Getting Wet on the GBR …
… made a lightning fast visit to the Great Barrier Reef out from Cairns recently for The Australian.
Journalist Graham Lloyd and I were choppered out to Moore Reef … certainly one of my quickest (and shortest) visits to the Great Barrier Reef !
A twenty five minute helicopter flight … then straight into the water with camera, reef crew Katherine, reef ecologist Eric and journalist Graham … forty five minutes working in the lagoon, the flat and the wall of Moore Reef … then straight back on the chopper to Cairns.
The Australian published a couple of my images to accompany Graham’s story on page 3 (middle pic below) with a pointer from page 1.
In the top two images below Katherine is exploring the ‘wall’ area of Moore Reef which was smashed during Cyclone Yasi in 2011, impacted by Cyclone Ita in 2014 … and then extensively bleached during climate change related extreme temperature events in 2016 and 2017. Damage on the ‘wall’ section is still evident but it does appear that corals are making a comeback (and the fish numbers were astonishing.)
Even on the ‘flat’ area between the lagoon and the wall … where there has been extensive bleaching (which I documented back in May 2017 for @everydayclimatechange and News) … there is some coral regrowth.
Sadly, with more frequent extreme temperature events and cyclones almost a certainty as the planet warms, the World’s largest reef system still faces a distinctly uncertain future.
The reef trip also gave me a chance to use a nice new bit of kit … the Sealife 0.5X wide angle dome lens … on my Sealife DC2000 underwater camera (pic bottom below). The wide angle is perfect for my choice of underwater pics … making underwater ‘landscapes’ much more impressive. If you are interested in any underwater kit (including the excellent Sealife system) may I suggest contacting Tim Hochgrebe at Underwater Australasia for the best range and prices.
Images © Brian Cassey
The Guardian … Vintage Nikon F2 … and Film ! …
… in good company in The Guardian today as they feature the 400TX Project presenting black & white film work produced on a 50 year old Nikon F2 passed around to some of (quote) … “Australia’s most prominent photographers” … including this geezer from Cairns.
The project was the brain child of Brisbane photographer Renato Repetto who transported the vintage 1970’s black Nikon F2 with a 55mm lens loaded, with just one 36 frame roll of Kodak Tri-X BW film, on numerous journeys criss crossing Australia and into the hands of current working photographers who gave it their best shot.
The Guardian story (a snippet below) can be found in full at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/mar/19/one-roll-of-film-what-a-test-the-400tx-project-in-pictures … and on abridged version on Insta at https://www.instagram.com/guardianaustralia/ … under the title ‘Back to Basics’.
The list of photographers featured is as impressive as the work … Dean Sewell, Tim Page (so sadly no longer with us), Paul Blackmore, Robert McFarlane, David Maurice Smith, Peter Solness, Michael Coyne, James Brickwood, Shehab Uddin, Jakub Fabijanski, Oli Sansom, Meg Hewitt, David Kelly … and yours truly .
My frame in the feature is “Too Busy To Die” … made in sparse light with the last frame of the thirty six on the film roll … of accomplished musician Geoff Tozer. He had just told he was dying. He was diagnosed with bowel, bladder, bone and advanced spinal cancer. But, he told me, “I’m too busy to die.”
I cut my teeth on ‘manual everything’ film cameras like the Nikon F2 decades ago and used ‘zone focusing’, guessed exposures and well-timed single shutter releases in my early work. This project has brought into stark reality how spoilt we photographers are now with digital imaging and digital photo technology … and, to be honest, the process of shooting black and white film again scared me stiff !
(The two posts on the 400TX Project published when I originally made the “Too Busy To Die” work can be found here … https://www.briancasseyphotographer.com/blog/publications/2017/08/final-frame-nikon-f2-afp400tx/ … and here … https://www.briancasseyphotographer.com/blog/2017/07/nikon-f2-roll-tri-x-36-pics/ … whilst a further post regarding 400TX and my work in an Australian Photography article can be found here … https://www.briancasseyphotographer.com/blog/travel/2018/03/spread-australian-photography-afp400tx/
Image “Too Busy To Die” (top) © Brian Cassey … Image “Sin & Stef in Bondi” (bottom) © Paul Blackmore, page “Back to Basics” © The Guardian