My Photography Journey

While I have several followers across social media whom I am grateful for, I also realise that I don’t believe I have formally introduced myself, so it’s about time that I do so.

My primary skillset is in Information Technology where beginning in 1994 I developed a fascination for computers with gaming & in 1995 began my IT journey in Brisbane as a level one support team member.? Fast forward to today where I am now a Systems Administrator for a remote retailer across remote communities in Cape York peninsula & the Torres Strait, based in Cairns, Far North Queensland.

In roughly 2006, I purchased a Fuji FinePix (S8000?) camera with an interchangeable lens.? This was my first probably, serious camera.?

At the time, I had no idea of how to use a camera with an interchangeable lens & I remember vividly wondering what all those modes where on the dial & what they did.? I recall trying to work them out without much idea as I had no patience for reading a manual at the time, let alone spending hours working out how to understand aperture, focus points, & ISO settings; never mind understanding light!

I enjoyed using automatic mode; I would pick it up every now & then but largely it fell by the wayside & I recall that one day I went to pick it up & I was unable to open the battery compartment as the batteries had decayed since the last time that I had used it & the camera was pretty much ruined as a result.

In 2012, I took my little point & shoot camera that I paid all or $50 for & captured the 2012 total solar eclipse along with hundreds of other people between Clifton Beach & Palm Cove here on Cairns’ northern beaches.? To my surprise, I achieved better than average results & the photos were reasonable for someone with no clue what they were doing.

Moving forward, I decided again to take up photography & purchased a Canon 1100D SLR with a twin lens kit, including a 300mm zoom lens & 55mm general purpose lens.? Again, I had no idea what I was doing, but the bug was about to bite me.

One morning I decided that I would visit Palm Cove here north of Cairns & photograph the sunrise.? The results, looking back, were ok for what I had in terms of gear & I got lucky with the light, the photo was pretty good.? The difference this time was that I now had some time on my hands to learn & had developed some seven years later, some patience.

I now read manuals, I knew about light but was absolutely hopeless in utilising it correctly.? I took that camera on some camping trips & managed to get some better than average shots, even the odd good one, that to this day I am still happy with.? I persevered through largely using Auto mode for the next few years.

In late 2018, I received some news that the company that I had worked for in Cairns since 2005 had been sold to a company in the Philippines.? Sadly, all our jobs were now made redundant despite promises to the contrary & I was now out of work.? Now latter stages of the year are terrible in IT for finding a new role, so from December through to March, I was unemployed until I struck some luck & found a temp role in western Queensland.

This was where I really developed my passion for photography as I had a few years earlier, upgraded my camera again from the 1100D to a 750D.? The temp role that was supposed to be for a month evolved to 3 months & then full time.

During this time I was blessed with the almost a never ending stream of wildlife & sunsets that mesmerised me & here I learnt how to use light.? A lens flare that was present in a photo was not present if I moved a metre or so in another direction & I was getting golden burnt sunsets that I could only dream of.

At this stage, a monster was now born!

Thanks to meeting (courtesy of my wife) & spending several months with Tim Corin (Instagram:? www.instagram.com/timcorinphoto ), who taught me patience, how to be quiet when approaching animals & also where to look for wildlife; I now had a good background & skillset to seriously work with.? Tim also taught me how to photograph the Milky Way which I still enjoy to this day; the zero light pollution of the outback also was a major selling point on this subject matter, clear skies, meteors & distant galaxies – what a utopia.

In terms of wildlife, I had endless birds of prey, brolgas, galahs, black cockatoos, lorikeets & wallabies to practice on; this was in addition to the sunsets & sunrises - I was in heaven!

I also caught the storm photography bug photographing some absolute ‘motherships’ of storms as they approached & lightning, learning how to read cloud formations etc.?

During my time in western Queensland, I was engaged by a Queensland Government department on project to take photos, in addition to the QRL who after seeing my photos asked me to shoot the final of a regional rugby league competition.

Still, life changes & I moved back to Cairns after a work accident where I had to essentially learn to walk again.? No longer did I now have the wildlife on tap & I had to now really work to get good shots of wildlife.?? Techniques I learnt in the outback didn’t always work here in Cairns & I became frustrated; birds were a lot timider here, so my shots were terrible until I learnt to adapt.

The accident also meant that my previous hobbies were not available to me, photography was now my one hobby that I could do that was within my abilities.

I also needed to find new ‘hunting grounds’ so to speak, there was no walk out the back door & endless subjects would essentially appear on queue.? In the suburban environs of Cairns, I found Centenary Lakes & the Cairns Esplanade were reasonably reliable, the former more than the latter.

It was now 2021 & I started learning more about light, ISO & how to adapt on the fly when the lighting conditions changed; where I had wide open spaces in western Queensland where my subjects were happy to be out in the open, I now had trees where they hid & shade to deal with.? What worked at F11, two branches away I needed to adapt & change my exposure to say F9-F7 to get an evenly exposed shot.?

By 2023, I (largely) understood the exposure triangle, contrast, white balance & what each of these brought to an image.? This was now a learning journey over a period of some 17 years to get to where I am now, this was not something that is for everyone.

I had also migrated my post processing from a Mac image editing software to Affinity Photo that further taught me the basics of image editing, which is still something that I’m trying to master & improve on.

Roll on 2024 & I have upgraded once more to a Canon EOS R6 Mark II on the mirrorless platform with new lenses.? My go to lens for wildlife is now the RF 200-800mm zoom & for landscapes & astrophotography, the RF L series 15-35mm wide angle lens.? This gear, I spent many hours researching & making sure that it was what I wanted to take my photography forward as none of it was cheap but it was an investment in my future, what I enjoy & what is my ‘happy place’.

I still enjoy my wildlife & photography has given me a new lease on life post injury, admittedly I can’t do everything that I used to but do I regret anything?? Not a chance!

I live for the chance to get out into the bush & national parks; this is my “Happy Place”; being in these environments makes me happy & ‘clears the fog’ from my head, gives me clarity & reduces stress in a way that nothing else does.

This is how Andrew Tunney Photography was born & how I got to where I am today.