Outdoor Photography

22 Outdoor Photography February 2018

I was doing three jobs, washing dishes in my

brother’s restaurant and doing picture framing,

with photography on the side. I was struggling,

and for the fi rst 10 years pretty much didn’t

make any money, but I was a free agent.’

It was about six years into this portfolio career

that Christian realised he hated photography.

‘I was shooting weddings, portraits and

commercial stuff. I had no idea what I was doing.

This was during the pre-digital time, shooting

negative fi lm and waiting four weeks for the

images to come back from the lab. I hated the

process and didn’t like dealing with the people

involved. So I gave up and took off around Australia

with no idea where I was going to end up.’

At this point, Christian tells another

anecdote, this time about how he found a

photography gallery in the middle of nowhere

run by an old lady who was to become his

inspiration. ‘She had created what I was going

to create, and that was a gallery where you

could sell photos. I couldn’t believe that a little

old granny pensioner could do this. Her photos

weren’t even that great. But she had so many

of them and her gallery was so full, and

I thought, “Wow, she’s making a living out

of this”. That was the trigger to go back and

pursue landscapes. As I say, I’d lost my way

and the life-force had been drained from me

by shooting weddings.’

This was back in the mid-1990s, and since

fi nding his niche the former surfer has followed

a photography direction that satisfi es him

creatively, while simultaneously becoming more

and more successful commercially. After all

these years and after such an inauspicious start,

he’s landed where he wants to be and can’t see

himself ever doing anything else. ‘But it’s really

important to stay ahead of the game. There was

a time when aerial shots of Australia were pretty

rare and so I did a lot of that. Now it’s everywhere.

You’ve got to be able to see the bandwagon

coming along and make sure you get on it and

off again at the right time. These days everything

is about strong bright colour, and so I’m knocking

that back a bit now, using more faded colours

like with the 1950s fi lm thing. I used to do a lot

of processing to create something that you knew

wasn’t real, but would sell: now I’m confi dent

enough to edit photographs slightly more in the

way I want to.’

To see more of Christian’s photography visit

christianfl etcher.com.au

The Remarkables, New Zealand.

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