Victoria

 Captured at the iconic Great Ocean Road viewing platform, this sunset was so late in a summer evening that we actually had dinner first. The golden cliffs and Apostles glow in this sunset, with the contrasting green flora leading your eye even more. I am so grateful of the opportunity to capture this natural wonder and unique landform. 

A smallish waterfall in the Otways, Cape Range National Park, this waterfall is a 2km hike down into a rainforested gully, with a VERY slippery crossing past the rocks and the stream, perilously trying not to fall in! 

What can I say about this image? It was a difficult one for me both physically taking it, and mentally editing it to get it's true potential out. The location is the Pinnacles, on Phillip Island, VIC.

The hike was pretty intense, a few hard km, rushed to try and make it before sunset. As you can see, we made it! The climb down past the "No access" sign was... Sketchy... and we had a few pant wetting moments on the way down. You can see the climb down in this photo, it's the grass on the far right. Looks a lot steeper in person!

The sunset looked pretty poor, we were getting frustrated that after the long climb we would be left without a great image.

Thankfully as I was setting up the panorama gear, Amanda told me to look up at the clouds. A hint of pink was starting to show through. I hurriedly finished setting up, and started to fire off shots for a panorama I had in my head. The light show we got was just amazing and really popped the colours of the cliffs around us in this epic location. I had seen other photographers images of this place, but I don't think any of them got as lucky as I did with the beautiful colours and clouds.

Stitching the image together was a whole other challenge! My quick setup and some poor execution on my part gave me days of headache getting this image stitched. It required some serious manual stitching work and almost did my head in! I've been sitting on this trying to get it right for weeks now!

The climb back up the cliff in the dark and the 4km hike back to the car was painful, but I was buoyed by the fact that I had captured an amazing scene.

All that remains of the Cat Bay Jetty on this famous part of Phillip Island, in Victoria, Australia.

This long exposure art image smoothes the motion of the water into calmness, lending a sense of serenity to the daylight image.

We drove our hired Motorhome through the Otways National Park to this incredible location, along small one lane roads that wound through the forest, down a small gravel road and into a carpark for about 8 cars.

The walk down to the falls is short but challenging with it's steepness and number of steps, and we were on a seriously tight schedule here to make sunset at the 12 Apostles.

Thankfully the location was just amazingly beautiful, I couldn't stop clicking the shutter as composition after composition appeared for me.

In the editing suite, I chose this image to represent Hopetoun Falls as it embodies it nicely for me, a beautiful waterfall surrounded by lush cool climate rainforest. You appear to peek underneath the huge tree ferns to get a glimpse of the waterfall.

I hope you enjoy it.

This image was taken during a trip to Victoria at the very start of 2017. I was at Whisky Bay for sunrise (just). We had been kicked out of our sleeping spot in the carpark at Whisky Bay for "Safety", so had to drive all the way out of the park at 11pm, and drive all the way back in at 4am!

Anyway, it was dark when we headed down to the beach. I got some beautiful pre-dawn photo's which I will share with you later, however during the sunrise I spotted this outcropping of rocks and decided to climb up to see if I could get a better view.

Near the top, I saw this incredible natural feature, a slit in the rocks with the surf pounding in and out, just as the natural red lichen in the area was being lit beautifully by the rising sun.

This image is taken at the aptly named "Wreck Beach", off the Great Ocean Road in Victoria.

The anchor is from a ship called the Marie Gabrielle, which wrecked on this spot in 1869, carrying a load of Tea from China. The anchor is all that remains of the wreck in this incredible location, a testament to how rough the seas can be in this spot, far from this idyllic but cold summers morning.

We parked for the night above the wreck, and made the trek down the 400 or so stairs at about 4am in order to be there for first light. Finding the anchor in pitch black conditions was no picnic, we weren't able to scout the location beforehand. Nonetheless, we made it and I set up for the image.

The sunrise was extremely dissapointing with minimal light, and the clouds above refused to fire up. I was just packing up my equipment to leave when Amanda pointed up and said excitedly, "It's happening!"

I set my stuff back up, slightly adjusted for the clouds and fired away as the clouds grew from pale grey to fluoro pink and then orange. It was all over in about 8 minutes, but it was just enough time for this shot. The walk back up the stairs was no picnic, apparently we climbed 22 stories in 340m to get back to the car.