Sky Sight

It was the early 1950s and the young Dutchman, then working as a painting contractor, was flying from Perth to Derby on business. When it's up to cruising speed, a DC3 plods along at fairly sedate 300 kph, so Woldendorp and his fellow passengers would have had a good five or six hours to gaze at the scenery.

Sand dune, Windorah, Queensland 1994. Late light falls on the drifting sand dune south east of Queensland.

 Woldendorp had come to Australia almost on impulse. Having been too young to serve during World War II (he was 13 when fighting started), he nevertheless joined the army shortly after the war ended. For three years he served in Indonesia, but when he returned to Holland he says, ' there was still not a lot happening after the war. I was used to being away and they had advertised Australia a lot while I was in Indonesia. So, I thought, well, I'm used to the heat and used to being away, I'll have a go at Australia.'

Although he'd originally planned to settle in Sydney, he decided to stop in Perth for awhile first. ' I'd never done a day's work in my life when I got off at Fremantle. But I knew a bit about colour so I started painting houses. I wasn't very successful, but I hung in there, sort of got the hang of it.' After living and working in Western Australia for about four years, he decided to return to Europe for a holiday.

He bought a camera for the occasion and after some initial practice in Perth, he travelled by boat to Europe, photographing along the way. 'When I got all the photographs processed in Holland, I thought, that's what I'd love to do.'

On his return to Australia, he discovered that there really weren't any photography courses as such. But he did discover a group of knowledgeable photographers (both amateur and professional) in the Cottesloe Camera Club - and before long he had assembled a portfolio. Still planning to settle in Sydney, he travelled to the east to see if he could find work as a photographer. ' I got in touch with a lot of book editors, publishers and editors of magazines.' he says. 'And they all said, we can give you a lot of work if you go back to Western Australia, because we haven't got anybody there that will take photographs for us.'

Determined not to be one of those photographers who did all their work in a studio, Woldendorp instead decided to be, in his words, 'a true freelancer' and to go out on assignments. Initially that meant editorial work for the magazines, but with the arrival of the mining boom, it soon entailed commissions for the likes of Hammersley Iron, Transfield and what was then called the Department of Industrial Development.

'Those people all wanted photographs from the outback and from the new developments. And that's how I started to travel and,' he adds, 'also became aware of how important the aerial perspective of the landscape was. There are whole areas where there are no roads, so how else are you going to see it? We don't have high mountains you can get overviews from. So the moment you get up [in an aeroplane], you see the strength of the landscape - how it evolved, and how repetitive it is sometimes, like the ridges in the Simpson Desert.'

Four decades, 18 photographic books and many exhibitions and magazine articles later, Richard Woldendorp, now just into his 80s, is still taking photographs from the air. These days he uses three different cameras, a Pentax 6x7, a Fuji 6x9 and a Canon 5D. He likes the speed and ease of use of digital, but while he is happy with the Canon's image quality, he says ' there's no two ways about it that digital will win out over anything else. But the 6x9 Fuji with fine Velvia film will give you an extremely beautiful image.'

Top of Curtis Island, Cape Capricorn, Queensland 1997. An estuary with sand banks.

To capture his images, he prefers a high wing Cessna or similar. Depending upon the aircraft design, he may shoot through the perspex, or out an open window. He may sit in the co-pilot's seat if the side window is suitable, or he may take a seat behind the pilot and shoot over his or her shoulder. Finding the right pilot is of course tremendously important. 'Some pilots are difficult to photograph with because they don't see it,' says Woldendorp. 'You almost have to fly the plane yourself. But others anticipate what you want when you show them the landscape that you're interested in.'

Landscape photographers of the earth-bound variety are frequently counseled to shoot during the magic hours just after sunrise and just before sunset, but Woldendorp says that he generally shoots during the middle part of the day. This makes sense when you think about it. If you're looking down on a landscape from an aeroplane at noon, your subject is perfectly front-lit.

Given that his immaculate compositions are created from a fast moving aircraft, it is something approaching a marvel to learn that he does no significant cropping and no 'photoshop-ing'. Asked his secret, Woldendorp says, ' It's years and years of practice. In the beginning it was a lot more difficult. I also know how quick it is to position a plane.' The plane moves relatively slowly in relation to the subject, 'but you only get one shot – and that's it.

Sometimes you can circle a subject when it's particularly good, but generally I don't for two reasons. One is that we fly long distances and you can't muck about too much because the plane needs to cover that distance for re-fueling and what not. We have the occasional time where we have 5 or 10 minutes to make a circuit. And the other thing when you make a circuit, you never get back into position. It's not like it's a road... you think you can get back but there's drift and so on.'

Burnt trees in snow, Victorian Apls, Victoria 2007.

When he began taking aerial photographs in the early days, for clients, he used black and white film, but in the last 30 years or so colour film has been perfected and become more important. '[My] training was always about form and design,' he says. 'And in [landscape] painting it is always about selecting something with a strong element of design in it.' His early experience in mono photography re-inforced this approach.

'You depend on form in black and white photography, so that definitely helped me when it came to using colour.' But he emphasises that while he shoots in colour, his goal is to capture the tonalities accurately and, as he puts it, 'the reality of what is out there'.

'Nature has very little colour, it is always either blue as the sky, green as the bush or maybe red as the earth. Colour is informative [and] it helps [us] to understand the landscape. I wouldn't like these aerial photographs to be anything but in colour – although some of them would stand alone in form. It's the colour that gives you the information. We are conditioned by the colour in nature.'

'In the man-made world, when you go into the street you see all that advertising and the brightest colours are usually expressed by subjects you are least interested in. We've used colour indiscriminately, but in nature it is totally informative and at peace with itself. You get a sunset, it's the highlight of the day if it's a flash of red or pink colour – and then it's gone.'

Forest River, Kimberley WA 2003. At low tide, drainage lines form a pattern against the mangroves.

While Woldendorp says that people often remark that his photographs look like Aboriginal paintings, he says that the radical difference in intention means any such resemblance is coincidental. Aboriginal people, he says, are not copying the landscape in the way his photographs do, but are creating something more akin to a multidimensional map of everything in a region from waterhole locations to local myths and 'Dreamtime'.

This isn't to suggest in any way that Woldendorp's work is intended to be some sort of abstract, academic exercise. His acute sensitivity to form and the skill he brings to capturing it arise from his own abiding appreciation for the natural world.

'I have a great deal of respect and admiration for Nature, the great provider. As a species our survival depended very much on us tuning in to the landscape. We've reached the crucial point that with global warming the natural environment needs extra care for its survival so that we can survive. I always hope that by pointing out the beauty of what is there, people will be inspired to look after the environment.'

All images in this article are from Richard Woldendorp's new book Abstract Earth, A view from Above (published by Fremantle Press). An exhibition will also tour Australia over the next two years.