Brisbane’s finest

I was in Brisbane in early November for the opening of my third exhibition of Animus at Foto Frenzy Photography Centre in the city’s southeast. The exhibition came about through my association with Darren Jew, a partner at Foto Frenzy and the facilitator of many of my photographic adventures in the underwater world. Darren is a world-class photographer and his many achievements speak for themselves. I was really pleased to get the call, to take my work north and to tap into this city’s great pool of creative talent.

Darren Jew

My good friend and fellow photographer Gary Cranitch collected me from the airport and delivered me to the gallery. Gary’s worked as a photographer for Queensland Museum for more than three decades and is the Principal Photographer for the museum’s new book, The Great Barrier Reef: A Queensland Museum Discovery Guide. I’ve been on several trips to the reef with Gary over recent years so I was keen to catch up and check out the book. I did, and it’s remarkable. Gary has a long association with Foto Frenzy. He exhibited earlier this year, showing photographs from the book.

The Great Barrier Reef Book..

At Foto Frenzy I met Gallery Curator Ian Poole, a wonderful man with impressive credentials. A long time judge for the Australian Professional Photography Awards, Ian’s renowned for his ability to deconstruct an image and demonstrate the makings of a great photograph. Meeting him really enhanced my time in Brisbane.

Gallery Curator Ian Poole

The facilities at Foto Frenzy were pretty incredible. Four of the smaller framed pieces from previous exhibitions travelled with me to Brisbane, including three handcrafted palladium prints, several others Darren printed for me on site using the centre’s high-end custom printing service. It all took less than 48 hours and the prints were flawless.

A well organised construction room..

On the walls @ Gallery Frenzy..

On the walls @ Gallery Frenzy.. Opening

I decided to take full advantage of the access to one of the country’s finest printers/operators and get a print of one of my latest images on canvas. The result was never going to disappoint. Carefully packaged for the flight home it was stretched and on my wall by Sunday arvo.

file for canvas printing

Darren & I checking out the result

on the wall…

If you’re in the Brisbane area, I highly recommend a visit to Foto Frenzy.

Liam..

 

Ballarat International Foto Biennale

Two weeks ago I crammed the car with framed prints for what ended up being a fairly epic road trip to Ballarat. Edie, my three-year-old daughter, quite happily shared the back seat with the alpha male ‘Omega’ and after a quick stop at the Guildford General Store for one of the best pies around we were on our way.

‘Omega’

delicious..!

The Ballarat International Foto Biennale (BIFB) is one of those interesting regional events that’s grown from fairly humble beginnings into a month-long, internationally significant festival featuring both emerging and established photographers and attracting upwards of 60,000 people.

I’m really pleased to be exhibiting at the BFIB this year as part of an Eleven40 group show with artists including Jacqui Dean, Roger Arnall, Yury Avi, Glenn Gibson, Ric Wallis,Bruce Postle and Neil Duncan

Eleven40 @ Backspace

As Edie and I wove our way through the Wombat State Forest, she fast asleep and clutching the remains of a pink cupcake sans icing, me, eyes on the road, the weather turned foul. By the time we arrived in Ballarat we were up against a power outage and gale force winds, but somehow we still managed to negotiate our way to Backspace Gallery in the heart of the city.

Edie charmed Gallery Director and artist Deborah Klein, while I emptied the car and took a bit of time to check out my fellow exhibitors. I’m sharing the space with some incredible talent and Glenn and Sandy from Eleven40 had obviously been hard at work the previous day. One of the immediate standouts for me was a piece from Ric Wallis’s Lake Eyre collection. A stunning series of images of the lake in flood shot from the air.

http://eleven40.com.au/photographers/ric-wallis.html

I returned to the BFIB this weekend, this time with my 6-year-old son in tow, to check out some of the other exhibits. The highlight for me was Korean artist Youngho Kang’s ’99 Variations’, complete with titles such as ‘Encountering a Skinny Pig in front of the Big River 2013’. Brilliant!

‘Encountering a Skinny Pig in front of the Big River 2013’

Youngho Kang

‘Sudarios’ (Shrouds) by Colombian Erika Diettes was captivating. The artist’s haunting images, beautifully printed on silk and hanging from the exposed beams of the Mining Exchange were something to see, and I loved the concept of Sheena Macrae’s ‘The Projectionist’.

Erika Diettes

Sheena Macrae

The BFIB runs from 17 August – 15 September 2013

at various venues in and around Ballarat, Victoria.

Check it out if you can.

 

‘Petrified’ by Nenad Saljic

A few months back while passing the windows of Saxony in Chadstone, (Melbourne) I was transfixed by an image suspended inside the store. After venturing inside and chatting with the salesperson I was informed that it was part of a series titled ‘Petrified’ by Croatian born photographer Nenad Saljic. you can see more of his work by clicking on the image.. enjoy!!

 

Jacob Sutton’s ghostly underwater portraits

Jacob Sutton’s ghostly underwater portraits

Beautiful and ghostly underwater portraits from New York-raised, London-based photographer Jacob Sutton. Sutton is best known for his fashion photography

Australian Geographic Cover

Back in 2010 I’d recently purchased my Aquatica Underwater Housing for my Canon 5D Mk11 and was looking for some variety in diving experiences to test the rig under different conditions. I chose a double dive of the HMAS Canberra, scuttled back in 2009 off Queenscliff just outside the heads of Port Philip Bay in southern Victoria Australia , she now resides 28 meters below the surface.

After gearing up in Portsea at the offices of Dive Victoria then boarding the vessel ‘Sea Dragon’ where I was buddied up with experienced wreck divers Andrew & Johnny both dive instructors at Dive Victoria with great knowledge of the dive site and the wreck itself. A 30 minute trip via the Queenscliff dock and we were at the dive site ready to drop in for dive 1, surface conditions weren’t great and the visibility below was fairly poor as well. We made our way down the mooring line to the deck of the friggett, with not alot of marine life calling the artificial reef home I quickly made the call to concentrate on working with the structure of the wreck and my dive buddies to add scale and perspective along with a human aspect to gather some ‘mood’ images.

# see images below for the out-takes from the dive…

floating over the deck #1

bow detail

floating over the deck #2

As it turned out it ended up being the only dive for the day as we surfaced we were greeted with a 3 meter swell which had closed in on us. So after a struggle to get back onto the boat we took a vote and decided to cut our losses and head back to land. 

Thinking I hadn’t achieved much picture wise I packed the car and headed home…

Fast forward to April 2013, I get a message from a friend and fellow diver Declan via facebook requesting images of divers on wrecks. Thinking long and hard then trolling my hard drives archives, I managed to find a couple from trips to Vanuatu, Fiji along with the few from the dive of the Canberra.

Fiji fishing boat

looking through the Canberra

million dollar point

After a few emails and conversations with both the picture editor and art director of Australian Geographic I’ve been fortunate enough to capture and supply the image that fitted the ‘look and feel’ they felt best suited the cover of the 114th edition of Australian Geographic Magazine.. 

So here it is…..

Animus opening @ Eleven40

Split toning with Adobe Lightroom4

1. I don’t do enough photos of my family as is an occupational  hazard with professional photographers but on this occasion I had both kids in fine form and a Canon 1D Mk111 at the ready.
2.     A cold, windy summer’s day at Pt Lonsdale in southern Victoria set the ideal scene for a few snaps of my kids playing on the beach, this combined with some awesome cloud formations happening out in Bass Strait made the perfect backdrop  for some action pics..
3.     Using Adobe Lightroom4 for my post production and RAW image processing I felt a split tone effect would best suit to achieve the dramatic effect in the images below…

   

   “ready for takeoff”

   

   “preparing for separation”

   

   “flying Leo”

   
   

    

The Orangutans of Nyaru Menteng

Back in early 2008 I was fortunate enough to gain permission to visit the very special place that too many orphaned or displaced orang-utans call home. 

There are overy 650 orangutans at Nyaru Menteng – a number well beyond the intended capacity of the centre.

The Nyaru Menteng Care Centre is situated 28km outside of Palangka Raya, the capital of Central Kalimantan. It is located within the boundaries of the Nyaru Menteng Arboretum, a 62.5 ha lowland peat-swamp forest ecosystem, founded in 1988 by the Ministry of Forestry Regional office of Central Kalimantan.

There are about 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 80 per cent of them in Indonesia and the rest in Malaysia’s Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak.

The major issue we face with orangutans today is what is called the ‘fragmented population’, split up in many small populations, and many of these populations are not connected any more casualties of the boom in palm oil – used extensively for biofuel and processed food like margarine – which has seen swathes of jungle felled in Borneo, an island split between Malaysia and Indonesia.

The aim of the Nyaru Menteng Care Centre is to rescue orangutans that have been displaced from their habitat or held in captivity as illegal pets, and through quarantine and half-way housing release them back into their natural environment.

During my time at the centre I witnessed only new arrivals no relocations unfortunately but what I did come away with from there was a new understanding of the problems facing our closest member of the primate family and some wonderful images that I’ve been able to share with the world.. some of which will feature in my latest exhibition ‘Animus’.. Liam

Liam Lynch photographed with Lau, 2008 by Tuta

 

‘Animus’ Exhibition is moving to Melbourne, join me for the opening on the 8th of May @ 7pm, click on the image for details…

Eleven40 Opening night invite

Castlemaine Animus Exhibition Setup Timelapse

Timelapse Still

The linked timelapse video shows the project from wall instillation through to opening day.. click on the still above to view the video