Beyond landscape photography

The Hawkesbury River and its people with Australian Geographic photographer Esther Beaton. www.estherbeaton.com

Esthers photo essay about the Hawkesbury River was published in issue 71 of Australian Geographic. Esther runs courses on photography (in conjunction with FotoRiesel) and I attended the course on Beyond landscape photography. This course focuses on how you might go about producing a series of photos for a magazine and is based on Esthers experience on the Hawkesbury River. Below is my account of the day and the photos I took. Obviously you don’t learn the lesson in one telling unless you are already very good. I would recommend the course it was a fun learning experience.

“Have you ever wanted to produce a series of photos just like in a glossy magazine? You don’t have to go overseas to do a great photo essay about a beautiful place and it’s interesting people. On the doorstep of Sydney is the little-known Hawkesbury River. Locked away by towering cliffs, hidden behind mangrove swamps, tucked around deep S-bends, the Hawkesbury River is one of the great river systems of Australia – yet one of the least known.”

Esther imparted many tips and things to think about when you go on an assignment. Starting at the first one was to think about the kind of shot you are after first up, select the lens and  adjust your camera settings before you meet your subject for the first time so you at least look like you know what you are doing.

So with that out of the way we set off to meet Bruce the oyster farmer. The oyster farmers of the Hawkesbury River are having a rough time of it lately with disease affecting this years and next years crop it will take some time for the industry to recover.

Bruce took us out to his lease, which was a bonus boat ride. We passed many empty racks, a reminder of the extent of the damage.

We even learnt a thing or two about oyster farming from our patient and cooperative model.

There is a long history of oyster farming on the river with some farmers being fourth generation. Evidence of the long history of industry can be seen along the shoreline. Here is a couple of shots of an old hut with loads of character. still not sure if I prefer the wide or the tight shot?

When we returned to the sheds where the processing takes place we chatted with some of the farmers who are really at a loose end some times as their normal work has gone. Some took the invasion of a dozen camera wielding people in their stride, while others were a bit weary at first but were always up for a chat.

We then went to a lookout off Colmer Rd Mount White a short drive away. Where we learnt a little about stitched panoramas and shots with negative space for titles and text blocks that you would see in a magazine. Here is a comparison of the in-camera panorama from the Fuji X Pro 1 and a sixshot (vertical) stitched panorama, my first attempt sadly not from the exact same position. Having done the stitching with “Hugin” I have an appreciation for what goes on in real-time in the little cameras brain. The second shot is in-camera.

 

We then went to Parsley Bay and around the point where we had another lesson on panoramas, hyper-focal distance, balancing for, mid and background. At this point I thought I would give it a go and see what I could recover when I got home. Not worrying about a tripod I held the camera about 300mm of the ground and took five vertical shots that I hoped would overlap sufficiently  to be able to stitch. I selected a location where I took this shot as it it had some foreground interest.

As you can see the setting sun is blasting in from the left, and I have not set the focal distance correctly as Dangar island in the background is not sharp. Over all I was surprised how well it stitched as the horizon in each shot was different by up to 35deg. Also ended up being 2×1 but anyway.

On our way to the pub I snapped these couple of shots over Sandbrook Inlet. With some time and skill I could probably make these look a bit better.

The final lesson of the day was on fill flash and getting it right, this is as close as I got. Yes eyes are closed it’s hard to keep peoples intrest with a flash.