Karijini – One Of The Best Photo Locations On The Planet?

I have been fortunate enough to photograph many of the iconic landscape locations in Australia and the USA including Canyonlands, Bryce, Arches, Antelope, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Olgas,  Kings Canyon etc. etc.   but I think Karijini National Park in Western Australia is as good as any of these… and may even be better than most!  It is without a doubt one of the least known but amazing locations in Australia.  This posting is going to be the first in a whole series of postings that outlines my experiences of the past week.

I have just returned from an incredible workshop that was run by 3 of Australia’s top photographers.  Christian Fletcher, Peter Eastway and Tony Hewitt.  I was one of 17 other participants who joined this workshop in order to shoot this incredible location in the company of some truly talented professional photographers.

Getting there was a chore… we opted to drive up from Perth which was 16 hours driving each way.  I shared a car with Mark Stothard, Peter Ng and Keith Lightbody.   When we set out on the journey I did have some concerns about spending 32 hours total in a car with three others… especially when Mark started playing his eclectic library of music… I was dealing with the Arabic disco music but drew the line at Zorba the Greek and Nanna Maskouri!!!  I had to take more control of the iPod…. after that adjustment we got on just fine.

The only incident of note came after we made camp… we got up for a sunrise shoot around our camp site…. This is when I got a tasted of just how competitive Christian is about getting the great images.   I was walking over towards an old abandoned caravan that Christian had just finished scouting…. however as I approached, I was blocked by an electric fence.  I surveyed the fence with caution and then Christian seeing my dilemna said “Don’t Worry Mate…. It’s not turned on”.  So while carrying my camera and tripod I put one leg between the fence to squeeze between the strands when all of a sudden my upper thigh touched the wire and I got a hell of a boot from the fence.  I bounced off the top wire and back to the middle wire for a second boot… then a third boot…. before extracting myself from the fence.

Christian looked at me and laughed “Oh I guess I was wrong about that fence”.   So I decided on getting my own back by photographing Christian in front of his van that he had just had sprayed with a custom spray job…. He was trying to keep it quiet.

I will be posting a series of blog posts with details of what it was like to explore and photograph Karijini National Park as well as participating in this incredible workshop.  I will share some of my images and I will complete the series with a high definition video that I have shot in Karijini.   You guys should check that out to really get a sense of what it is like to photograph this incredible place.

More posts to come shortly.

Brent