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Mieke Boynton
I'm an almost 45 year-old Australian who started out as a frustrated on-the-side artist, discovered photography in my late 20s, and eventually found my way to being to an absolutely delighted full-time landscape photographer. Together with my fiancé Matt Palmer, I now run a photography gallery in my picturesque hometown of Bright, Victoria, in the foothills of the Australian Alps. I specialise in nature, landscape and abstract aerial photography.
If asked to name the most moving/influential photographers of all time, there is no doubt in my mind that landscape photographers such as Ansel Adams and Peter Dombrovskis would be on most people’s lists – Adams for his spectacular photographs of Yosemite and Dombrovskis primarily for his iconic photograph of the Franklin River in Tasmania, “Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend.” There is no denying the beauty of their photography; however, surely what makes their photographs so enduringly memorable and meaningful is that these photos resulted in the permanent conservation of some of our most treasured natural places.
For better or worse, I am no activist. Certainly, I am a proud advocate of the Nature First Principles, but I certainly don’t take photographs with the intention of saying anything that will change the course of history – or even people’s opinions. What actually motivates me to create landscape photographs is simply the beauty of nature – I take photographs purely in an attempt to capture and share those special moments when I am amazed and awed by its beauty. For a long time, I felt that this was quite a self-indulgent reason for photography, and couldn’t see any great meaning or purpose to it.