Chockstone Photography Blog

As the autumn of 2023 approached I had the opportunity to slip away for three days to the Grampians National Park down here in Victoria. Being only a few hours drive from home the Grampians has been our go to adventure destination for hiking and landscape photography. During the past 30 or 40 years you might think I had seen all of it, captured every angle, and explored every summit. The thing about the Grampians, however, is that they always lure you back. The promise of rugged, craggy mountains, sweeping vistas, crashing waterfalls and long but not impossible hiking lingers and inspires.

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This is just a quick write up of some local trips that yielded a few new images worthy of mention. It is not always practical for me to drive thousands of kilometres in search of great landscape photography opportunities. Revisiting locations within a day or two of home, over the course of years, can produce quality work. This approach delivers a greater selection of any special conditions that might elevate the scene such as light direction and quality, season, weather, tide, access and even luck.

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In the January of 2023 the lure of New South Wales, with its diverse coastlines and impressive mountains drew us back for yet another dedicated photo trip. We had a little less than two weeks, which is not much for the time consuming art of landscape photography, but we managed to squeeze in quite a few places by reacting to the weather conditions at hand and relocating accordingly.

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In the spring of 2023 I had the opportunity for nearly two weeks of landscape photography travel and chose to head up into New South Wales. Unfortunately our lad, who was very keen to accompany me, picked up a cold at the last minute and had to sit this one out. So with a car packed and the open road before me, I headed north planning to focus on the central coast between Newcastle and Port Macquarie with some inland exploration as well.

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So here we are again with another batch of images for the collection. This time my travels saw our boy and I exploring the south coast of New South Wales and a brief adventure into the Victorian Alps where we were met with mixed success mainly due to tide issues and a lack of light, though ultimately a few solid keepers.

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Initially when planning this photography trip I had locations, distances and times of day all sorted for a big drive right through New South Wales. With nearly two weeks up our sleeves our boy and I were keen to set off. Then on the day we were due to depart the news was full of flood warnings. Major roads were closed and even whole regions inaccessible. Unwilling to let us head into danger my wife suggested we look elsewhere. The answer was simple enough, we would head west into South Australia instead. Massive drives and endless sunny days tend to be the norm in SA, making landscape photography a challenge, but we figured we would make the best of it.

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The school summer holidays represented a chance for our boy to join me on a nice long dedicated photography trip. We had been talking about it from some months, planning where to go and waying up our chances of escaping the state in the face of rising Covid cases. In the end we decided to play it safe and stay in Victoria.

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So here we are at the end of another year once more. Looking back over the images I have created in the last twelve months I am pleased with what I have been able to achieve despite mostly staying within Victoria. The urge to explore further afield is certainly strong but with our lad too young for vaccination the risk seems too great should he accompany me, as is often the case. Now on to happier things.

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This little collection of work comes from two or three photographic trips in the late winter to early spring of 2021, the first of which saw our boy and I spending a day on Mt Stirling. Having hiked or snow shoed there for several decades I was quite confident in terms of navigating us along the well-marked trails, but laden down with two heavy tripods, multiple cameras, and lenses, as well as water and winter gear for two, my now 50-year-old body was pretty done in by the end of the day. Our lad, of course, was spritely and exuberant the whole time, drawing upon a seemly inexhaustible supply of youthful energy and the general novelty of having snow under his feet.

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As Victoria enters lockdown number six, I find myself with enough time to write up the last couple of photography trips, which were embraced with enthusiasm in the days prior to lockdown five, when local travel was permitted. Vaccinated with a double jab of Pfizer, I had a cautious sense of optimism, though every opportunity to avoid people was made – something quite easy to do when the purpose of the trip is to explore remote natural environments.

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