/// Wild Tracks - Landscape Photography by Eduardo Gallo

WILD TRACKS

Passion for Landscape Photography

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Great Sandy National Park, QLD, Australia

March 2010

Great Sandy National Park, QLD, Australia

Canon 5D MkII & EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM, 1/30s + 1/90s + 1/180s f/8 ISO400 @24mm

Google Earth for this photo
AWAKENING

Great Sandy National Park, located a few hours north of Brisbane on Australia´s Pacific coast, protects a huge area of subtropical forest growing on sandy soils, and includes long beaches backed by huge sand dunes, colorful cliffs, mangroves, quiet lakes and rivers, and above all an extremely varied forest that mixes tropical species from the north with more temperate ones from the south. It is a landscape based on sand, which nourishes the plants, stores rainwater, and fights the waves; a huge sand dune covered by forest and surrounded by the ocean.

I arrived in late afternoon, not knowing what to expect, but willing to make the most of the twenty-four hours that were at my disposal. There I rented a cheap motel room and headed to photograph the approaching sunset with my new digital camera, which I was not yet too familiar with. The chosen location was Carlo Sandblow, named by Captain James Cook in honor of one of his crew men during his first circumnavigation of the world in 1770. A sandblow is a path of coarse, sandy soil denuded of vegetation by wind action, which prevents trees and shrubs from taking root. Walking into one creates a strange sensation, as you approach though dense forest and the last thing you expect is a huge barren area of sand, kind of a moonscape, sitting there surrounded by jungle by no apparent reason. I was fortunate to enjoy a colorful sunset and capture the desolate nature of this place by isolating a couple of long dead trunks against the backlit purple clouds, as can be observed in this image.

After a huge dinner in town (I will never get used to the Australian dinners, in which you order your food and then have to get up and go to a different bar to buy and pay your drinks, which you then have to personally take back to your table), I had a good sleep, and woke up very early to enjoy the sunrise over Rainbow Beach. The picture shown above was quite difficult to obtain, mostly because the relentless wind did not stop shaking the palm leaves on the foreground, but also because it came loaded with salty water from the waves below, covering my lens with spray and forcing me to clean it every few seconds. On top of that, keeping the tripod in place on the steep sandy terrain was not so easy, and I had to recompose the scene several times.

I then quickly put on my photo backpack and proceeded to cross the park by foot taking advantage of the low sun to photograph the forest without shadows, including a close encounter with some type of lizard of a size and look that made me keep the distance to what I considered reasonable. When a wild animal does not escape when you approach it to take a photo, it makes you wonder the possible reasons for its behavior, and at least one of them is that you may be committing a serious mistake. I came back to town hungry, had something to eat, and then proceeded to swim in the warm ocean catching some waves before heading back to civilization.

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