My photography attachment project with Ian Brodie
In April 2121 I was finishing up my position at the Esperance Chamber of Commerce when I saw a fantastic opportunity come up to apply for a photography attachment, through GEDC and Screenwest. It was with Ian Brodie, a well known film tourism photographer. After doing some research I decided it was too good an opportunity to pass up so I applied. A few weeks later I got the news that I was successful! I was so excited.
Ian and I met over zoom and started planning out our trip. We had two briefs to complete. The first we named ‘Imagine That,” and is a document to showcase Goldfields Esperance Region to potential film makers. We needed to show the vast range of different landscapes that our region offered. The second was a document showing films that had already been filmed in the region. We named that one “On Location.”
My role was to plan the trip as Ian hadn’t visited the area before. I love being tour guide so I started a Google doc and told Ian about all the amazing places we had to photograph. We only had six days to cover Ravensthorpe, Hopetoun, Esperance, Norseman, Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie so we had a very large area to cover!
We started on our trip on the 9th May meeting in Ravy. We only had time to cover the main street of Ravy, photographing the old buildings while running over our plan. Hopetoun offers some spectacular scenery at the Fitzgerald National Park so we set off to get some shots at sunset.
We spent as many hours as possible shooting during the day and then loaded up our photos at night and had lessons on Lightroom. I’ve learnt to edit using, Bridge, Camera Raw followed by Photoshop and Ian used Lightroom so it was so exciting being able to see how he edited his photos. I have done a fair amount of my learning by short courses and YouTube so having the opportunity to ask questions was amazing! By day two we had already started to lose our voices from talking so much.
The film industry was something completely new to me. Ian spent many years working on sets of Lord of the Rings in NZ and also through Europe including many projects in Norway. It was very interesting learning about how it was so different from my photography journey. We talked about equipment and shared stories about our travels. I really enjoyed hearing about Ian’s photography career and was very thankful that he was willing to share.
On day two we started with the sunrise at the Hopetoun groyne and then we went back into Fitzgerald National Park and got some more shot also flying the drone. Next stop was Esperance. We unfortunately got some grey weather for the tourist loop but still shot as we needed to show the area in all weather conditions. That day was finished with a walk around Esperance town and the Whale Tail. We were so tired after a full day of travel and shooting.
Day three was out to Cape Le Grande National Park. Even though I’ve grown up in Esperance it still blows my mind how beautiful it is. The kangaroo’s weren’t out a Lucky Bay but we did get to see them at Cape Le Grande Beach. We had a funny moment when I was getting close to one to get the shot and didn’t see the two big guys laying down in the bush right next to me! Ian thought it was amazing to see them so chilled out by the beach.
Day four we were on the road to Norseman. We had lots of stops planned, like Gibson Soak, Helms Arboretum, Grass Patch, Salmon Gums and the Great Western Woodlands. It took us most of the day with lots of stops at interesting spots.
The next two days we spent in and around Kalgoorlie. The history and building was really interesting. We started working on the layout and covers of the docs at nights. On the last night my girlfriends came up to pick me up and fit in a bit of shopping.
Once we had got home we then worked remotely on getting the right images and content in the docs. It took us a few months but was worth it!
The whole experience was fantastic! I learnt so much and really enjoyed showcasing our beautiful region.
Here are the two documents now live on the GEDC website
Here is a few images that I took along the way.
