The photographs are vibrant and dynamic, full of swirling bands of colour and so textured they pop off the cotton rag on which they are printed. It’s not what most people would expect of aerial photographs of the desert.
In fact, as photographer Peter Elfes told his audience at the Royal Botanic Gardens Palm House last Sunday, many viewers mistakenly think that his work is so digitally distorted that the landscapes are unreal.
But this is the desert of Southern Australia and northwestern New South Wales – the Green Desert, as Mr Elfes titled his exhibition— and these images are very real. Top-of-the-line equipment and his years of experience enable him to capture low level aerial landscapes as they actually are, and a dramatic climatic shift has turned the Lake Eyre basin of Southern Australia from barren desert into what looks like a tropical paradise.
Professor of Environmental Science at the University of New South Wales Richard Kingsford, said Lake Eyre “is iconic, fluctuating erratically from incredible biodiversity. . . to a desert when it dries.” Dr Kingsford is part of the Scientific Advisory Panel to the intergovernmental agreement aimed promoting the region’s sustainability.
Because of changing weather patterns that blow cyclones inland to dump heavy rainfall that ultimately flows into the million square kilometer catchment, Lake Eyre, once dry for decades, has flooded each of the past four years. That continuity, explained Mr Elfes, has allowed aquatic life, including many water birds, to begin to thrive there—not to mention added brilliant colour of algae and minerals to a horizon that many expect to be monochromic.
Inspired by photojournalists like Paul Lockyear, among the first to document water flowing into the basin, Mr Elfes said he wanted to “continue their work of telling the story about a place that is really important. There’s so much about the place we don’t understand.”
“I think it defines Australia,” Mr Kingsford said.
The photographs appear other-wordly because Mr Elfes avoids the haze and contrast problems that typically mar aerial photographs. He describes his work as the type of pictures people wish they could capture from airplane windows.
But attaining those types of shots is arduous, limited to perfect weather and wind conditions. Mr Elfes commissions specially equipped helicopters to fly low over the desert, and while traveling 150 kilometers an hour and violently jostling with the movement, he takes up to 10 frames a second to hedge his bets for that perfect photograph.
The exhibition at Customs House, Circular Quay will run until May 27 and in the Royal Botanic Gardens until February 28.
By Jennifer DeBerardinis
