Photo Review December 2015 - February 2016

A close friend of mine is a very keen fisher. Very keen. A simple stroll along the beach invariably elicits a steady stream of observations about the current state of the tide, the wind and weather, the sea temperature, the presence or absence of gutters and rips, what the solunar tables indicate and, above all, where and what the bird life is up to at that moment. In a funny way, what he’s doing is not all that dissimilar to a photographer on a photo walk. We’re also looking at the world, watching the weather’s moment to moment changes, thinking about the way the light is now and speculating about what it will be later, looking for interesting angles and backgrounds and searching for the place and time where it…

Blossoming By Anders Wotzke Sony A7M2; Sony Zeiss 55mm f1.8; 1/200s; ISO 50 Kiyomizu-dera Temple, Kyoto, Japan Each year in Japan between late March and early April, there's a small window where the sakura (cherry blossoms) bloom. During a day trip to Kyoto, it was forecast to rain heavily not long after the first of the blossoms began to flower, and unfortunately, a modest rain is enough to strip these delicate trees of their blossoms. With this looming threat, many locals hoping have a glamourous engagement and wedding portrait in front of the blossoms rushed to the surrounding temples on the weekend before the storm. As a result, there were beautifully dressed locals at all the traditionally ‘touristy’ locations -- it was quite the sight! This photo proved to be…

'I have no idea why, but I could make that camera work, whereas my father never could.' And from the very first roll of Kodak Gold he put through it, his approach was not that of a casual snapshooter, but of a photographer. When you ask photographers about their earliest picture-taking forays, the subjects are typically family, pets, friends and holidays. The photographic intentions are simple and immediate, and little thought is given to the final results – beyond a vague hope that the pictures will turn out more or less okay. The Scalone family lived on a busy suburban road in Sydney’s Abbotsford and Steve for his first picture-taking effort thought it would be interesting to see if he could photograph the cars at night. More particularly, he wanted…

‘That image took less than five minutes to photograph,’ says Steve Scalone. ‘I used to walk past his shop on the way to lunch or to get a coffee. One day I had my camera gear with me, so I just popped in – for me this was quite a courage thing as well – and said I was a professional photographer just walking past your shop; I've always admired it and wondered if I could take a very quick portrait of you. ‘He was quite willing and happy to do it. And I ended up taking a few photos – probably about 15 or 16 in all – of him just starting to work. ‘I noticed this large rack of violins at the back and so I set up…

Perhaps the best way to get some insight into your work as a freelance documentary photographer is to ask what you’ve been doing most recently. A lot of my work is about refugee and migration issues. I returned to Sydney from the Balkans a couple of days ago (in mid-September). I flew to Budapest, Hungary, and spent three weeks in Hungary, Austria, Germany, Serbia and Croatia – the tip of the spear with respect to the refugee crisis in Europe. It’s a huge, very dramatic situation with hundreds of thousands of people crossing into Europe, displaced by war, conflicts and famines in different regions. I didn’t have any assignments initially. I just decided to go and managed to pick up work while I was there. I shot for about a…

John Swainston was managing director of Maxwell Optical Industries, the local distributors for Nikon cameras, for 25 years until 2006. More recently he ran Maxwell International Australia, the Lowepro and Tamron distributor. A constant for industry insiders over three decades was the sight of John with the latest Nikon SLR seemingly surgically attached, snapping pics of industry functions and events. He was the self-appointed pictorial archivist of the photographic community. Universally respected, he has been the ultimate committee man, whether as a board member of the Australian Centre for Photography or in numerous executive roles on industry associations, spanning four decades in the Australian industry without a break. He has been a patron of Australian photography both as a private collector and as a company director, investing Nikon sponsorship funds…