I have a great affinity for travel especially to new places and sharing that journey with people who have a like-minded kinship for the outdoors. Whether on holidays or travelling for work, my eyes hardly ever stop looking even if it does mean making more work for myself when maybe I could be relaxing. The process of looking, planning and retracing steps all to be at a location for the good light or when the crowds are all at the pub is all part of the journey and adventure. Recent extended trips over the last two years throughout Europe I picked up some tips and lessons along the way to make such trips simpler, more about that in a future article “VanLife Lessons”.
Simplicity. So, what does this look to a photographer who enjoys all aspects of the outdoors and capturing lifestyle visuals? It generally means less gear, no laptop, one tripod, no editing images or a VLOG on top of some lookout until 3am so it can be released the next day before we roll on. Yes the Terrazza panoramica di Sardagna lookout over Trento, Italy is such a place and the views were great, you can see it in my Return to the Mtns VLOG I made late one night while travelling in Europe.
But no, this was not what I had in mind for this trip. How did I achieve this and still provide myself a challenge to create and possibly find new ways to shoot subjects? Restrict myself to one camera, one lens and see what I can create. Now what lens, normally I would grab a wide angle as it’s my favourite perspective, but I am too familiar with that lens and as I said I want a challenge. Our eyes see equivalent to about 50mm so everyone knows what that looks like so creating interesting images will be a challenge.
The Tassie 50 project was born. One camera, one lens (50mm) and 50 images from 10days of travelling around the island.
Tasmania is an amazing place, so nice I was thinking of moving there a few years back. An idea that still lingers in the back of my brain somewhere waiting for a more opportune time to resurface. With amazing beaches and coast lines, great mountains and rives to explore and quiet city streets, well quieter than the hustle of Sydney, it’s hard not to love Tassie. New places was the agenda so a hire car in Hobart with a big clockwise loop saw us travel through Mt Field national park, across the centre to the west coast to the township of Strahan. After some exploring the coast, we headed north to Cradle Mountain for the summit hike missing it two years ago when we did the full Overland Track. After enjoying the views from atop we headed to the north coast to enjoy the warm weather and water. Along the top we took in walks near Port Sorell in hope to see some penguins but only discovered quiet beaches and no crowds something Tasmanians seem to enjoy everywhere. Then to the east coast for a wedding in Binalong Bay before cruising south to Triabunna taking the ferry over to Maria Island for a night. Maria Island is treasure chest of beauty and adventure with great camping, mountain bike riding, hiking and plenty of wildlife. Lastly was some time spent in the Tasman national park especially Cape Hauy checking out Totem Pole and Candlestick two popular rock-climbing pinnacles that jut out of the sea taking shape as their names describe while little sight seeing boats buzz around below in the water.
So how did the project go? Well I captured some images that caught my attention. Some simply for the beauty of the land in front of me and some because I had to work for them. Some I had to walk away from logging the location into my database of locations hoping to return one day soon and capture an image how I imagined it at that time. Did I capture anything stellar? I always reserve my feelings until I return home and look at my images later to see if they still invoke the sense of excitement as when I took them. Some images do, some don’t which usually is an indication that I should have spent more time with the subject at hand. But the simplistic ease of just grabbing my camera and not having to think about lenses only to try and capture what I am seeing made me consider what it is that I like in front of me a bit more. This was a great revision for my creativity and keeping me from going flat in my work shooting the same old ways as always. It’s all about what you leave out of the frame and not just what is in it that makes great photos something a single lens makes you very aware of.
