Swan Hill still waiting for the flood peak


Swan Hill is still waiting for the flood waters to peak. There have been minor breaches in a number of levies with a major breach at Murrabit and Benjeroop.
Hold your mouse pointer over the image to read the caption. Please contact me for any editorial or commercial use of these images, all monies donated to flood relief.

Photo of the Month: June

This month I will explain some of the processes involved in the photo of the month.
I borrowed my young sons pair of shiny silver magnets, feeling their smoothness I imagined them being photographed on a reflective surface. The silvery appearance needed to dominate. Placing them on a black high gloss acrylic surface would reflect their silver finish but still give contrast to the image. To aid in the composition they needed to be placed of centre, perhaps using the rule of thirds. I had a very clear idea in my head as to what the final image would look like.
I first tried to photograph them indoors, bouncing my flash off the ceiling to soften the light. I found it too hard to control the reflections and the reflections that were happening in the magnets and in the black acrylic just did not enhance the image.
The sun was almost setting outside and the light was quite soft so I thought I would try outside. Picking a spot under our slatted pergola, I tried a number of angles finally settling on the above composition. The lines produced by the illumination from the blue sky filtering through the wooden slats added greatly to the overall image. I chose an aperture that would just blur the reflections and used a large silver reflector to fill in the shadows and enhance the silver finish on the magnets.

100mm macro lens, f11, 0.7sec

Photo of the month: February

I have included this photo not for it’s artistic merit but for it’s content, or lack of it. A couple of years back I had a job to photograph a number of outback pubs. I had just finished photographing the deserted Hatfield Hotel and my next job was the Duke of Edinburgh Hotel at Booligal, my GPS said that I needed to go via Ivanhoe which was over 200 km. I had a bit of forethought and had loaded a set of maps from Tracks4Australia which is a very detailed map without auto routing. It showed me a dirt track between Clare and highway 75 that saved me more than 100 km. The land scape was incredible, about half way along the track I stopped and climbed onto the roof of my 4×4 and took in the barren 360 degree view, a view with not a single tree or building, this is a photo looking back towards Clare.  

“And people have an awful down
Upon the district and the town –
Which worse than hell itself they call;
In fact the saying far and wide
Along the Riverina side
Is Hay and Hell and Booligal ”
Hay, Hell and Booligal
A.B. “Banjo” Patterson

Photo of the Month: December

Dry lake bed of Lake Boga during the great drought (composite photo). The Swan Hill area has suffered drought for almost 10 years, most farmers have only seen minimum production on their dry land farms during this time. Ironically last month we have had 79.6mm of rain which will most likely severely damage most crops that are ready for harvest. This is the first time that I remember Lake Boga being dry. The Lake Boga Yacht Club was formed in 1936, I started sailing on the lake over 30 years ago and such a sight would have been unimaginable then.

Photoshop montage