Hi, I am a landscape and nature photographer based in Melbourne, Australia and enjoy using my camera to explore our remaining wild places and better connect with nature.
I am heading up the freeway in the early morning light. As always, I am looking forward to some time in Nature, and hopefully making some interesting photographs.
The plan is to go to Hanging Rock – a location forever embedded in the Australian cultural milieu for the 1975 film Picnic at Hanging Rock directed by Peter Weir in which a group of schoolgirls in 1900 go for a picnic and several students and a teacher are lost, some never to be found.
Based on a 1967 novel, the film was controversial in that it provided no answers to the mystery, there no resolution to what happened to the women. However, my favourite part of the movies was not the story, but the beautifully crafted scenes (both the cinematography and the haunting music) that emphasise the mystery of the Australian bush, so foreign to the relatively recent colonists from a very different landscape (a recurring theme in many Australian films of the era).
I am hoping to find something. Not the lost schoolgirls, but a re-invigorated direction for my photography. After a long summer and continuing dry conditions, there is not a lot of water in the creeks and the vegetation looks scrappy. Along with a lot of distractions at work and home, I am questioning what it is I want to say with my photography. Why I am out taking photos?
So to mix things up I decide to head to Hanging Rock with the intent of creating something completely different to my normal photography.
I normally like to start before dawn but here I have to wait until the park gate opens at 9am. Finally, I shoulder my backpack and head up the hill. The park is well developed and built for crowds so the path is bitumen and skirts around the rocky outcrop that was created 6 million years ago as a dome of lava.
The bush is a mix of eucalypts beyond my ability to identify, with bracken and various spiky bushes as understory. While the going is easy on the path, it is much slower and more difficult once you step off the track
But there are soon plenty of boulders mixed amongst the vegetation that demand exploring, moving in, out, around, testing different perspectives.
The path reaches its most western point and turns upwards. There is a choice of a longer, more gradual ramp or the stairs. Like most people I take the ramp.
I am now climbing up into the outcrop. Large rocks tower overhead, gaps allow glimpses of what’s beyond.
Slowing down, I am getting in tune with the environment, exploring the light and texture of rock and vegetation.
Reaching the top of the first steep incline, I head off track to explore a gap between rocks. I find myself well above the surrounding country, with plenty of views to enjoy. With rapidly moving clouds, I set up a timelapse and wander around without my pack.
Moving between the rocks, I come across trees in unexpected places. Each tree worthy of time to explore its many different angles.
I climb the second steep section and the terrain flattens out towards the summit. I set up another timelapse, for practice as much as anything. I am in no rush. I head off track, wherever my curiosity leads me. Although it would be difficult to get physically lost, mentally I am lost in exploration. Time is measured by the moving sun and the shadows it casts on rock.
By now the day is warming up and the sun is emerging from behind clouds. There are more people, which only encourages me to explore further afield, through gaps, following the light.
I find larger trees successfully surviving in the small cracks with the barest of soil, the roots embracing the rocks.
I am enjoying the patterns of the trunk and bark against rock. The different scales of time are apparent – humans scurrying over the rock like ants, trees tenuously surviving through the years, the rocks seemingly immoveable.
I find a younger tree, direct sunlight causing its foliage to glow. I head past this tree, out into an open space surrounded by rock with a large tree silhouetted against the rapidly moving clouds.
It is difficult to find an angle as I set up my third timelapse. As the camera takes an image every 4 seconds, I lie down in the sun and think about the story of Picnic at Hanging Rock. About people lost in the bush. Sometimes through miscalculation or disaster, sometimes by design. Being entirely subsumed by Nature.
Why do I take photographs? There are no answers in Picnic at Hanging Rock. But sometimes going out, connecting with nature and recording some memories is enough.
I love these images James and how you have paired them as well - they work so well together. I particularly like the second, third and last pairings.
I hope you find an answer to your question.
Love these images. I love how you paired them as well. My personal favorites are the last two!