Drought and the Murray River

Canon 1Ds II, f2.8 24-70mm lens, Robinson 22 helicopter.

One of the interesting things around here lately is the number of requests coming through for stock photos of the Murray River dying. One from an international agency requested pictures of the river dry... but not from drought , rather it must be dry from over use of irrigation water. Now it must be difficult for international editors to understand that the Murray River isn't really a river in the true sense of the word. Rivers by nature ebb and flow. During rainy seasons more water flows down them, sometimes causing flooding. During dry periods the amounts of water flowing down them decreases to the point they sometimes stop running altogether.

The Murray River however, is managed more as an irrigation channel. During wet periods huge amounts of water are stored upstream in dams and river flows are tightly controlled to ensure that there are sufficient flows to meet irrigation, human and so called environmental flows. The stored water being released during dry times to ensure that these needs are still maintained. So that now even when water shortages are critical, river levels haven't change dramatically with all the dams and weirs doing their job. But if your an editor needing to illustrate the river in drought, the picture above which looks like a totally normal river, despite the fact that it is a recent shot of the Murray River near Mildura under drought conditions, is totally useless. You really need to show something graphic, like dry cracked river beds, or tree roots exposed by unusually low water levels, or dead or dying marine life.

That leaves me in a bit of a predicament. Do I continue to resist the temptation to fudge reality and start submitting images which although not factual, do illustrate the rivers situation? Or do I forgo the income and only submit images that are genuinely of the Murray as it is now? It's really easy to find some swamp that is currently dry, take a few shots and flog them off to buyers who probable don't care that much about truth anyway.

That my friends is the problem for me. I know a number of my competitors have elected to supply what the client wants. More stock images of the Murray River and it environs can be found here, and our good friend Paul Atkins has some new shots of the lower lakes of the Murray here.

St Kilda Jetty and Pavilion.

Canon 1Ds III, f2.8 16-35mm lens

This is the “New” “Old Pavilion” located at the end of St Kilda Jetty, a popular beach side suburb of Melbourne, Australia. The original pavilion was constructed in 1904, if I remember correctly and became of on the icons of Melbourne, until its untimely destruction by fire just short of its 100th birthday in September 2003. So missed by locals, it was decided to rebuild the old girl using original drawings from the 1900’s.

Today the new building stands at the end of the very popular St Kilda Jetty and is witness to many thousands of visitors who flock to the area for a bit of R & R. The outback photographer was able to capture this shot of the pavilion, minus people just by getting out of his 4 star hotel bed early and taking a stroll along the water front before heading off to work. I’d love to tell you the early morning walk was about enthusiasm to get the shot but to be honest it had more to do with the hotels air conditioning unit, which sounded a lot like the engine of a Boeing 747 at full power… all bloody night…

Hey.... while I think of it, Vincent Larforet is currently shooting the Olympic for News Week, and he along with a couple other great sports shooters has regular posts to his blog and also the News Week blog

Some great insights into how those amazing sports pictures get to your morning newspaper. Photographers will appreciate some of the difficulties these guys go through to get pictures. I particularly like Vincent's story of getting a picture of the fire works over the Great Wall... priceless.

Winter

Canon 1ds III , 16-35mm f2.8 lens

Seems the winter slow down for photographers hasn't started yet. Two weeks ago we fitted new all terrain tyres to the Troopy, not knowing that we would in the nest couple of weeks test those tyres on a wide range of surfaces. Highways, freeways, sandy dirt trails, snow covered mountain tracks and muddy back roads we've been over them all.
Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that the outback photographer doesn't love variety, because I do. The problem is getting back to the studio and a huge backlog of work . Not to mention emails, boy do they mount up if you're not on top of your game.

The shot above is photographed on a mountain track in Southern Victoria, in an area that is generally below the snow line and was recently ravaged by bush fire. Talk about mother nature handing out punishment, many of the trees along this road had been burnt badly during summer and are just starting to make new growth only to be covered in snow and ice and buffeted by gale force winds.

Desolation

Hasselblad 500cm with f4, 50mm lens, Agfapan 400 film

Wow today has been the coldest of our winter so far. A great day to run out of gas. So how come the outback photographer is posting a fine art nude today of all days. The answer is really simple... I wanted to.

This shot was taken a few years ago, just for fun and as part of a private project which is entitled "The Naked Landscape". Simple concept really, take a naked human and add them to a landscape urban or natural, try and get interesting images using just available light and the environment for inspiration. Funny thing is though, when I find a great location that I really want to shoot, there isn't a model anywhere to be found. By the time I find a model willing to get their kit off way out in the middle of the Never Never, the location has change, or the light no longer works there because of seasonal changes. On the other hand when you have a willing and able model or models, inspiration and locations seem to be hard to find.

What should have been a 12 month project has dragged on and on, but when our weather warms up I'm going to get right into it. That's my mid winter resolution. Well the New Years resolutions I make never happen so we'll try Mid Winter instead.

Our model Rachael was brave enough, or maybe she is just plain adventurous by nature and allowed me to drag her out into the middle of absolutely no where for the above shot. She wasn't fazed by the old derelict car body riddled with high caliber bullet holes. The chill of cold steel should have put her off, as I'm fairly sure that naked flesh pressed against cold, rusty, paint peeling steel, couldn't be all that pleasant but no she took it all in her stride.

The only interruption to the shoot was a bus load of Japanese tourists who drove up an old dirt road just behind the car. That event saw Rachael taking cover behind our bullet riddled car body and left me standing out in the centre of a million acre paddock trying t look as if I'm casually snapping pics of said car. Had they only looked closer!

Now people turning up on location isn't unusual, I've had a mother bring her three young teenage girls to look at a hot air balloon that I was shooting. Problem was, by the time I spotted her coming, I only had seconds to organize a diversion to steer her and attached children around to the other side of our partially inflated balloon. Right away from the five very naked men who were the subjects of the shot. Knowing the lady in question as I do, I'm reasonably confident we would have had to brush up on our CPR skills. But back to the bus load of tourists. I mentioned earlier that we were in the absolute middle of no where. Black Stump 500K's South, back of Burke 800K's North and no place between. How do these people manage to arrive on set on time?

Flowers

Nikon D2x with f2.8 60mm lens (The outback photographers "FUN" camera).

This morning the old outback photographer was all psyched up go shoot a large flock of Pelicans that I've been watching for the last few days. Always in the same spot and always the early morning light has been just perfect.. but as is often the case with photography, I've had other more pressing things to go shoot... you know, the short of things that put food on our table rather than the pics that just make me feel all good inside.

This morning would however be different, some precious free time, gear all ready to go and so was I. By 5am I couldn't wait any longer, hoped out of bed and stuck my head out the door just to check that there were no early clouds forming... Ahhhh! to my dismay the sky was full of dull gray clouds.... bugger, no point in going out in this... so it was back to bed to fume for a couple of hours. By 7 however I'd had enough, dragged myself out of bed, grabbed the Nikon and headed out into the bleak gray winters morning to find something to shoot.

As luck would have it I found these little white Snow Drops flowering just a few yards from our studios front door. By lying down on the wet grass I was able to frame these two against a very dull sky and as you can see the early light combined with the very shallow depth of field at f4, gave a rather neat look. Some days you just gotta take what the day offers up. Besides the shot was for me so there was no pressure to come through with the goods. But then I guess the most demanding person I shoot for is myself.

Don Costa

Canon 1Ds II with 16-35mm f2.8, available window light.

A trip to the post office today to clear out our mail box in the hope that someone may have sent us a cheque was not the success that we might have wished for. But there was this one interesting looking packet that we couldn't wait to tear open and have a look at the carefully packed contents. Our good friend Don Costa, musician and all round good guy has just released another CD and the outback photography team were lucky enough to get an autographed copy forwarded to us by Don and his fabulous wife Anette.

Robyn and I shot with Don earlier in the year. The image above was shot in the front window of the recording studio where Don was busy recording. Subsequently used inside the CD cover, it is one of my favorite images from the shoot. Using only available light coming through a window, the light pattern across the wall coming from sun reflecting off a parked van outside. Immediately after getting this shot we moved out into a narrow lane way, complete with cobble stones and great back lighting created by a quickly fading sun and shot the cover picture for this latest CD.

Smile

Nikon F5 with 60mm f2.8 Micro Nikor and film!!!

After spending a couple of hours putting together a not very inspiring composite image for a commercial job I'm working on. I decide enough was enough... time to have a bit of fun and to cheer myself up. If there is a more cheerful flower than the sunflower (helianthus) I haven't yet met it. The stock shot of the big bright yellow sunflower was shot in our studio a few years back, the sunset from about the same time was combined using simple masking techniques and took about two minutes from start to finish. Now that its complete I guess I should put it up onto our stock site www.excitations-stock.com
Think I'll make it a royalty free image, and price it in our cheap and cheerful range... sounds like a plan, but then again my brain is a bit addled from fiddling with another as yet incomplete composite... so I guess I'd better get back to it.