Photography, the accessible artform!

With such stunning scenery wherever one looks, it is little wonder that photography is a popular pastime of visitors to Tropical North Queensland.

Cloud capped mountain ranges tower over the narrow coastal strip, which borders the Pacific Ocean, their peaks looking inaccessible and forbidding.

The ocean, at times a sparkling, brilliant turquoise, at others stormy and wild, seems to respond to the mood set by the mountains as they either bask in benevolent sunshine or are hidden by monsoonal rain squalls sweeping across their faces.

For this is the region of, often violent, cyclones, which wreak havoc on forests and human structures, as photographic records of cyclone Larry in March 2006 will attest.

Nature based photography is popular with artists of Tropical Australia, who produce striking work, which is often used for tourist brochures and the like.

Sweeping landscape and seascape panoramas join revealing close-ups of the hearts of delicate flowers or the spiral divisions in a pineapple skin…or even a tiny “Nemo” fish hiding in coral crevices.

Marks on the beach, in dry sand where the wind played with coconut fronds to produce intricate patterns...little balls of wet sand around crabs’ holes... or the brooding darkness of the jungle path, from which a curlew, green tree frog or python might suddenly emerge... are all subjects for the inquisitive lens.

The colourful mix of people and their activities – at sport or leisure or just going about their daily life - provide fascinating and ever changing subjects for the photographer.

Picture framer/ photographer, Wayne Parkinson, combines his love of photography with his framing business and also sells his smaller images at the Port Douglas markets.

Many people choose Port Douglas, Cairns, the Tablelands or nearby islands for that special wedding and there are very experienced photographers, such as Steve Brennan, on hand to record the occasion.

Ross Isaacs, who lives in Port Douglas, specialises in photographing reefs from all around the world, often teaming up with prestigious scientific projects to explore unknown ocean depths.

Peter Lik, from Cairns, produces well finished, commercially appealing images, which are sold through his successful group of photographic galleries in Australia and America.

Then there are the photographers who use the medium essentially as an artform. These include photographic artists such as Keflyn Moss and a number of other artists such as Linda Jackson, Jill Chism, Louise Collier and Frieda van Aller.

Frieda’s observations of nature also take the form of structured haikus, which sum up the essentials of a situation in a concise but poetic form.

It seems to me that the camera has become an extension of the hand and eye of the majority of the population, especially since the advent of digital photography… which gives us all the chance to be artists!

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