TWO WHITE EMUS
Regular reader – and Fujifilm Showcase entrant – John Walker tells the tale of how he got started as a serious photographer, largely by trial and error… and a little encouragement from a certain photography magazine you might know well.
Photography came into my life almost 30 years ago due to life-changing health issues. I needed something to keep me mentally and physically active. I was living in the bush in the remote north-west of Western Australia’s Pilbara region. My first camera was a little Pentax compact with a 38-135mm zoom, followed by an Olympus OM-2n 35mm SLR that was bought one night after a drunken disagreement with a couple of old-timers concerning two white emus that I told them I had seen.
“Prove it,” they said and, as if by magic, the OM-2n was produced, having apparently just fallen off the back of a truck. Money changed hands and, along with a killer headache the next morning, I now had my first real camera. It was an SLR – whatever that really meant – and it even had a small dent from falling off the back of that truck!
I headed off into the bush, clicking away at anything and everything and always keeping a lookout for those emus. I could have done with the truck to cart away the huge amount of dud images that the camera was taking. Maybe it was that dent, but I kept at it, bought a secondhand 135mm lens, added a 2x teleconverter and then (wait for it) a tripod. I was now one seriously decked-out photographer, needing to know if he was getting any better by showing people my little photo album of 6x4-inch chemist prints, closely watching facial expressions for signs of approval or not… any sign would do. I had so much to learn about photography and about using the camera, f-stops, depth-of-field, ISO settings and everything else. These were only terms I learned from reading the Olympus’s manual which, luckily, had also fallen off that truck along with the camera. There was no library, certainly no Facebook feedback, and what the hell was a Google? The time from pressing the shutter to seeing the image took three weeks and editing was all done though the camera’s viewfinder.
Audience Participation
So, one of the first of the many things I was to learn about photography was that you needed an audience and, if I wanted to be able to actually sell some photos one day, people would have to play a part in my development (pun intended). When you live in a town of 50 people and are spending 300 days a year living away in the bush in the middle of nowhere – finding an audience was a bit of a challenge.
The small town I lived in did have a shop… well, maybe half a shop that didn’t stock much that you couldn’t eat or run your 4WD on. So, it was a huge surprise the day I found a photography magazine sitting amongst the three-month-old Picture Posts, 4WD and shooters’ magazines. I talked the shop owner into ordering it for me regularly, which soon became the talk of the town. Word was, “John’s reading another type of magazine”. Yes, it was that sort town. I read those magazines from cover to cover, practising different settings, angles, f-stops, film speeds, double and long exposures and, after another truckload of duds, I was finally starting to understand my camera. I found the best film for me was Fujichrome Velvia 50 transparency stock. Shot at ISO 40, it certainly reduced the number of overexposures I was making due to the brightness of the Pilbara sun. The tripod started to get plenty of use in low-light situations.
Playing around with light painting was when the penny dropped about how to shoot lightning while standing on the roof of a tray-back ute – out in the middle of the flats with a tripod, rubber thongs and a beer. It worked and I’ve captured some great shots over the years. Lightning is something that I’m a bit crazy about, but don’t forget the rubber thongs.
Lessons And Life
What makes a good image? Level horizons, the subject matter, the colours and shapes, the rule-of-thirds compositions? It’s all those and more. However, for me at that time in my development as a photographer, a second opinion was urgently needed and so I entered the Fujifilm Showcase competition in Australian Camera magazine. I don’t know what I expected with my first entry. I can’t even remember the image, but what I do remember is that a photo of a pink bike leaning on a pink fence did very well. So here I was, living in Australia’s remote outback in a stunning landscape that is every photographer’s dream, and I’m competing with pink fences! I knew there was a lesson in there somewhere, but wasn’t sure what it was.
I continued to enter the Fujifilm Showcase contest every month with my chemist-printed 6x4s until, one day, I opened the magazine and there it was… The Old Car by John Walker. Over the next few years my images did very well in the contest and I even had an article published.
Over the years photography became quite a force in my life. I was teaching it as a guest at Pilbara high schools, documenting the country of an old Aboriginal elder (and, then, 20 years later sharing those images with her grandchildren), and walking my mum down the aisle while shooting her wedding at the same time. I believe that without The Old
Car appearing in print – and living north of the black stump without the challenge or the audience – I would have given it away.
So, when someone asks me how to improve their photography, I tell them to read the camera’s manual, buy camera magazines and enter contests. For 30 years my camera and I have travelled all over Australia from the Pilbara – with its 45-degree days – through the remote dusty outback of South Australia to the central highlands of Tasmania where it snowed. My images have been proudly displayed on walls along the way.
The photography world has changed since I first held that dented Olympus 35mm film camera. There are billions of images people are exposed to in today’s media, but to me the true nature of photography is the image that somebody prints, frames and hangs on the wall. Seeing one of my images on someone’s wall, 15 years on, is humbling… as it should be. Stealing that frozen moment in time is what we do as photographers. Digital or film is still, fundamentally, all photography – it’s only the old-timers who can always feel the difference. Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop have become my editors for sharpening, cropping or going all out arty if the mood strikes me. HDR and panorama stitching have replaced the good old double exposures and other tricks.
Today my gear is nearly all digital – Nikon D3100 and D7000 DSLRs, a Nikon Coolpix P900 with its 2000mm-equivalent zoom and the latest in the stable, a Canon EOS 90D (bought after reading the review in Australian Camera).
I should also mention my little pocket camera – a Panasonic
Lumix DMC-FT10 that produces great underwater videos and, last but not least, an old Minolta Dynax 500si 35mm SLR rescued from the local tip.
I often wonder if the people carrying around all that flash camera gear – making me feel like a photographer’s poor cousin with lens envy thrown in – know even half of what their equipment can do? Then there are those photographers who hit you right between the eyes with images so real, perfectly connecting you with the world around and I can only think ‘Wow!’.
I guess it’s a sign of the times. Yes, I know I’m starting to sound like those old-timers, still looking for two white emus after 30 years.
When someone asks me how to improve their photography, I tell them to read the camera’s manual, buy camera magazines and enter contests.”