Chasing the sun

I am now also a Sunchaser. I am on the west coast and the best bit – watching the sun set into the Indian ocean and Western Australia sunsets are stunning! I almost forgot how good they are in real life and not just on photos, how special it is to see the sun fall straight into the Indian Ocean. So here’s what I did the other day (click for larger size):

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Get the train to Cottesloe Beach, sit and enjoy the 29 degree warm Spring day

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Watch the fantastic cloud formations light up behind the Indiana Teahouse

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Stroll the beach in the dusk light

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Watch some blokes decide this sunset is so good they have to jump in a boat and chase it to the horizon – and then wishing I had gone with them!

Perth

If you jump on a plane in Sydney and fly 5 hours and 4300 kilometers west you would be forgiven for thinking you would land in another country. Well, you don’t, you are now in Perth in Western Australia the worlds most remote capital!

Perth is beautifully situated right on the Swan River and presently home to an estimated 1,5 million people and that is growing rapidly due to the oft mentioned “mining boom”. Western Australia is rich on minerals (richest mineral soil in the world) and the mining industry is doing incredibly well. Fortunately Perth is still the way I remember it – an outback country town with a few highrises thrown in! A very nice change from too-hectic Sydney. Perth has that great laid-back remote outback Western Australia feel and almost all of the 1,5 million live in the suburbs so Perth CBD is very small (and totally dead and slightly spooky after 6pm). Most streets are fairly wide, most houses are only a few floors tall. Most of CBD is one big construction site at the moment though, trying to adapt Perth to the many new inhabitants building new highrises.

Been a long time since I’ve been here, spent a long time here in 1999 in another life starring another me. Bit weird revisiting (like a never-ending flashback) so I put myself to work straight away shooting pictures, my main reason for being here (the few Perth shots I have from 99 are shithouse, backpackers, alcohol and photography don’t mix). Here’s a few of Perth more at my gallery.

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Perth with purple dusk light as seen from South Perth across the river

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Perth at night from Kings Park

Outback Western Australia

I love outback WA, so beautiful and so remote. Just to try and put it into perspective: WA is about the size of Western Europe but home to only 2 million and the 1,5 million of those are living in Perth! So that leaves 0,5 million people for the rest of Western Europe!

Some day I will revisit and re-shoot the fantastic far north outback of Western Australia. The Kimberleys are one of the best spots in Australia. Not on this tour though, wrong time of the year to go far north now, pretty much has to be in May/June/July. Fortunately Perth is so remote you only have to drive a few hours north to get to places like these, more at my gallery:

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The Pinnacles in Nambung National Park

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Sand dunes of Lancelin

I need a holiday!

Yeah I know sounds pretty stupid to need a holiday but I’m so exhausted! This trip was always about photography first, holiday maybe second. But the past 3 weeks I may have overdone it and wore myself out as I tend to do, doing nothing but photography full time every day trying to get to as many shooting ops as possible every day. I love, live and breathe photography don’t get me wrong but it’s a lot of work. So I need a holiday. I also need a new left foot! Something wrong with the one I have now, something happened to it doing those 200 kilometers walking in Sydney. My left shoulder is not really keen on the heavy camera bag anymore either. So these last few days of my trip I have traveled around by taxi, taxi to and from Kings Park, to and from the beach etc. Soon I will be shooting my shots out of the window of the taxi and annoying the taxi driver to no end: “Just a bit forward mate. Stop. Go back a bit. Stop. Left a bit. No too far. Back. Stop. Forward. Turn around. Go right. There. Perfect shot. Ah bugger the light is gone…forward!”

Randomness

  • You gotta have your fun living in the remote outback. Which is why you will see roadhouses advertising “25 hour service, 8 days a week” and pubs in the middle of nowhere advertising “Ocean View!”
  • Ah the joys of photography at dusk. Mossie bites on my right hand this time! Where are the Germans, I need a bit of your mossie repellant!
  • Big sign on the Transperth train saying “if you witness criminal or anti-social behaviour on the train report it by calling this number”. Anti-social. Hehehehe that could be me, I’m not very social, not a real people’s person – so I better watch my behaviour on the Transperth trains!
  • Always take the weather with you – and I do! Have had fantastic weather the whole trip, even here in Perth (Spring is not normally that warm here) it’s been up to 27-29 degrees and sunny. Have had sunshine basically non-stop since 23rd of August!

One Comment on “Chasing the sun”

  1. Just think, you only have to wait until February 2011 for the X100 then you can give your shoulders a break. I predict that your life will change after that. Fujifilm definition: Life changer.
    Just wait, it’ll be here before you know it.

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