I used to do a lot of landscape imaging.

One of my favourite haunts was “The Gorge”, about 30 mins walk from the middle of Launceston and a surprise to most who visit it.

First you encounter open parkland, then more closed in, semi-wilderness.

My processes involved the mandatory tripod, often as heavy as I could bother with*, some type of timer delay, filters, various lenses etc. I was not Robinson Crusoe here, packing much the same as the rest, only variations in format made any real difference.

Oh how things have changed.

Today I went with;

G9

12-60 Leica

…………

Yep, that was it.

All the images were taken at f5.6 to 7.1 (about f11-16 in full frame), all hand held at 1/5th to 1/200th with ISO’s of 100-400 and the full range of the lens was employed.

The day was not ideal. The best days there are high overcast after rain, employing a polariser to cut glare. I got patchy cloud after a short dry spell. Kinda cool to think this is only 5 minutes drive and 10 minutes walk from the centre of the city.

The stream bed these were taken in was obviously damaged last flood season. A lot of settled, open woods were literally washed away, or smashed up, trees fallen, then pushed into clumps.

A good season for moss has helped.

Higher areas were mostly untouched.

The under growth was healthy.

Some classics were revisited.

Hard to believe how far we have come. I remember once toting six Canon “L” primes up to the same spot one balmy spring day. What a sweat-fest. Straight after I repurchased the 17-40L and 70-200 F4L lenses, just for landscape.

Yes it is lazy and a tripod does have the advantage of slowing me down, but is that actually an advantage? I have found over the last few years, that speed is important. See-shoot can be handy in other environments other than just for street. Often I “work” the frame far better and more easily than when I employ a tripod.

*I used to rate my tripods by range. Studio only, near the car, a short walk, a long walk, an over-nighter.