The AG Journey: Picture this

By Joanna Egan November 7, 2013
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The Australian landscape has always inspired writers and artists with its diverse natural environments: old-growth forests, deserts, sun-drenched plains, bushland, oceans, dunes and islands skirted with pearl-hued beaches and richly-populated coral reefs.

It’s no wonder that many a photographer has headed out, camera and lenses in hand, to capture it in frames. Their stills, like the landscape…

The Australian landscape has always inspired writers and artists with its diverse natural environments: old-growth forests, deserts, sun-drenched plains, bushland, oceans, dunes and islands skirted with pearl-hued beaches and richly-populated coral reefs. It’s no wonder that many a photographer has headed out, camera and lenses in hand, to capture it in frames. Their stills, like the landscape, quirky towns and characters that live throughout Australia, have the power to inspire, to amaze, to frighten and to leave you awestruck.

Each image that we use in the Journal is carefully considered. Not only does it have to be aesthetically strong and visually alluring but it has to say something about Australia. We look for images that tell a story about the people, places and wildlife that live on this vast land mass, on its islands and in its oceans. We are lucky in Australia to be surrounded by such sweeping beauty, something that you can easily lose track of sitting on the 20th floor of a high-rise building in the middle of the Sydney CBD.

Researching images for the Journal is like looking through a window at Australia, and every day I travel vicariously to the places that feature in our stories. In the last few issues I’ve dug my toes into the white sand of the Whitsunday islands, tramped along the Heysen Trail, rocked with the currents of Currie Harbour in a King Island fishing boat and meandered down the main street of Dimboola.

For each image that we publish, there are many that we just can’t fit, and I am privileged to be able to peruse not only the images that are selected by our Art Department, but the scores of “overs” from both commissioned photography shoots and digital image libraries that don’t end up in the Journal. Our archives hold thousands of frames from some of Australia’s best photographers.

At the moment my day consists of scanning the magical underwater gardens of Lord Howe Island as photographed by Justin Gilligan and learning about some very tricky behaviour as I start putting together images for a very unusual story that we have planned for Issue 96…stay tuned!