Just how big are the blue skies of the Australian outback?
The answer to that question is really easy…. BIG. If you haven’t stood on the edge of vast inland clay pan, on a hot summers day, you have no idea of just how much blue sky is out there. If you’re a landscape photographer it’s great to see so many blue skies in a month. A portrait photographer on the other hand may not share your enthusiasm. All the harsh sunlight that goes hand in hand with vast blue skies. Makes portrait photographers work a wee bit harder. Especially if their commission is to flatter their subjects. Ya can always tell a city photographer from down south. First thing they comment on is how bright the light is. You get use to it and learn to work around it.
But back to big blue skies. We are blessed with them in much of outback Australia. Except of course when they’re full of bloody dust whipped up buy a strong northerly. On those days you look straight up and see blue skies. Look towards the horizon and you’re lucky to be able to see anything. Mostly due to millions of tiny pieces of grit,traveling at full noise and trying gouge your eyes out. That’s without the discomfort of having sand and grit in your mouth and ears. Fortunately hot northerly winds subside as we head into our Autumn. Leaving us with… you guessed it blue skies. occasionally we even get a little white fluffy cloud in our big blue skies. Oh what excitement, another compositional element to play with. I kid you not. Photographing a tree against a endless blue sky can get a bit…. boring. Add a little white fluffy cloud and landscape photographers of the great Australian outback, often get so excited that they…. well let’s just say they get excited.
Back in my youth, shooting with film. Black and white film no less. In fact to be really precise Panchromatic b/w film. I use to stick a really dark red filter over my lens to render the blue sky almost black in the final print. Contrast that against the white, bleached skeleton of a tree, that had long before called it a day. You where well on your way to winning best landscape photo at the local camera clubs monthly meeting. In fact most of my early black and white landscapes featured trees. Mostly dead. Photographed against a big blue sky. Actually there wasn’t much else to shoot in a flat, semi arid landscape, punctuated occasionally by a tree.
See, no trouble finding big blue skies in outback Australia. No shortage of local comic relief either.
Because space is so limited in the outback, locals have found a new space saving way to park their airplanes. At least it gives us poor bloody photographers something else to contrast against a big blue sky. To be totally honest I would liked to have used a tree, but the closest thing to a tree was about 100 clicks south of this location on the Oodnadata Track.
