Photography

Picture this: a solitary heron foraging in the muted, autumnal half-light of dawn. Or an ethereal gull hovering motionless in mid air. Or a lonely stone-curlew gazing wistfully into the artificial lights of a forbidden destination. These and more are the winning entries of the sixth annual BirdLife Australia Bird Photography Awards, which have just been announced.

Honor Auchinleck. The Man From Snowy River Bush Festival Elyne Mitchell Photo Story Awards hopes that you will find great pleasure in creating your entries for the 2024 Awards ... Elyne was a great admirer of A B (‘Banjo’) Paterson. As she was the inaugural Patron of the Bush Festival, it seems fitting that we use a theme that complements both Elyne’s and Banjo’s legacies.

Through the lens of the Allora Photography Club. Now showing at the Warwick Art Gallery, the exhibition will run until 2 December. This exhibition is a reflection of the group’s work to showcase the individuality, perspective and interpretation in various topics of photography.

Thanks to photographer extraordinaire Rob Leeson for this great photo of Newstead farmer Tony Butler, and Kelpie Mac, in a paddock of wheat. In recent weeks, the local region has received around 40mm of rain, and this has been a bonus for farmers.

Serena Kirby. Photographer Nic Duncan recently collected the best portrait print award and the Izzy Orloff award for overall best portrait in WA’s 2023 Pro Photography competition. The winning image for both awards was of Denmark man Andre Steyl who Nic said had been one of her all time favourite faces to photograph.

The annual Spirit of the Land festival made its return over the weekend making Lockhart a haven for sculptures and fine arts. The event opened early on Saturday the 7th and finished off on the following Sunday with stalls, galleries, exhibitions and sculptures galore to enjoy.

We have just confirmed that acclaimed Sydney-based wildlife photographer Leila Jeffreys will be visiting Ballarat later this month for the launch of her work on the new Art Screen in Alfred Deakin Place. Join her as she discusses her career and experiences working with birds with Gallery Curator Julie McLaren.

Charlton Arts is in the final stages of preparations for its inaugural Art and Photography Exhibition on the weekend of October 13 to 16.Formally run by the Charlton Rotary Club, the members of Charlton Arts are excited to continue this popular annual event.

The cover of the newly released Maldon Museum 2024 calendar is a photograph of a beautiful watercolour of the Beehive Mine by David Relph Drape ... The Maldon Museum has a unique photograph collection and the calendar has a distinctive photograph of Maldon for each month.

The face is in deep contemplation, hands in a prayer gesture. Simon Dow describes this self-portrait as “silent”; and has named it ‘No Self’ ... shortlisted along with 19 other photographic portraits for the prestigious Martin Kantor Prize.

All About Care’s "Brushstrokes of Harmony" Art Exhibition was officially opened on Friday afternoon at Nhill Gallery Central. The exhibition signifies that all creative minds and art forms belong and have a place. Nhill Gallery Central has become more aware of the broader community art world.

The streets of Ganmain came alive for the weekend for the second ever Ganmain Arts Festival. The festival featured art in different forms such as sculpting, painting, photography and even an ecofabric creator.

The winners of the fourth annual Rural Aid Spirit of the Bush photography competition have been announced. Five of the twelve winners were captured in Queensland, four in Western Australia and three in New South Wales ... "A powerful love of livestock and the land really shines through in this year’s pictures": Rural Aid CEO John Warlters.

Words, pictures and voices bring to life the stories of the 2019-2020 bushfires ... The stories and photos have been turned into a book that was launched at the Roxy Gallery on Friday, May 19.

As a young theatre director and teacher Peter Derrett travelled to the 1973 Aquarius Festival ... He took his camera with him and the resulting collection of images  provides a comprehensive documentary account of this landmark event in Australian cultural history ... offer valuable insights into what happened at the Festival and sum up many of the ideologies that surrounded it.  

Gerrit Fokkema. Wesley Stacey died recently in Bermagui, where he had lived since the mid 1970’s. Between 1968 and 1972, Wes made pictures in Wilcannia of buildings and street scenes that were used in a book, ‘Historic Towns of Australia’.

Sadly anthropologist Jeremy Beckett passed away in the last months of 2022. A Celebration of his Life was held on 19 February 2023 at Chai Chak Wing Museum, Sydney University ... I would like to share memories of my association with Jeremy when I worked at Wilcannia River Radio in 2012-13.

Honor Auchinleck. Timing and circumstances ensure some wartime tragedies are more defining than others and so it was with Malcolm Chisholm. He was the first Australian to die and the first of some 60,000 Australians who lost their lives on the First World War battlefields. His death has resonated through more than a century and well beyond the Upper Murray.

Narrandera-based artist Vic McEwan, who is also the National Museum’s 2015 artist-in-residence, created the large-scale still photography and video works in ‘Haunting’, in collaboration with curator George Main ... Haunting honours the Murrumbidgee River and its communities of people and other living beings.

Kristin Murdock. An image capturing a dog and dairy cows enjoying a dip and a drink has been awarded first prize in the 2022 National Agriculture Day photo and video competition ... “Dog in the Water Trough” was taken by David Williams from NSW.

Matt Blakers sees the seasons through a photographer's lens and each season has a unique signature that it scribes across the sea. Spring is playful, even flirtatious, and writes with a light hand.   The waves are smaller with a soft and inviting luminescence. Summer, by contrast, writes with a pen packed full of colour, casting hues from a palette of blues and golds. The falling lips of the waves are lighter, the sunsets are brighter and the water is warmer ... But it’s big waves that excite Matt the most ...