total harmony.

If you find yourself camping anywhere in the Australian outback it would be wise to check that your camp site isn't to close to a flock of these guys. Let's just say you won't get a good nights uninterrupted sleep.

For those of you who care the Little Corella has the rather grand scientific name of Cacatua sanguinea

Cold Saturday night.

Canon 1Ds II with 16-35mm f2.8 USM @ 16mm

Hey … what else would any photographer worth his salt do after shooting three drop dead gorgeous women around the streets of a small outback city? The answer, take the towns two custom built white limo’s out to a nearby deserted car park and shoot them. The beautifully presented limousines belong to Vince and Miranda Lamattina, the Party Professionals based out of Mildura in far Northern Victoria, so if you’re anywhere near that neck of the woods and need a limo, these are the guys to see. Vince an Miranda graciously let me play around with the cars for about an hour, braving the winter cold while I shot away. The shot above is straight out of the camera without any retouching. Even the white balance was set to auto, something I rarely do but the Canon 1Ds II handled the multitude differing light sources with ease. Now all I have to do is get down to doing a bit of post work on the files and see what happens.

Hey its raininig

Yep its raining on the outback photographers world and I’m so happy about that. This isn’t heavy rain but its rain and thats great. No big deal for most people but when your in the midst of a seemingly never ending "dry spell’, rain is the best medicine you could possibly imagine.

You see for those of you who are not from the south eastern parts of Australia, we are going through the "worst drought in a thousand years", something that I doubt myself but its a good line for governments trying to escape criticism for years of failing to develop infrastructure to cater for growing populations and subsequent increases in demand for water. Our current rain fall for this year is under 25% of normal and that follows years of below average falls. Farmers drawing irrigation water from the Murray River near Mildura were this year restricted to using just 48% of there water allocation, but next irrigation season face far greater restrictions on the amounts of water they will be allocated. Less water, obviously means less production and in many cases they will be forced from the land and in many cases their land may be retired from production permanently.

One of the things about being a photographer based in the Australian outback or the "Bush" as locals often refer to it, is our dependence on rural families for much of our client base. When the rural economy suffers, rural photographers feel the heat in a big way. That requires looking further afield for jobs, which is not all that bad of a deal, because photographers should always be pushing themselves to get outside their comfort zone and events such as drought, fire and even some times flood all help to make us think outside the box.

Storm photography

Hey while we're talking about weather check out Laurie Excell's blog. Laurie, and American nature photographer spent the last week chasing storms, really big bad and ugly storms across the USA. She has some great storm pictures so do yourself a favour and take a look. Also on this storm chasing trip was Moose Peterson, yet another American photographer of all things natural. Moose has some super Tornado shots on his blog as well. Click here to see Tornado shots by Moose. You'll have to scroll down the page a bit because Moose is a prolific poster of photography news with almost daily updates to his page.

Erskine River, Lorne.

Canon 1Ds II with f2.8 16-35mm "L" lens

Finally today we started to see some rain here in Mildura, the first for quite some time. Not enough mine you to do anything except lift the spirits of locals a bit and maybe wash some dust of the trees but every little helps. Listening to the rain falling on our studions iron roof makes me want to pack up my camera gear and head into the bush again. There is nothing quite like shooting the Australian bush in the rain.
But that's not going to happen for a while at least so I've dragged out this shot, created on the Erskine River, in Victoria's Ottway Ranges a couple of months ago. Yes even there the drought is making itself felt but at least it still feels and smells like a rain forest. Meantime the outback photographer is back to his trusty Macpro to process some more images and listen to the rain keep falling. (hopefully)

Art and pornography

Here in Australia there has been much debate about the works of an artist who's work has been removed from exhibition from a Sydney gallery. I like many, and in fact I suspect most of the informed commentators on this subject, I have not actually seen any of the artist work in person. So I will not pass any judgment on its content.

I do find a number of thing interesting about the media storm that has followed. Undoubtably many newspapers have sold and many hours of radio and television has been devoted to the subject and many millions of dollars have be made form the coverage of the story.
I find it interesting that the artist has been able to hide this "absolutely disgusting" work, this "pornography", for such a long time. Apparently according to some reports, one of his "poor innocent models" is now in her forties. You do the maths, 13 when the shots were taken, 40 now... been a while. And exactly how did this monster of a man manage to keep this atrocious works from our view and that of the law? Obvious really... you hide them on the walls of art galleries around the world. No one would ever think of looking there.

As a photographer this is an area where I would choose not to go myself. But I don't believe, as has been suggested that the only motivation an artist could possibly have for creating images of the naked human form is sexual. Whether the images are of minors or adult in the nude there are many motivations for creating art images that have nothing to do with sex. Shape, form texture the fall of light, the sheer beauty of the naked form all great reasons to create art images.
Once many moons ago after shooting some art nudes with a beautiful young lady on location, I was packing my gear away, she dressed and walked back to where I was, still buttoning up her
top as she approached. Which is the exact moment I chose to say what I thought. "You look so much sexier with your cloths on." It was the truth but let me just say to all you budding photographers of the nude, not a very wise thing to tell any model. BIG MISTAKE, but you learn from your mistakes.

Another huge weekend

Canon 1D IIN with f2.8 16-35mm "L" lens available light, shot through the window of Seasons Restaurant, Mildura.

Wow what a weekend of shooting, we started on Saturday with the wedding of Amy and Joe, which continued way into the night, then first thing Sunday it was backing up all Saturdays shoot. Yep the outback photographer is a little paranoid about backups and I won't even consider reformatting a CF card until I have 3 copies of the files backed up to two separate hard drives and also to DVD, then off course there is no point keeping them in the one location in case of fire, flood or theft. Backups completed it was off on location shooting an ongoing portrait project, recording a period in time for a family with three generations of history on the one farming property. Followed by lunch on the run, more backups, a portrait viewing and two more family portrait sessions in the Excitations Garden Studio. Followed of course by many more backup sessions before finally calling it quites late Sunday night.

Back to the wedding of Amy and Joe we had an absolute blast shooting in amazing late Autumn weather. Taking full advantage of the many coloured and falling leaves in Ampelon gardens near Mildura, with a great group of people... Lifes just plain great isn't it. The image of Amy and Joe above was shot during a quick visit to Seasons Restaurant in the Mildura City Heart. Amy and Joe were inside while the outback photographer played the role of voyeur and shot through the window, taking advantage of the warm glow emanating inside. Love the technology that allows me to be able to shoot in full sunlight one minute and seconds later being able to shoot in very low light situations without the need to continually change film types like we did in the not so distant passed.