Bill Hatcher Photography

On Assignment: A look inside My Mountain Biking Photo Bag

I am packing now for a job next week in Western Australia. I am excited about this trip because it will be my first time in that country. Deciding what photo gear to bring for this shoot is tricky because the assignment includes a week of pedaling 400 km off pavement on trails with no support vehicle. Will I ever I do a photo assignment that was actually easy? The big challenge on this assignment is I will have to carry all my own gear. My solution is

Australia Geographic Magazine: Forestry Feature Story

In the July/August 2011 Australia Geographic magazine issue 103 you will see my photo coverage about the state of Australia forests and the forestry industry. This is a very hot topic right now in Australia, the 18 page feature story includes images I made in the course of shooting for the story in forests in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.The photos look at the modern face of logging in Australia's public forests as well as portraits of people involved and working in Australia's forest industry and forest conservation.

I've included a few pages from the story below. 

New Photography Column: Australia Geographic Outdoor Magazine

My first photo column for Australia Geographic Outdoor is in the winter July/August 2011 issue of magazine. This will be a regular column that focuses on photography in the outdoors. I look forward to sharing more photo adventures and techniques in the upcoming issues of Outdoor. 

 

 

Broken Hill

Click the link below or (here) to view images I made for a story feature Broken Hill: After the Rains published this month in Australia Geographic magazine. The Australian outback around Western New South Wales and the Darling River Basin look very different now following months of local heavy rains and flood waters flowing from Queensland. The best part about this assignment was the chance to witness a once in a lifetime phenomenon and a desert transformed. When shooting the aerial photos for this story I discovered every dry lake bed filled with water, the rivers over their banks and the red desert turned green. And it appears the continued flooding in Queensland will bring even more water to the desert. 

 

Photos from the sky

Aerial photography is fun but I don't get to do enough of it. I just put some new aerial photos in the New Works section on my web site (here). I also wrote a piece about it in my column in the January issue of Outdoor Photographer. I'll post a link to that when they put it on their web site.

There are many photographers who specialize in aerial photography, but for me it makes up about 1% of the work I do. Usually my aerial work has to support a story I am shooting. These aerial photos are nothing like what I normally shoot because they are just beautiful scenes I have seen when flying to or from assignments.  The photo here is the photo that will run with the Outdoor Photography story. 

Return to the Outback

 

This photo is not in Australia it's actually 7,000 miles away in Utah's southern high desert country. I brought this photo out to show to science writer and author Karen McGhee. A couple of weeks ago Karen and I were

Getting published in National Geographic

One way is by entering the National Geographic photo competition. The deadline is 30 Nov.2010. Click on the image below and it will take you to the National Geographic web site with the entry details. 

Of course the more typical way is through hard work, pursuing great stories and always working toward getting your work published, exhibited and talked about. Entering photo competitions with top magazines like National Geographic, Smithsonian and PDN can be part of this formula. 

Exploring Sydney with the Nikon D-300s

These are some photos from a recent day I spent in and around Sydney. Occasionally I have to remind myself that I am living in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. What better place to catch up on the Nikon D-300s camera than photographing iconic scenes around Sydney.

You might remember a couple of months ago I was vacillating between several compact cameras. What I was looking for was something that could work as a small discreet street camera. I reviewed many point and shoot type cameras and I decided the Leica X1 was tops for resolution and will fit in your pocket as well. But the Leicas limitations including slow focus and a fixed lens had me looking again at SLR cameras. I finally decided on the Nikon D-300s. The Nikon-D-300s will not fit in even a large pocket, but you get so much more for the same money spent on the Leica X-1 (I paid about $2,000 USD for the Nikon with a 35mm 1.8 lens). 

Why an SLR? I have been using SLR cameras with a gazillion functions, plus auto focus and interchangeable lenses for years so I decided why should I accept the limitations of a fixed lens range finder or point & shoot camera. Simply put a great shot only comes along once in awhile and I knew the SLR camera gives me the best chance of capturing that image.  

 

The D-300s is not the D3s, but it's fast, compact and reliable and really the perfect SLR for street photography. I saw these Marilyn Monroe look-a-likes on George Street. Taken with the D-300s 35mm 1.8

The Great Outdoors Photography Competition Deadline

There's less than a week left to enter this photo competition. Find out more about the comp on their web site here . I rarely enter competitions, but this looks like a nice one. Amateur submissions are judged by National Geographic Traveler and the professional submissions are judged by Photo District News.

 Below are a couple of the images I have submitted for the competition. The tree photo is entered in the outdoor sports and activities category the other is in the scenic category. A curious thing is these two locations have both been dramatically changed, that's a nice way of putting it, by  recent natural disasters.

 

This photo is taken in the Wallaby Creek area outside of Melbourne, Australia. 100% of this forest was destroyed by the bush fires of Black Saturday in February 2009. I am shooting from a rope about 30 feet off the forest floor. I captured this panorama in camera with a Hasselblad Xpan camera on Fuji Velvia film.

In this photo the sun illuminates the moss covered moraine of an outlet glacier on the Myrdalsjokull icecap near Mt. Katla. The recent eruption under the Eyjafjallajokull icecap a neighbor to the Myrdalsjokull has sent up a ash cloud that has effectively buried this landscape in a grey blanket of ash. This photo was made in August 2009 using a Nikon D-700 with a 24-70 2.8 lens.