The Visual Language of Aerial Photography

Tim Wrate

Tim Wrate is an Australian landscape photographer with an affinity for exploring and capturing the wild and rugged Great Southern Land with a special emphasis on aerial exploration. Tim has an insatiable drive, in the deepest sense, to capture the beauty, the honesty and the unique character of the Australian landscape from the aerial perspective.

timwrate.com.au

There has been a proliferation of aerial images in contemporary Australian landscape photography. These aerial images are quite often very abstract in nature, which begs the question – what is the visual language of aerial photography?

Australia is an age-old worn-down land. It is the flattest and driest inhabited continent in the world. It is not easy to comprehend from ground level. But from the air, the Australian land reveals its powerful identity, full of contrast: harsh and varied. A land weathered and carved by the forces of nature and the passing of millennia.

To most people, flying is a way of getting from A to B, but for me, it is an opportunity to observe the landscape from a different perspective. It is quite surprising how revealing the landscape can be, even from a commercial jet. The aerial point of view has compounded my appreciation of Australia’s landscape’s diversity. Each journey becomes a flight of discovery as the countryside below tells something about its natural history and evolution. The challenge for me is how to interpret the complexity and intricacies of the landscape before me..