Isopogon dubius at Leseur National Park, Western Australia.
Leseur is magical. Being a botanically minded soul fed on a diet of eastern Australian flora, there is something fantastical and otherworldly about the diversity and sheer boldness of colour and form in Western Australian wildflowers.
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Rocks and palm trees deep in the shade of Piccaninny Gorge in Purnululu (Bungle Bungle) National Park.
I’ve been thinking about panoramas lately. The more I think about it, the more I think a 6x17 ratio is much more natural to me than squarer formats. I think I’ve always found the ‘standard’ 3x2 ratio awkward for composing, and it rarely feels natural when trying to put together a composition.
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The recently rediscovered New Caledonian Storm-Petrel hovering over the slick at the Britannia Seamounts
Some of the most exciting pelagics in Australia at the moment are the Britannia/Queensland Seamounts trips run by Paul Walbridge and Craig Newton out of the Gold Coast. They are the only trips in Australia to regularly get both New Caledonian and Band-rumped Storm-Petrels and Magnificent/Collared Petrels, and have turned up other incredible seabirds such as Bulwer’s and Herald Petrels, Swinhoe’s, Polynesian and Matsudaira’s Storm-Petrels and many others.
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One of my favourite landscape photos taken with the Zeiss 35mm f2 - Canon EOS 3 with Velvia 100 slide film.
As I’ve become more experienced and comfortable in my style of photography, I’ve come to realise there are certain lenses and focal lengths that suit my style and that inspire me to take photos. There are some lenses I love using but don’t quite connect with the resulting images (such as the Zeiss 100mm f2 Makro-Planar), others that I love using and love the resulting images but rarely find myself wanting to use that focal length (such as the Zeiss 21mm f2.8 Distagon), others that I don’t particularly enjoy using and don’t quite like the resulting images but have unique capabilities (such as the Venus Laowa 15mm f4 macro), others that I love but are rather heavy (such as the Canon EF 300mm f2.8L IS USM), and yet others that don’t really excite me but perform well as workhorses to get the job done (such as the Canon EF 100mm f2.8L IS USM macro, the Canon EF 16-35mm f4 IS USM and Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM II).
But there’s one lens that more or less combines all the right attributes - I love using, I love the resulting images, and I love the focal length. And that lens is the Zeiss 35mm f2 Distagon Classic.
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One of first species I worked on during my PhD, Pterostylis longifolia with Mycomya sp. fungus gnat pollinator.
It was over five and a half years ago when I first sat down at my PhD desk to begin my journey to uncover the secrets of Pterostylis pollination. A lot has changed since then - we moved buildings at uni, I spent years in the field chasing gnats and in the lab working out chemistry, I published two papers on my research, I moved to Arnhem Land and moved back again, I started working in the public service and I submitted my PhD thesis.
Today, at least symbolically, I capped off that journey as I graduated from my PhD at the ANU.
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