Karijini 2
The plan 🔗
In mid 2012 I decided that I'd like to head back to Karijini again for another photography trip. The previous trip in 2011 was fantastic, and I felt like I could spend another couple of weeks there at least.
I sent out a general invitation through PhotoAccess and to cut a long story short, in July 2013, Steven Shaw, Helen and Phil McFadden, Stephen Best and myself arrived in Paraburdoo ready to start two weeks of camping and photography.
The plan was fairly straightforward and worked really well. We flew into Paraburdoo and hired a couple of 4WD dual-cab utes. We spent the first night in the Paraburdoo caravan park, and the next day driving to Tom Price to stock up on groceries, park passes and fuel, and then on to Karijini National Park. Our second night was spent at the Savannah campground, but the remaining nights were spent camped outside the park along a bush track.
That arrangement worked so well that we kept that base camp for the whole two weeks.
And the results? 🔗
After the trip we had a show-and-tell dinner back in Canberra. I was surprised by the diversity of images we got. Despite the fact that we were in danger of tripping over each other in a few places, we all got quite different results. Sure, we all got enough long-exposure running-water images to sink a ship, but there were also some stand-out abstracts and landscapes as well. We all had either full-frame or APS-C DSLRs or MILCs, but Stephen Best also brought along a medium-format pinhole camera, which he ended up using almost exclusively.
I've processed all my images using darktable, an open-source photography workflow application and raw developer. This is the first time I've used it, and I'm very impressed. I think I'll be using it from now on.
I've got my camera on the tripod and I'm criss-crossing the campsite looking for views of the horizon that aren't obscured by nearby trees.
"What are you doing?" asks Steve.
"I've got an idea" I reply.
And here it is. This is a montage of dawn and dusk skies at the campsite over one 24 hour period. I haven't applied any enhancements or filters during processing - all I've done is set the white balance to "daylight" on them.