Well I’m back from Australia and still horribly jetlagged. Yet it was a truly great trip with many wonders great and small to see and think about. I will put together some posts soon yet I will start with this simple picture from Kalaranga Lookout near Palm Valley in Northern Territory. Now most will have heard of Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas). And many will have heard of Kings Canyon (don’t know its aboriginal name). But few have heard of Palm Valley and the reason is simply that it is far less accessible than the others; you can only get in with 4WD and a skilled driver (no, not me) and even then not always. And that illustrates a point that a landscape photographer needs to do more than drive somewhere and stick a camera out of the car; at best you only get the same photograph that thousands of others have already; at worst you miss so much.

Kalaranga is a short but very hot (temperature near to 40C) scramble from the track that leads into Palm Valley. The rocks and their textures are gorgeous and getting to the top reveals a hidden secret; a vast amphitheatre of red rock formations. And that creates a photographers nightmare. Use a very wide angle lens, as in the image below, and  whilst you get the (almost) whole amphitheatre you get no sense of the true grandeur of these towering walls around you. Use a longer focal length and you get A towering wall, but no amphitheatre. Gaia has built on a grand scale here and even multiple images joined together will lose so much. Yet I have seen and I will remember.