Latest / Reframe / 03 - Tim Wrate, Passion & photography Above Australia

Transcript

03 - Tim Wrate, Passion & photography Above Australia · Reframe

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever wondered what truly fuels a creative mind?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: What ignites their passions and drives their creativity?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: G'day, I'm Dean McGuire, an Australian fine art photographer.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: From the moment I stepped into the world of photography, I have been captivated by the community and the stories behind the lens.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Join me as we delve into humble beginnings, explore artistic visions, and discover how we as a collective reframe our minds through the power of creativity.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: Before we dive into this episode, I'd like to give a quick shout-out to the incredible team at Nisty Filters Australia.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Nitsi offers world-class products like high-quality filters with minimal colour casts, an impressive range of cinematic lenses, and various other accessories to fuel your creative endeavors.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: Nisty Australia actively supports the greater photography community through workshops, educational events, and live streaming webinars on YouTube and other social media channels.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: As a special treat, Misty Australia are offering all reframe listeners a store-wide discount of 5% off.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: You can even combine this with style items and other promotions for further discounts by using the code Reframe Podcast at checkout.com.au today.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you and welcome to Reframe.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Hello everybody and thanks for tuning in.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: On this episode, we're talking to none other than Tim Wright.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Tim's an Australian landscape photographer who focuses on aerial photography.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: He's won multiple awards and is deeply inspired by the Australian Outback and its textures.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Good afternoon, Tim.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: How are you, mate?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: Good afternoon, Carl.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Good afternoon, Dean.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, mate.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: To start off with, um, could we hear a bit a little bit about your background, please, mate?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Sure thing before before I go into that, I just wanted to um firstly say thank you for having me on the podcast.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: I've been a long-term listener of many different podcasts.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've listened to your first three episodes back to back to back.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I this isn't this is my first podcast.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm thrilled and honored to be here.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and what a privilege to be the first guest on your on your podcast.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks for having me.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you took the words right out of our mouth, Matt.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for being our first guest.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: We're honored to have you.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: So let's jump in.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess a little bit about me personally, and then perhaps I can get into my photographic journey.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I guess most importantly, um I've got a very loving wife and I've got two gorgeous daughters um who are just out of nappy.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I've got a four-year-old and a two-year-old, um, and and they fill my heart and fill my life.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm I also work, I guess, professionally.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm a trained chartered accountant.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: I work in the corporate world here in Sydney.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and my big uh balancing ballast or or keel that keeps me very even in my life is my creative outlet, which is photography.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've been doing landscape photography for the best part of two decades.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's it's something that is a constant throughout my life.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it really fills me um and fills my cup when I kind of go out there and experience um my love of nature and my love of of creating.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, I I've spent most of that that time um photographing on terra firma.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, I got into photography kind of throughout the mid-2000s just as the digital revolution was taking off.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I not that I consciously was bucking the trend, but I I I initially picked up a film camera and I stuck with film for about the best part of uh a decade, um, all while megapix megapixel counts were were growing and everyone was getting more and more into digital.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I just really loved the aesthetic that that film gave me.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, not that I was a new age hipster or anything like that.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was just more of a creative choice that I made.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and you know for a long period of my uh photographic um, you know, juvenile stage, that that really suited me.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I really feel like I've kind of grown past that.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I I can definitely s say more and speak more to who I am um through my aerial photography, which I've been doing with great gusto for the past five years.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: Unreal.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: Take us into your film.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what did you love the most about shooting film and what camera were you using back then?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was uh I was using a uh Fujifilm G, uh not GFX, uh GX uh 617, which is a 617 Panorama film camera.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I absolutely adored the camera.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was a big beast of a camera, weighed, you know, about three kilograms.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: It took up half my backpack whenever I went um on multi-day hikes.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was but the thing that really uh impressed me when I first got that camera was uh the clarity, the resolution, the contrast, um, the vibrancy and saturation that the that using Velvia slide film gave me.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and when I was first into photography whilst the digital digital revolution was taking off, um, resolutions weren't that great.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and to have um 617 or 6 centimeters by 17 centimeters worth of uh medium format film really gave me a leg up in terms of um being able to capture um you know significant resolution and getting prints that would be would sit proudly on anyone's wall.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, I I think the the main thing about it beyond I guess the technical stuff of of resolution and the aesthetic um benefits that are gone on shooting film versus um the very early stage uh of of digital was I just really loved the process.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um it really kind of slowed me down, it really helped me get into um what is I guess commonly discussed as things like flow state.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um it, you know, I had this really heavy uh I had to lug this really heavy camera around and it really made the effort worthwhile when I took it to remote places.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I guess in reflection, whilst I loved it at the time, um I don't think I was ever truly me photographing with that camera.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is um that that camera really enabled it was a was a tool that I used pretty much to mimic other photographers.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I say mimic not in the not as a term to say copying because I certainly didn't copy other photographers, but certainly the style.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that the style was definitely definitely mimicking what was popular in Australia at the time.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: That was, you know, that that that path was trailblaced by people like Ken Duncan, um Peter Lick, you know, these giants of landscape photography here in Australia.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um and ultimately I was trying to put my own twist on it, but I I felt like my my voice wasn't really um that strong because you know I was I was singing in a bit choir and everyone was trying to do the same thing.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um so what I found with my aerial photography is um not only do I feel like I can say more about the landscape, but I can also say more about myself.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: I know um since you got into your aerial photography, uh that's sort of when you kind of really took off in your photographic world and journey, I I believe, because I remember I followed you and uh for about for the past decade, right?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And um, once you move from that into heavily into the aerial photography, I remember watching your style progress quite quickly into something that is now like I I recognize as yours almost as soon as I see the picture without a name attached.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I I really appreciate that.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I feel like uh my my learning has been on a kind of exponential parabola parabola ever since I kind of decided to go down that path.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't really an active decision.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was uh well, I'll I'll take you on the journey, I guess, in terms of how I came across aerial photography in the first place.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Aerial photography has been, I guess, a constant throughout Australian um uh landscape photography history.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's quite a depth of history there with people like Richard Waldendorp and um, you know, then there's more contemporary guys like the ND5 collective and the The Light Collective, who really have strong portfolios of aerial photography.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I feel like my journey into aerial photography is perhaps a little bit more personal than that.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because you know, whilst there are, you know, quite a consistent group of people that are out there photographing it, I feel like my my personal story um in terms of having uh family um in aviation, um, and then kind of combined with my love of the outdoors and my love of photography, it really feels like I've hit a sweet spot.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I I was particularly close with my grandfather growing up.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um he was a uh returned veteran from the Second World War.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: He was in the Australian um Royal Air Force, so in the RAF during the Second World War.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: He came back to Australia and uh was on his family farm and in the 1960s uh kind of fell in love with aviation.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: He was ground crew during the Second World War, um, was a mechanic on the hurricanes and spitfires.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think he that kind of stuck with him.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: He the thing that the war gave him, other than bad memories, was um a love of aviation.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was growing up, um I spent a lot of time on on his farm, which was in the uh rural southwest of Queensland.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um we'd jump in the car here in Sydney, we'd go on family holidays for six weeks over the summer, um, and you know, we'd spend the best part of three or four weeks uh every year on the farm.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember sneaking into his shed and just seeing this plane and just thinking like, this is so cool.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and not only that, you know, some of my very first memories as a three or four-year-old were sat on his lap in his um Cessna Skylark 175, um, flying above the farm.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I distinctly remember looking down out of the window and seeing like all the livestock dotted around like there are ants.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: And kind of the really um geographic, uh, sorry, graphic nature of all the the wheat and barley crops, how they were kind of these big squares that had, you know, rows of tractor marks through them and all this kind of stuff.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I just really distinctly remember that.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um he and I shared a very special moment um when I was around 18, 17, 18.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, being a return serviceman, he very rarely talked about the war.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and he sat me down with an atlas when we were 18.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um, knowing my grandfather, he sat there with a glass of scotch.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: And uh probably probably there with a with a lemonade or something at the time.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he just uh took me aside, no one else in the family, and he just gave me his his war story for about three or four hours.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I think I was the only one that he shared that with for me, and um, so we we shared a really strong relationship.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And Dean, having listened to the first couple of episodes, I I know that you've got a very similar kind of feeling about your relationship with your grandfather.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, no, that's that's insane.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that story.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's all about those um interactions we have with our family to push our art into the next direction.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, w when you're a kid, right, it's the most um pure version of yourself.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think you don't have years of context of nuance of of ego and all these different things that kind of um dial back who you are.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you as a kid, it is the most pure essence of yourself.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I I distinctly have those memories, and then I was also the RD kid that kind of sat down and drew and drew and drew.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: I never never had my head in um books.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't think I've ever read a fiction book cover to cover.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't interest me.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you give me a National Geographic or an Australian geographic, I will sit down for an hour and read that thing cover to cover.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you give me an encyclopedia, I'll happily sit down and read, you know, sections of the encyclopedia.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, you know, fiction books just didn't interest me.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, as as a kid, I'd spend hours just kind of I've still got some of the pictures in my mind of like these grand mountainous scenes with the stream running through the middle and these big kind of pine trees.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I was always really interested in that kind of um of landscape.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was really interested in drawing, and then I guess as an adult, that all manifested in in terms of my love for photography.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I guess later in life, then um that love of photography got mixed with um with this kind of all these raw, uninhibited uh childhood memories of being in in the plane and you know, all the vibrations and smells and all of that, all of that kind of stuff was really familiar.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I'm hooked, this is it.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: I love aerial photography.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like that was the paradigm that your grandfather helped you set my whole mind, right?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's the gift that he gave me.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um he's no longer with us, but you know, it's um every time I hop in one of those little planes, it's just I kind of look up, look up above and just say thank you.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, this is the gift that you left me.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Ha, that's that's such a good story.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: I heard your your touch on sort of Australian geographic and national geographic before.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: I know in the last couple of years, you you had some really good success when it came to uh Australian Geographic with Anzang.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you how did that how did that all come about?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know you had quite a special portfolio there.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd like to hear where that came from.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, so I think that was really a kind of a breakthrough portfolio for me.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um for everyone that's not familiar, Anzang is the Australian Geographic um awards that are hand held annually.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I had the great privilege of winning the portfolio of the year 2021.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Congratulations again.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, the fantastic portfolio.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: I might think.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I guess where it came from is um I have an insatiable drive, I guess, in the deepest sense, to capture the beauty, honesty, and unique character of the Australian landscape.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I really enjoy the way that I can see the landscape from above, and I'm endlessly surprised by what you see.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess that that trip um surprised me more than anyone else because uh what I actually did was my my sister um was living in Catherine in the territory at the time.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I had arranged to go visit her.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um my brother-in-law, who was um working um as uh a building contractor for Len Lease on the RAF Tyndall base, the um the Air Force base there in Tyndall, um, reached out and got and got in contact with the the local charter company and put me in contact with the right person to speak to.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to kind of the inside um, you know, I had insiders working on the uh on it for me, kind of on on ledge on the ground type perspective.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I just got chatting to um this the charter business owner, and I was like, I've got quite an ambitious project.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: I want to fly from Catherine out to the um, I guess you'd call it the Western Gulf of Carpentaria on the uh Northern Territory um coastline there.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I've got no idea of what that landscape looks like.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: I've I'm just kind of curious to explain.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the Vesta you'd take something you've never thought.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh in order to do that, we had to um it was just at what they called the build-up in the Northern Territory, which is the season just before the wet season.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you're getting about 100% humidity every day, and the temperatures are like 45 degrees plus.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we we arranged to fly, and and obviously with high temperatures, you get a lot of like thermal thermals and such, so you get quite um quite hideous turbulence in the in the aircraft.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we we flew extremely early in the morning.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we had to fly about 400 kilometers to the east um to a remote indigenous community called Nookah.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we landed in Nookah.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we managed to take the doors off.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I also had the privilege of taking my dad on the flight with me.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: So he was in the back seat.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh yeah, we we took off and we flew around um, I guess, the the coast of the Northern Territory that abuts to the uh Gulf of Carpenteria.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's uh the Northern Territory's largest river system, the Ropa River, feeds in.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there's a whole bunch of um mangrove of coastal floodplain.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and what really was the surprising part that kind of links back to how I opened this section was um at the end of the dry season, I was really fortunate that they had just had a little bit of rain.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a little bit of water on the ground.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And what that does, as soon as there's a little bit of water and it kind of sits um in open floodplains, um, it kind of draws out all of the minerals and all of the salinity that's in the floodplain and creates all these fabulous different textures and colors and patterns.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, I was able to come back with a pretty deep portfolio of shots that I guess not many people had had um the privilege or or had the benefit of seeing before.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of it really didn't look like landscape, it was really quite abstract.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll touch on that in terms of my creative path and or how I um approach my uh creativity in respect to aerial photography uh a little bit later.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I I came back with a portfolio that was just kind of, I guess, mind-blowing because it was totally unexpected and it was not like uh what much had been photographed before.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I was really, really happy with that.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: Unreal.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh just before we do go on to your process, I've just got a couple of questions.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: We've gone through the your reason of um aerial photography, your love, and where the passion comes from.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: Have you got any um I you call it horror stories or some things that you've found hard along the way to grasp?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: Challenges.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, challenges, yeah, yeah.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Or challenges along the way.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: The the biggest challenge uh I ever had um was part of the reason why I got into aerial photography um or real kind of really jumped into it.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I started aerial photography uh when my wife was pregnant with our first uh daughter.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I had this idea that I wanted to create some artwork for her bedroom.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we didn't realize that uh we didn't know the sex.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: So um I was gonna go to Western Australia and photograph uh Hut Lagoon, which is famous for kind of its pink colours.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And um we also had our baby moon on Hamilton Island, so I was gonna organise a flight out to the reef and and capture some blue cover colours.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: So um that was my very kind of naive uh just kind of dipping my toe into aerial photography.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'd have these two portfolios um for the baby's room, um, one blue, one pink.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: And um, suffice it to say, I've ended up with a house full of pink.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um but what actually happened was I did those two trips, um, and then I had an external hard drive crash and I lost both trips.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I've I've got the prints, so I've got the prints still hanging on the walls today, um, but I lost a couple of thousand photos, and I was emotional uh to say the least.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I guess I've I've got a really uh understanding wife, and I kind of said to her, Look, um, I'm absolutely gutted by losing all those photos.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how about I arrange a trip over to Western Australia to reshoot it?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, I know that that's important for your mental health, so go for it.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then I went over to Western Australia, had arranged about four or five flights, and from that from that trip, I was absolutely hooked.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, aerial photography is super high yielding.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, with four four weeks' annual leave every year, uh I can go out there, I can um spend a week in a location, and I can come home with six to seven thousand images.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Lucky for you.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: That is that is one thing that's good about that aerial photography.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's one reason I actually quite like it as well.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because you sort of get a lot out of your time as opposed to um spending a lot of time to get one photo, I find.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you only need to be in the air for about 90 minutes.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and if you're over something cool, then you're gonna come away with over a thousand images.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um pretty pretty intense like that.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's something that you do, um, and I think it's pretty it's it's spot on at the moment.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: The um when it comes to sort of uh Interest rates have gone up a lot lately.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that aerial photograph is quite expensive because for myself, I find I find it's something that I end up cutting out as soon as I can't sort of meet a budget.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I know you're very good at budgeting and using the right aircraft to get the most out of things.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: So how how do you go about planning your trips and um to get the most out of the money you're spending?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Whoa, well, that's a monster question.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um how I go about planning a trip.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I guess I it all starts with uh idea generation.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um so in that idea generation phase, it's kind of doing a bit of um bit of research and a bit of uh things like Google Maps just to kind of get a general idea of what I want to shoot.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um Australia is the uh I guess obviously it's the sixth largest country in the world.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's the flattest country in the world, um, it's the driest non-Antarctica continent.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we've got this massive big canvas um for aerial photography.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, the lack of relief in the landscape is actually a good thing for aerial photography.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, and and there's just so much in Australia that is um incredible for aerial photography.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: So um I guess that that idea generation stage is really important just to give get an idea of where I want to be on where I want to put myself and where I want to explore.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, once I've identified in general sense where I want to be, then I guess I'll reach out to charter companies just to get an idea of um where they're located, what aircraft they've got, um, the range for which you can fly from from their um from whatever airport they're located, if there's any refueling necessary at you know uh rural runways or or remote runways, um, understanding what type of aircraft they've got, whether it's uh helicopter or light aircraft, um, and and you know, understanding things like the speed maneuverability um of those aircraft, and then I can kind of start put putting together a bit of a more robust plan in terms of flight path and trying to, you know, um get best bang for buck.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um you're right in saying things like cost of living and interest rates going up, it's really starting to kind of pinch pockets at the moment, but I still think um, you know, there's some uh reasonably cheap aircraft that you can uh charter.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you can start at$300 per hour to charter a Cessna 172.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the easiest plane to shoot from because it's got fixed landing gear of wing wing wing struts, but it's certainly more economical than hiring a helicopter over$1,000 per hour.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so just making some smart choices like that, I guess, really helps um and really helps you maximize um photographic opportunities when you're out in those remote locations.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: So it's also a good little place to start, in a way, isn't it?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, totally.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so uh just while we're on that, yeah, yeah.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: We're in a lull.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's all right.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's all right.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: What a little bird.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: Let's let's move forward.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um a little birdie told us that you have uh an exhibition coming up.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Do you want to talk, take us through that and and talk us about the process that you are uh going through with two other photographers?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh absolutely.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, really, really fortunate to be having an exhibition this year.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and super excited given that it's my first real kind of um group exhibition.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was fortunate enough in 2020 um to arrange um an expedition with two other aeri photographers, Dave Dellenberg and Paul Holman, who um who are quite well known in terms of their aerial artwork.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we started plotting out a quite ambitious journey across um remote parts of South Australia and a multi-day um trip.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I most uh most aerial expeditions for me are kind of um point A to point A.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you you go to an airport um and you return to that same airport.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, Dave, Dave Delenberg, who's a South Australian local, reached out to me and said, I've got quite an ambitious um plan.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: I I want to take um take an aircraft and I want to kind of explore for for a number of days.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: So what we did was we kind of packed up a little Cessna 182.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um we had a wonderful pilot, Steve, who was kind of on the same page as us in terms of no expectation, um, you know, no borders, um, no just horizons and and creativity.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and we just kind of took off and started exploring South Australia.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: We landed at some remote sheep and cattle stations.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: We had to pump in fuel by hand into the plane and do some really cool um, you know, boy's own adventure type stuff.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we went to Birdsville, Mare.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: We captured Lake Air, all across this South Australian outback.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was just such a really cool experience.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think we we spent about uh over 20 hours in the aircraft together.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is a really small aircraft for grown men.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and and two little windows for for three photographers to try and shoot out of.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, it was a hell of a journey and we had so much fun.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but most importantly, it uh enabled the three of us to get ultra creative.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we not only were we able to get to some really remote places, we created some pretty cool artwork.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yes, we we were very proud to announce that we're we've got an exhibition in South Australia um at the Barossa Regional Art Centre commencing on the 9th of June.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yeah, if you if you're in South Australia and would love for the opportunity to see some um some amazing artworks by three well myself and two very talented aerial photographers.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to blow my own horn.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um you can toot it, mate.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: You can toot it.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Tim train come on down.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um what's next for Tim?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like apart from your exhibition and and some more flights, so have you got anything planned that you're or projects that you'd like to share?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I'm I'm very much a project-based photographer.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like it really keeps me um in my lane and focused on on a um on kind of deliverables on the way through to you know the ultimate delivery of a project.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a pretty ambitious project that I'm working on at the moment, um, and that's to create um an art book of um of all landscapes across Australia.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and really giving me, I I guess, the um the opportunity to use that elevated angle to give a new viewpoint on the real interrelationship between geography and art all across Australia, um, to explore things like the modern legacy and the human impact on our environment, um, to explore ancient, the ancient legacy of kind of geology and geography.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and something that's really of interest to me is kind of exploring um indigenous relationships with with country and and spirituality.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, I I've got a couple of um couple of locations that I need to complete um book the book.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm yet to fly um in Tassie and I need to build out my portfolio from Queensland.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, I I'm I'm really interested in building out um, I guess broadening my portfolio and still really focusing in on my aerial work.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have to send us a copy of that book when it's done, Tim.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean hanging out.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean hanging out for this book.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Make that clue.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: The reason why Carl and Dean are laughing is because I've been talking to them about this book for quite some time, and little do they know that this is quite a big endeavor and is probably still a couple of at least a couple of years away.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, knowing your style, you know, you put in the hours and and the work to create that high-quality product that your customer needs and and wants, you know, and I know that you put in the effort for it.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that'll help you awesome.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um so um apart from the book, would you ever go back into landscape or you you're solely, I know it's kind of a um a backward step um to what we were talking about earlier, but is landscape still a th uh something in that you'd address again, or you you're solely I um I for the first time in about well, since Carl and I went to the Snowy Mountains in 2020, I got the camera out yesterday and went for a landscape shoot.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so absolutely.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: I um as a a parent of young kids, finding time is quite difficult, and that's that's um part of the reason why I have gone so um put all my chips on the table in respect to aerial photography.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I think what you would find is my artistic vision has matured since I was um primarily shooting on terra firma, and as a result, the images that I would be capturing, even if they were from the land, would be very different to what they were, I guess, kind of you know, five, ten years ago.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I I I talk to um that artistic approach, and if I could just kind of um spend a little bit of time talking about that artistic approach in respect to aerial photography.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, go for it, mate.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so for those that are aren't familiar with my work, um, much of it um is I guess abstracted.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess your ability to abstract the landscape is emphasized in aerial photography.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um in in traditional landscape photography, a horizontal line usually indicates the horizon, and the horizon often then suggests time and place by anchoring the image and creating depth.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: So by angling my camera down out of a plane um and abstracting the landscape, I've removed or I um remove that reference point and allows me to focus on things like texture, pattern, shape, um, contrast, color, um, balance, all those type of kind of fun things that um as an aerial photographer I like to focus on.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um so spending my time in an aircraft and and capturing images, um, not only is it like a hyper um realistic kind of situation to be in.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've got this aircraft that's moving it at um, you know, 180 knots per hour, you've got all this crazy wind buffeting, you've got all the um all the noise in your headphones, it like it's really attacking all of your five senses.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and everything happens so quickly.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I've got to dial in the settings on my camera, I've got to react, I've got to communicate with the pilot, we're exactly where I want to be, and I've just got to make sure that I capture the image at the right time in the right place.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's very different to what my approach was 10 years ago with a with a panoramic film camera where I would I would go out and shoot four frames all day.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's the you know complete opposite to that.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I mean that that that adrenaline and sitting in the you know a small light aircraft with the door removed, um, and you kind of at your heart rate's going and everything's so elevated.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: I just love it.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um artistically, I guess it kind of um gives me the opportunity to kind of translate almost spatial mapping into a game.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you're kind of seeing the landscape as um as kind of this canvas, and you're trying to isolate and um and uh record certain features, you know, where a mountainous crest or a beachy shore or protruding landmass can exist independently from one another, and then you kind of use your ability to abstract that from the context to to create an an image that kind of inspires and intrigues.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and people kind of look at it and think of, you know, what what might that be?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as a as a um artist, um it really gives you, well, I certainly feel like it gives me a louder um creative voice.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I I guess yeah, it it may seem whimsical, but uh if you look harder, you can see things like um trees in the sand of a river bed, or you might see a face in in the ocean, or um, you know, some are literal and some are metaphorical, but yeah, you it's um it really kind of I feel like it gives me so much um creative uh bandwidth.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think it it's the abstraction, isn't it?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and the art of uh I guess um exclusion is what adds to building the art out of the different colours and the landscape and the shapes, right?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, you you can focus on all these different things, or you can, you know, something like uh texture in an image gives gives the final uh print a sense of of tactile-ness or touch.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, uh a repeating pattern in a landscape kind of gives it a sense of rhythm.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, I I just um I love that ability to kind of use the landscape um as my canvas in that regard.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're creating these aerial images.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: What what type of kit are you using right now?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think that's something that is is part of the reproduction.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like you use medium format um 617 when you're shooting film for landscapes, and so what are you using these days for your aerial photography?
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm lucky enough to have a medium format camera as well, um, digital camera, I should say.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I've got a I'm sticking with the Fuji theme, and if I ever have a dog, its name will probably be Fuji as well.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's uh 102-megapixel um medium format camera, and um yeah, it the files it gives me are just buttery smooth.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: I I love it.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have a go-to focal length?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I'd say F-stop as well, or is it Yep?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I guess for everything, everyone that's not a photographer, we're getting into the technical stuff.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, yeah.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, I just I couldn't help myself.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, all good.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I love the challenge that a fixed focal length gives me from the air.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because uh I can use the aircraft as my tripod.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: So as long as I can communicate it, and it as such, it challenges me to communicate with the pilot to get me in the right spot.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I love the challenge of having a fixed focal length.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I primarily shoot um on my 110 mil um Fujinon lens, which is the equivalent of about 87 mil on a traditional uh SLR camera.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's quite um, I guess it it's in that medium focal range.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but when you're in the air, you know, it it enables you to pull out um I guess quieter, smaller scenes in the overall landscape.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and without the horizon there, it doesn't really give you sense of um of size.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, some of the features I might be photographing from the air might be hundreds of meters, if not kilometres, wide.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but as as long as I'm communic communicating with my pilot to get higher or lower, it you kind of um I I don't really miss having a um a variable focal length um zoom.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, so we'll move on from the the the tech specs because we just nerded out a little bit there.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um inform in what would you say your most favorite and um location would be to fly over and and which one would you have the most connection to at this point in your career?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I love, love, love flying flying in the Northern Territory.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've got a per a personal connection there.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: My my sister and brother-in-law and and nieces and niece and nephews live up there.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I have the benefit of spending a fair bit of time up there.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um and every time I fly over any part of that landscape, it it is full of endless surprises.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I but it's got a spot in my heart because um I guess my seminal portfolio was uh, or my initial seminal portfolio was captured um on the Gulf of Carpentaria there.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I recently uh late last year spent some time above Kakadoo.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um wow, I was just uh I was really um struck in a really profound way about that landscape and about the spirituality of that landscape.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I I really felt, you know, like that landscape spoke to me in a way like not many others have.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I I love flying above the Northern Territory.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um the annual monsoon provides it um, that it's a really dynamic uh um landscape.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's never the same.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, the salinity in the in the floodplains, um, the oils and the minerals in the uh soils just mean that it you have an absolute plethora of colours um to to explore and to interpret.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um but above all, I mean, I I alluded to it earlier, but it it may seem whimsical, but I'm you know, I I'm really kind of struck by uh the relationship of the Indigenous um Australians and their relationship with the land and and um the spirituality.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just reflecting on the recent portfolio I captured there, there's an image I call rainbow serpent, and I swear I can I uh immediately understand um a lot of those um dreamtime stories about creation and and such just by looking at the landscape.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: What I find is like when I look at your work, and particularly the rainbow serpent image you're talking about, um what I think's amazing is that how the indigenous art matches so many aerial photographs from areas that they predominantly live in and was is their home.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: I f I find it quite amazing that the indigenous could paint these aerial type scenes in their dot work.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's what gets me.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: I the the the more that I'm into aerial photography, I guess the less that I'm looking to other photographers for inspiration, and the more I'm looking towards um indigenous artists, particularly of the central deserts.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: So artists from places like utopia and papania, um, the way that they interpret their landscapes, the the way that they um use their their uh um paintings to um deliver messages, so on and so forth.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: I I just find it so inspiring.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: And um, yeah, I I would I would love, love, love um some integers on my walls one day.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_02: Just uh before we start wrapping it up, um, where can people find your work, Tim?
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um best place to find me is on my website.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that's um www.timrates, w-r-a-te.com.au.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um you'll also find me intermittently.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a love hope relationship with um with social media.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: You can find me on on Instagram as well.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and sometimes on Facebook, very rarely.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: So all the listeners are home will have all those links uh in the description for this podcast.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll be able to reach out and see Tim's work and purchase some for your own home as well, because they're definitely amazing pieces.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: And worth and worth it.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're just simply amazing, that's for sure.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's damn right.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: And on that note, um, thank you very much for joining us today, Tim.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um I know we had a couple of hiccups to start with, but we got there in the end.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: But um, it's been such a pleasure.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's our first guest.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, as I said at the start of the conversation, um, I really r relish um any opportunity to talk art, creativity, yeah, photography, and um to share it with you two who um uh well-respected um colleagues and friends.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you so much.