FlyLife Australia & New Zealand — Winter 2017

(^6) FLYLIFE
Nu m b e r 88, Wi Nte r 2017
ISSN 1324-
Ed ito r
Rob Sloane
Co lu mN i st s
Chris Beech • Steven Dally

• Peter Watson

illu strato r s

Trevor Hawkins • Peter Leuver

adve rti s iN g & di g ital me d ia

Leighton Adem

Telephone: 0417 501 560

Email: [email protected]

su b sC r i p ti oN s &

oN-li N e se rviC e s

Vanessa Bresnehan

ph oto g rap hy & pr e-pr e s s

Brad Harris

de s i gN

Kitestring.com.au

pr i Nti N g

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Edit ori al Rob Sloane

flylife.com.au

Grippers and Grinners...

Yes, I’m talking about photography. It has come a long way since the

earliest days of FlyLife, but I don’t intend to bore you with yet another

reflective piece about the negatives and positives of twenty-odd years ago.

Today it’s all Instagram and Facebook and giffs, tiffs, raws and jpegs.

Quality and quantity have certainly taken a leap forward and good

cameras are smaller, lighter, simpler, more foolproof and more affordable.

Images can readily be sharpened, cropped, enhanced, flipped and stitched

with everyday software and some basic skills.

Instead of a dozen or so transparencies in a tough-bag accompanying an

article (I know, I promised), I’m now invited to check out some funky

photo-library on a young punk’s website or googlewotsit. Rather than a

handful of options from one or two precious rolls of film we have a choice

of hundreds of images all fired off in rapid succession. Rods in mouths,

fish in faces, heads in water (the angler not the fish), drones hovering

overhead — the choice is bewildering and the process of selecting the

‘best’ is consequently brutal, and highly subjective.

If I sound peeved, I’m not. I find this new wave of material highly

stimulating and enjoy nothing more than opening a new folder of images

from the likes of Hutchins (20), Jones (27) or Kós (8). In fact, in this

Winter issue we have first-time contributions from Rick Stuart-Smith (32),

Sam Reach (68) and John Robertson (58), and all three add something

undeniably new and refreshing to the mix.

Our recent photographic competition is a case in point. A cynic might say

we were just trolling for content in the form of cheap images, but as you

can see we’re not short of new contributors. It was purely intended as an

exercise in social engagement. Mind you, we did uncover some hidden

talent and potential future prospects along the way.

Rather than just present the finalists in a predictable photo-essay spread,

I conscripted our designer Jeremy Price to help piece together a typical

5-page article layout (38), drawing examples from the avalanche of

entries. This was partly intended to demonstrate what we are looking for

— the method behind the madness — to help guide budding contributors,

but also as an apology of sorts to our regulars for all the images we leave

out, crop or run at small size to achieve those finished layouts. The ‘why

did he leave that one out’ accusation rings loud and clear in my ears.

It’s worth noting that even our esteemed Top Shot judges ranged widely

in their selections, which is perhaps not surprising as each have their own

unique photographic style and incumbent fishing biases. We all have eyes,

but rarely agree on what is beautiful. To avoid the obvious cliché, didn’t

someone once say that beauty, like supreme dominion, is but supported

by opinion?

Oh yes, the public vote winner was a big fish grip-n-grin, and who

can argue with that!