REDISCOVERING HOME IN AUSTRALIA
@onlylandscapes
From the minute I began travelling in 2014, I wanted to capture every moment. “It’s a memory. What if I forget this someday?” I would almost always say, at the behest of whoever would be travelling with me. But the moment I came back to my home in Southeast Queensland, the camera would be stowed away until the next overseas adventure. The excitement that carried me through my travels, the proverbial lenses that changed how I viewed the world, would vanish the moment the wheels hit the tarmac on Australian soil. Now this wasn’t to say that Australia isn’t beautiful; it most definitely is, I just couldn’t see what everyone else was gushing over.
It wasn’t until 2022 that I began to slowly discover this inexplicable beauty of my own backyard, and with each adventure, I’d drive further and further away from home only to be met with endlessly evolving landscape and skies so beautiful it practically had me begging for a photographic memory. Mountains, beaches, sunrises; I wanted to capture them all – but I had next to no understanding of photography or editing. So, I spent the better part of 2023 learning the basics and fundamentals of landscape photography and eventually, I was finally able to do the landscapes the justice they deserved. From the rocky shores of the Sunshine Coast and Hastings Point to the rolling hills of Springbrook National Park on the Gold Coast, and everything in between, I felt truly privileged to be able to witness and capture some of the most awe-inspiring moments of my life. I still have a long way to go in my journey of photography but I am thankful for it because, without a camera, I never would have rediscovered home.
This article first appeared in PRISMA, Issue 18.