“Look!” he said, “it’s an aviators rainbow.”

Sure enough, a full circle of a rainbow had appeared over the top of the cloud, something I had neither seen, nor heard of before. But immediately knew it was a certain privilege that few others had experienced.

Before we get into it, I would like to apologize to Duane for the time it’s taken me to put this post up on the blog… It’s taken way too long. Sorry, Duane!

OK, lets go back a bit…

A few months ago my wife Lacey and I managed to wrangle a kid-free two days away at a Bed and Breakfast on the sunshine coast hinterland. It was a quirky little place with a pretty awesome library and a really unique feel to it. Like many Bed and Breakfast’s around the place, the morning can sometimes involve a communal table with a large cooked breakfast. This place was no exception.

When we arrived for breakfast, we met a lovely couple and got chatting. We ended up going up to Noosa with them and did one of the stunning walks in the National Park.

During our conversation, Duane had mentioned that he has a small plane that he enjoys flying from the Caboolture airfield – not far from where we live and offered to take me up for a morning flight.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited about the prospect.

Long story short, Duane contacted me a month or so later asking if I wanted to go for a flight around Moreton Bay.

I jumped at the chance!

The day arrived and I strapped on my two cameras – a Sony A7iii with a 24-70 f2.8G OSS for some wide action, and my trusty workhorse – a Canon 5dMkiii with my all-time favourite lens, a 70-200 f2.8L for some ‘closer’ action.

Interestingly, the Sony seemed to perform better with the flight conditions, as a lot of the Canon images did have some motion blur. I am thinking that the fact that the Sony has sensor level stabilisation as well as within the lens allowed it to be sharper with engine vibrations coming through.

Anyway, here is a selection of some of the images taken:

After circling the mountains for a while, we headed out towards Maleney and Lake Baroon.

From here we headed out towards Somerset dam. I managed to snap some of my favorite photographs of the day of the water sports happening out there.

The creeks that run into Somerset Dam made for some interesting photographs, with some stunning green tones:

It was almost time to head back home at this point, but before we did, we did a ‘touch and go’ at the local Kilcoy airstrip. It was astounding how dry everything was out that way.

We continued on from here back towards the Caboolture airport. I was thoroughly enjoying myself. I can see very clearly why Duane enjoys piloting light aircraft at this point.

It really is something else when you’re up there – your attention is wholly focused on your surroundings, and the view. As the pilot, there is obviously a whole lot of other things that dominate focus, but the result is the same:

You are in another place. All the stressors and anxieties of life occur on the earth below. You have both figuratively and literally left them behind.

On our way back we swung by Wamuran and checked out our place from above – no one was home though.

The local swimming pool on King St Caboolture stood out against the brown of the burnt grass.

I feel like these next two images are something special due to the fact that I wouldn’t normally be able to take an image of a highway using my drone. It was a unique perspective of the Bruce highway heading into Brisbane.

So, those were the highlights of a very special morning indeed!

I would like to thank Duane sincerely for taking me up in his plane and showing me a new perspective on sights that I know so well from 30 years living in the area.

Cheers Mate!

January 17, 2019

November 11, 2018

There’s something about getting up super early and heading to the beach.

This will be the first of many early morning trips out to the beautiful coastline of the Sunshine Coast (QLD). I had been talking with a mate (Josh Whysall) about heading out early to catch the sunrise. He was keen so, we hit up Shelly beach to see the rise. Not many people in the water just yet, it’s still a bit cool. Though there was one keen fella and his dog (seen below).

After we finished up at Shelly beach we headed over to Bullcock beach. I love Bullock because the northernmost tip of Bribie Island is literally a few hundred meters away, and it’s stunning!

We wrapped up the early morning shoot with a quick stop in at Kings Beach Bar for a flat white and the most amazing apple and cinnamon muffin – I could get used to that.