LightVision

What better time than winter to dream about the seaside? It’s at the core of Wildlight’s identity as we’re reminded with this edition’s focus on our shimmering shores. The beach still evokes the strong emotions it did in the mid-80s when Wildlight started, as evidenced by Rennie Ellis’ Life’s a Beach library additions. It reveals that prior to the present era of slip, slop, slap*, the yarn mills of the Pearl River Delta got little joy from the Aussie beachwear sector because there wasn’t all that much going on. For once, enjoy this imbalance of trade that saw a lot of people down under soaking up the sun at maximum exposure.

*modern-day UV protection

Short Back and Slides - Our Quarter Century

Wildlight Photo Agency is celebrating it’s 25th anniversary in 2010. Look forward to stories and images of our history in coming LightVision editions. Wildlight has been the standard bearer for real Australian photography over the years, realised in our amazing library exceeding 30,000 top of the line images from 50 great photographers located in every corner of the country. We invite you to share memories of your own association with Wildlight since 1985, by posting a comment on the LightVision blog.  Whether the good old days were long ago or last week, we’d like to hear from you so we can all share your recollections.

No Collars or Cuffs and Little in Between

Enjoy a bonanza of more than 400 iconic archive photos from Rennie Ellis, the late Melbourne photojournalist and renowned master of the Australian outdoor idiom, whose work occupies a whole chapter in the annals of Australian photography. In this new collection, you can relive the Australian shoreline at its colourful best with the sunny disposition of Rennie’s lens revelling in images of people, places and events. You’ll find plenty of party-ready eskies and idyllic beach cricket matches, confronting fronts and sandy rears, that will be as memorable as the time you first remember seeing them. We promise.

Think Big With Environmental Graphics

The built environment becomes all the more grand when decorated with big pictures from the Wildlight library that astound and delight. Firms all over Australia have found a place in their breakout areas, corridors, staff canteens, client waiting areas and meeting rooms to put images of Australia front and centre. Hang Australia up on your walls with Wildlight graphics that boast the high resolution needed to enlarge the image size massively without losing a single pixel of detail. Click here to see how companies are tapping the power of the big Australian picture to release the poetic emotion of our majestic land.

Reflecting on Earlier Visions

We’ve scanned in the third edition of the original lightVision magazine with Robert Besanko’s no-country-bumpkin cover, dating from the dawning days of 1978, to remind you what the photographic scene was like way back when. Although it pre-dates Wildlight, some of the players are still around, like our partner and intrepid technical guru Jean-Marc Le Péchoux, who was at the editorial and publishing helm of this earlier industry publication.  Find out what subjects were on the minds and retinas of our industry associates in those days (like sneakers and photographic equipment auctions and garden nudes) and take a moment to reflect that as much as things change, they somehow remain the same. Reassuring isn’t it!

Photographer Central

Water Magic Exhibition in Sydney

As we write, Richard Woldendorp has just descened after a weeklong aerial photoshoot over the magnificent Western Australian coast gathering spectacular new bird’s eye matierial. You won’t have to wait long to see the results, which will be on show at a new exhibition entitled ‘Water Magic” at the Boutwell Draper Gallery, 82-84 George Street, Redfern in Sydney from 26 August to 18 September, 2010.

Penny Tweedie photo to become a Rolf Harris artwork

Wildlight photogapher Penny Tweedie, long a chronichler of the indigenous Australian landscape, is having her picture ‘Christmas Sunrise’ transformed into an oil on canvas by noted Australian born artist Rolf Harris, CBE, AM

The work (shown here before its final iteration) will appear in Harris’ A Life in Art show at the Clarendon Fine Art gallery in London’s Mayfair from 2 to 19 July 2010, after which it will go on nationwide tour of Britain.

News from the Rennie Ellis Archive

Apart from the collection that incorporates our current Life’s a Beach retrospective, which has recently been acquired by the State Library of Victoria, you can catch two great exhibitions of Rennie Ellis’s work in Sydney and Adelaide:

Up the Cross: Rennie Ellis and Wesley Stacey Until 8 August 2010

Museum of Sydney

Cnr Phillip & Albert Streets, Sydney

Rennie Ellis and fellow photographer Wesley Stacey spent the summer of 1970-71 in Kings Cross, getting to know the locals and delving behind the scenes. Together they captured the sights, sounds and pulsating rhythms of life on the streets, in the clubs and residences of Sydney’s infamous red light district. It was the ’summer of love’ and the Cross was as much a magnet for long-haired pilgrims and avant-garde artists as it was for US servicemen on leave from Vietnam. This exhibition of their photos reveals moments of joy and pathos, the surface glitter and what was going on backstage, providing a fascinating portrait of life ‘up the Cross’ at a unique moment in time.

Candid Camera Australian Photography 1950s – 1970s Until 1 August 2010

Art Gallery of South Australia

North Terrace, Adelaide South Australia

A survey of Australian documentary photography from the 1950s to the 1970s, Candid Camera comprises more than eighty photographs by renowned Australian photographers, including Max Dupain, David Moore, Jeff Carter, Robert McFarlane, Mervyn Bishop, Rennie Ellis, Carol Jerrems and Roger Scott.

Head On Portrait Prize 2010

This portrait of Hugo and Ernst earned Wildlight’s Andrew Stephenson a runner-up spot in the Australan Centre for Photography show judged in Sydney in June.

Sushine Coast School of Photography in Yandina, Queensland

Running for almost a year now with over 200 sudents, Colin Beard reports that the school is planning an ‘In the Footsteps of Saint Francis’ exhibition in central Brisbane at Westpac soon. Check here for more details.