THE WORLD OF WILDERNESS PHOTOGRAPHY

By Alistair Paton

Published in Outdoor Australia magazine, Oct-Nov 2006

WATER droplets cling to fern fronds. Mist drifts through the rainforest and a diffuse sun tries to fight through the fog as a storm clears. And Rob Blakers is there to capture it: crouched behind his tripod with one hand on the shutter release of his camera and the other managing a delicate balancing act with a giant golf umbrella.

“It is definitely awkward, but especially in Tasmania and any other wet place it’s an invaluable tool,” he says. “It takes longer, but I can get shots in forest I couldn’t get otherwise.”

Blakers has a passion for capturing Australia’s wildest places on film. Actually, obsession might be a better term; the fact he is willing to carry a golf umbrella, and a large briefcase full of camera gear, on long hiking trips, is a hint of the lengths he is willing to go to get that special shot.

He is far from alone. Photos of natural places are appearing on a growing number of products, from calendars, postcards and books to T-shirts, coasters and magazines such as Outdoor. The people who take those photos can be lumped into two categories: photographers who head to natural places in search of a subject, and bushwalkers who turned taking snapshots of their hiking trips into a business. Blakers definitely puts himself in the latter. “I’ve always said it’s an excuse to get me out there. I love the process of being out in wild places … I think a love of being in the outdoors is at the core of producing interesting images.”

An image that we might appreciate for a few moments on a magazine page or postcard is the result of often hours, and even weeks, of planning and preparation. Sometimes it’s impossible to put a time-frame on the process. For Blakers, it often starts when a new walking guidebook hits the shelves. “I might not follow the walk in the book, but they give me ideas for new places (to photograph), and they are usually written by locals, who know the area really well.”

Ideas for locations are also found by looking at other photographers’ work and talking to fellow hikers, and by keeping a keen eye out while in the outdoors for spots that might make a good image now, or later – at a different time of day, in different weather, or in a different season. “The weather basically rules my life,” Blakers says. “I have a list of places I have a better chance of working in in particular seasons or weather conditions.” 

Geoff Murray is one of the dedicated brigade that heads into the Tasmanian wilderness around Anzac Day every year to photograph deciduous beech in colour. “Each person picks their own destination and tries to judge when the beech is at its peak as it varies with altitude and from season to season.”

He says time is a key to producing great images. “You don't find good images in the wilderness without spending a lot of time there. It isn't unusual to find what looks like a good potential image but with lousy light so you decide to sit and wait for it to improve. I have sat and waited for three or four hours with no guarantee of a result. Other times it is well worth the wait. And during my wanders in the bush I might see something that looks ordinary now but might look good in another season so I mentally jog it down for a later visit.”

Asked to distil the essence of good wilderness photography, successful wilderness photographer Robert Rankin says: “Basically it’s being in the right place at the right time. And that’s not luck, that’s knowledge.” 

Light is, in the most literal sense, the key to wild photos; images are a recording of the light reflected from the landscape. And judging the best light in which to photograph a particular subject is at the heart of the process. 

For mountain vistas this is almost always when the sun is close to the horizon early in the morning or late in the evening, when the landscape is bathed in a warm glow and long shadows define key features; in the middle of the day, when the sun is directly overhead, landscapes will often appear “flat”. In a rainforest, the best light is produced on overcast or rainy days; bright sunshine creates too much contrast. In either case, a tripod is an essential piece of equipment. It allows the long exposures required in low-light conditions (and produces the blurring of flowing water in rainforest images) and forces the photographer to take time to find the best composition.

“Understanding these two facets, lighting and composition, is the essence of good picture making, and these skills have changed little since the early days of photography,” Rankin says. 

When composing photos, photographers have their own “golden rule”: the rule of thirds. The idea is to mentally divide the frame vertically and horizontally, producing nine equal sections. Images are most pleasing to the eye, the theory goes, when key lines (such as the horizon) are located on the third lines, and key features are placed where the lines intersect. 

“The rule of thirds is one you should know,” Rankin says. “You break it every time, but it’s a good starting point.

“Experience is the main thing. It takes a few years to really understand conditions of the environment and the light, and how it changes … and as the years go by you find a much better rate of good photos.”

Fortune plays a part in many good photos – no matter how much planning you do, it’s impossible to predict that one unbelievable sunset, or a rainbow falling on just the right spot. But there is no such thing as dumb luck.

“Good photographers have more luck because they spend more time out there and when something good does happen they know what to do with it,” Murray says.

Adds Rankin: “I usually go to a place with a particular shot in mind from an area, but you always get unexpected ones as well. Don’t waste a day. If there isn’t a good sunrise, go and photograph something else and come back. Sunrise is a good time to take photos of large landscapes, but you can’t be everywhere then.”

Persistence also plays a part. “If you’ve found the right spot it is just a matter of trying again and again and again until you get it (the shot you’re after),” Rankin says. “But it depends where you are. In the Western Arthurs you can’t really wait, you just go and take what you can get.”

David Neilson, who was one of the first to publish photos of Lake Pedder and has since produced books on Patagonia and Wilsons Promontory, says many of his best images were not the ones he had in mind when he left home. “A lot of the time at the Prom I decided to go somewhere and the lighting happened to be good, and I happened to be there to take the photos.”

The last point is the important one; Neilson would never have captured those photos if he had stayed home in bed. His advice to budding photographers is simple: “You’ve got to be out and about.”

A history of conservation

Wilderness photographers are linked by more than a desire to produce great images. A key reason why they do what they do is to enhance knowledge of Australia’s wild places – hopefully promoting a desire to protect them.

This is hardly surprising given the history of the medium. The pioneers, and inspiration for most of today’s photographers, were Olegus Trechanus and Peter Dombrovskis. The pair followed bizarrely parallel paths. Trechanus was a Lithuanian migrant who emerged as a key to the campaign to prevent the damming of Lake Pedder in the early 1970s when he showed slides of the lake while working as a clerk for the Hydro Electricity Commission. His protégé Dombrovskis came to Australia from Latvia and became renowned for his photographs of Tasmania’s wild places; his best known image, of Rock Island Bend, helped save the Franklin River. Both died doing what they loved; Trechanus drowned in the Franklin River in 1972, Dombrovskis suffered a heart attack in the Western Arthurs in 1996. 

“Peter Dombrovskis was a major inspiration,” Blakers says. “I remember seeing that (a book of his photographs) when I was at uni and it brought me to Tasmania. I came down for a three-week holiday and I’m still here.”

Blakers also shares the conservation ethic of the man who inspired him. “You’ve got to love your subject,” he says. “There are many places that remain under threat, and the more people that can give voices to these places the better.”

TTIPS FROM THE EXPERTS

Get up early.

“I’m nearly always up before sunrise,” David Neilson says. “Often when I get up it’s cloudy and nothing happens, but every now and then something magic happens.” Mobile phones don’t always get reception in wild places, but the alarm can be invaluable.

Look at other photographers’ work. 

Rob Blakers says it’s important to see what other photographers are doing, but not to just reproduce the same image. “I think it’s really important for people to find their own places, and make their own images.”

Look critically at your own photos. 

Think about why some images work and some don’t. Some photographers find it helpful to take notes, but not all. “Most shots I wouldn’t have a clue what the shutter speed or f-step was,” Robert Rankin says.

Think about photographic possibilities before leaving on a trip. 

Look at a map. Where will you be when the lighting conditions are at their best? This might prompt a slight change in plans. “Photography gets me to places I wouldn’t otherwise be,” Blakers says, “such as camping on top of a mountain at sunrise or even in a forest in rain and mist because that’s when the lighting conditions are more interesting.”

Be prepared to go the extra mile.

Rankin once returned from a camping trip in a forest to find his car bogged by rain that produced great photography conditions. He couldn’t retrieve it for three weeks. “I had six good photos,” he says. “I didn’t care about the car.”