Australian Adventures

In 2015 I was lucky to get the opportunity live in western Australia. It was an exciting prospect to see landscape and animals so different to what we find here in the British Isles.

I did a variety of shoots out there, which I will discuss in a separate post, but this post is dedicated to teaming up with a familiar face on the other side of the world.

Ivory Flame (Holly) and I have known each other for almost ten years. I started out as photographer in Wales around a similar time as Ivory Flame started modelling professionally, and so I have been lucky to photograph her many times. Holly has been an inspiration to me for many years with her amazing artistic poses and classical looks.

I was based in central Perth and when I was able to I would go and explore as much of Western Australia as I could. Though, its massive!

Whilst on a modelling tour of Australia. It was great to explore and hang out with Holly between her bookings whilst she was in Perth for a few weeks before travelling East.

Fremantle is a historic town about thirty minutes from Perth. I really liked the vibe there. Full of interesting shops, friendly folk and lots of sites of interest (Fremantle Prison Tours are awesome!) Fremantle also had another quirky unofficial destination, Coogee Power Station.

I had really wanted to explore the abandoned Fremantle Power Station. It was a must for urbex explorers. Holly knew all about it too as she had done a shoot nearby so on one of her days off we went over for our own photo shoot. Exciting!

On the day of our shoot the place was heaving with other explorers, photographers and graffiti artists. As you can imagine it being a shell of an old power station the scale of it was huge. So many parts to explore and the graffiti and murals added extra interest.

Holly had her costume all planned out to contrast the colours and mood of the power station. She wore a delicate contemporary ballerina costume in bright rust that really made her stand out.

I am absolutely thrilled with the images we took at Fremantle!

On another day we decided to go more environmental and drive out to Lancelin inland sand dunes and then Numbung National Park ‘The Pinnacles Desert’.

It’s almost always sunny in Western Australia so we had that glorious Australia light at Lancelin which really gave some bold contrasts. Holly decided on the dress and the red was perfect against the perfect blue sky. We were not alone either on the dunes. Motocross riders were having a lovely time.

Later on in the day we arrived at The Pinnacles, which really is an astounding landscape. It’s like an alien planet. Pinnacles go on for as far as the eye can see. This is because around 30,000 years ago, seashells were blown inland. The shells broke down into lime rich sands, of which were then eroded by the elements. This is how the Pinnacles were created. The tallest pinnacles at Numbung are around 3.5 meters high. Apparently the Pinnacles were only exposed about 6000 years ago, and then covered up again by shifting sands and then exposed again in the last few hundred years. This cycle is still continuing. The times we visited the Pinnacles there were many other tourists and very cute Galahs. We started off with a simple style and towards sunset Holly decided to get one with nature and we took some tasteful artistic nudes.

I feel the Pinnacles is one of those destinations that really sums up Australia as it’s such a stark contrast to the United Kingdom landscape. It’s an exciting, odd, inspiring, magical place.

Lastly here are a few images from an amazing tree at the banks of Kings Park which you would pass on the way to the iconic Crawley Boat Shed.