Previously I’ve spoken about the salt pans up around Swan Hill and in the Mallee, but today I have some more photos to show you. They are ones that I have done more processing too. It is a dilemma images like this. Do we do little to them to show how they really look, or should we process them in an attempt to highlight the problem and the environment.
I did a bit to this. I don’t know if it adds to it or not. I think it turned out darker than I had expected. The colours are very much true to how I think of the Mallee. It is really not a colourful place and everything does seem washed out. In summer it is brown everywhere, or as a friend put it recently, golden. Even the trees seem a bit brown.
I loved what the salt has done to the fence posts. Really shows how destructive it is. While I think it is beautiful, I know it is not natural. I mean the salt pan is a not a naturally occurring phenomenon and we should be sad about this.
The area in the image above was taken near Sealake on the way to Nyah West up in the north of the state of Victoria.
This photo was taken from the road between Nyah West and Chinkapook. It is a quiet road and you can just stop and take photos. We did and that’s when I captured the above image.
Again, I have done more than the basic processing. I really wanted to show the environment a lot more. Bring out the fence and the ground it is surrounded by. It really was that colour too. I guess the algae is still on the ground. It hasn’t been dry for long, you could tell when you walked on it that it was soft and still moist. You do have to be so careful walking on it you can sink into it before you know it.
Sometimes it is better to let a scene talk for itself. While some processing is okay, I think sometimes it is better left alone. I wouldn’t do a lot of processing to these as then the message would be lost. I think they still ask you to think and react to what you are seeing.
