Nature Strikes Back

Its all our fault

It’s winter in Perth, and as much as most of the readers of this won’t believe it, Australia is currently very cold. Not so much in temperature but in the fact that no house here is built for heat or cold. We have air conditioning, but no modern house is built to keep heat in. As a result, after a walk, I have had to put my jumper on to come inside and write this.

I’m a very sporadic person by nature. I get an idea, and within 10 minutes, I’m planning where, when, how, and why. This image was no different. I was going through old photos I had taken and came across a frame I had taken of my beautiful partner on one of our first outings together. I was, of course, trying to impress by showing her some of my favorite spots across Perth. After a beautiful hike, I stopped to take some photos of this massive cactus. Suddenly, after seeing the photo I thought how cool this could be for a frame, but what would work?

The escape-the-corporate-world seed had already been planted, and I thought this beautiful natural backdrop could play a part in my second frame for the series. But how? I didn’t know yet. I knew it would happen, but the rest I’d figure out when I scouted. I messaged a dear friend who had posed for me previously to see if she would be available. Thankfully, she was. As a bonus, she also had an old retro suit that would suit the theme perfectly.

With the location kind of ready, the model and outfit sorted, I headed out to scout. I had planned on shooting in the afternoon with the forecast favorable and the cactus backlit. I drove the 40 minutes to find my cactus, and it was perfect for what I wanted, large for scale, nothing in the way, and even a slightly broken leaf perfectly positioned so I could continue the no-faces portion of the series.

WE WERE SET..

Back home, food, and grabbing the camera gear, we headed out again to meet our model. Now the last thing was to compose my shot. How far away did I want to be? How wide was the frame? Where was she in the frame?

Within two minutes of being there, all of this got answered once the model had bravely avoided the cactus spikes (called glochids) and got in position. Potentially the quickest shoot I have ever done, we could have walked away in five minutes, but with a location as beautiful as this, we took our time, got some variations on the frame, and even spent some time taking portraits of the model in this location - see below for the portraits.

How cool is this spot? I adored it. The lighting was perfect, and I am so happy with the frame I got here.

Why "Nature Strikes Back" for a name? I think it’s fitting for what I want people to get from the series: the disconnect from nature, the gap that continues to grow between us and our relationship with nature. We belong more with the locations of these images than the world in which we created, surrounded by things we own in small little apartments in a concrete jungle.

We belong with nature, and I wanted to use the cactus as a representation of nature getting us back for how we treat and continue to treat it. That’s why it is called, and before I say it again, let me present to you, “Nature Strikes Back.”