Shifting Sands

Shifting Sands – Cervantes Western Australia

Myself and a friend and fellow photographer Mark Stothard had been planning a trip up the coast for a few weeks when conditions seemed pretty right, this past friday looked like the day was ripe for a variety of shooting conditions. We wanted to shoot some dunes as well as the West Australian Landmark “The Pinnacles” inside Nambung National Park. The name Numbung is the indigenous meaning for crocked or winding, describing the Nambung River that drains into the area.

First stop was the dunes where we covered a fair chunk of the dunes on foot heading left and right scoring the dunes for some nice shapes. mark had found this nice “S” shape dune some 150mtrs away when I was still on the look out for my location. Reaching the top of a dune I looked around and saw nothing that took a firm interest, so I thought hell why not lets go scout what is over the next dune peak. Coming down of one large dune into a valley I sized up the next slog up the soft sand when I came to a ledge in the valley and saw this stunning sand sculpture. While it could only been 15-20 feet long it really took my interest and I knew there was a shot here if I could just get the angle right.

I have been somewhat looking at a couple of photographers of late that have sparked my interest in looking into the landscape as well as the general wide angle view, looking for those elements within a landscape that draw our attention. Guy Tal has an incredible eye for this and while his work I have followed for a number of years only recently have I really been trying to study what makes his imagery so appealing to many.

So with that in mind this is one of my first examples of that type of landscape photography. While I was just a mere 6 or so feet above this stunning sand pattern if you look long and hard at the image one can get a sense they could be in a plane at say 3000 feet looking down on a huge expanse of land with giant sand dunes and waves of shifting sands.

If you get a chance check out Guy Tai’s work along with Tony Kuyper both sensational photographers with some much to learn from by just spending time within their images …

Oh the image I almost forgot the image … Was on a bit of a mind wander there with the back story ….

Cheers again Mark for the afternoon … Next time we tent up 🙂

More from the trip coming up over the next week … I think I have a few really nice images to come ….

Click the thumbnail below for the full size sample image …. Cheers Neal