PhotoTour Wildflowers Of Western Australia Vol1 is a 180 page photographic book which captures the 2016 wildflower season in Western Australia from Kalbarri in the north to Perth. Vol 2 covers Perth to Esperance. The season was the best in two decades according to some experts thanks to good rain in April and May and consistent follow up rain in the months following.
WA contains more than 50% of Australia’s documented Biodiversity Hotspots and the south west is listed as one of 34 in the world. Surrounded by desert the plants and animals have evolved in isolation and many are completely unique to this locality.
They make perfect photographic subjects with a huge range of colours, textures and shapes. The book explores a natural beauty which simply takes your breath away. It delves into detail and many of the flowers are shown much larger in the book than they are in real life.
It therefore differs from the traditional flower book which is designed to help the reader identify plants and species. The flowers are not identified in the book and in many instances names are in the process of being changed as a result of better identification techniques such as DNA. The purpose of the book is to examine the natural beauty of the flowers and present it to the reader so that they also can share in it.
The two volumes represent almost three months on the road in 4wd and caravan and over 16,000km. The photographs span early August to late September. This is generally considered the peak season, but you can spot flowers all year round.
The digital camera that was used to photograph the wildflowers was primarily a Canon 5DsR and a Canon 100mm macro lens. A Canon 5D Mk3 was also used and a variety of other lenses including a very wide angle 11-24mm zoom.
The 5DsR uses a 50mp sensor; each photograph is taken as a RAW image and has a size of 8688 x 5792 pixels or 735mm x 490mm at 100% resolution. This typically consumes around 70mb of storage. To fit the 8.5” square format of the book each photograph has therefore been cropped to around a quarter of its original size. This provides a scale of magnification beyond traditional photography and this is reflected in many of the photographs in the book. It was a common occurrence to spot things on the computer that had not been seen through the viewfinder at the time of talking the photograph, particularly insects.
The name PhotoTour will be used in a series of photographic books of which this is the first.
It is hoped it provides some inspiration for people to travel to Western Australia and experience the wildflower wonderful for themselves. Their friends will not believe what they try to describe, until they show them the book.
