My Island Home

My Island Home, Cairns – Steve Rutherford Landscape Photography Art Gallery.

My Island Home, Cairns – Steve Rutherford Landscape Photography Art Gallery.

This is an unframed, limited edition collection landscape photography print of only 25 units. It is printed on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl papers, structured to refract the highest values in colour and detail. It’s high-quality ink absorbing layer enables exceptional image quality with enormously detailed sharpness, and a very broad colour range, providing archival permanency of your artwork for over 100 years.

Aerial, Canon 5DMk2, 50mm, F8, 1/640th sec, ISO 800, no filter, processed in Lightroom.

I’d flown over the reef many times, but on this occasion, I was in search of Upolu Cay’s famous sand tail. Only a metre high, you have to time your visit very specifically to the tides, otherwise you get nothing but a tiny patch and the sand can be washed over very quickly. With help from my friend and pilot, we plotted the exact timing for the shot. Aided by glorious weather and sunshine, the reef glowed like it was lit from beneath. A small seaplane had landed shortly before which gave me the perfect opportunity to show the scale of the reef and the size of this unique, rarely seen sand cay, 30 kilometres off shore, in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef

My Island Home, Cairns – Steve Rutherford Landscape Photography Art Gallery.

I’ll start by saying, if your intention is an image like My Island Home, then buy a polarising filter, attach it to your lens before you leave the ground and keep it on. The colours of the Great Barrier Reef cannot be understated, but the glare in the sun will kill your image. A polarising filter will give you a chance to not only remove the atmospheric haze seen from altitude, but cut the glare off the water’s surface, revealing the real colours beneath.

Remember a fast shutter speed is necessary as well, even use your cameras TV (Shutter Priority) setting to minimise fiddling with your camera setting. Leave your ISO on auto as well.