Tasmanian Granite

On finding shade in the Bay of Fires

In 2026 I was able to realise a dream by visiting Tasmania for a month – firstly on a brilliant tour with David Ward and then some 10 days travelling by myself. On the tour we visited a lot of the island but some of the most fascinating areas included some remarkable geology on the east coast.

There is a major concentration of intrusive granite and dolerite rock on the east coast that is a delight to photograph – or it would be in cloudy conditions. Although we had a couple of cloudier dawns which went well – more on that on another day – a lot of the time we were photographing the rock with clear skies and bright sunshine. The granite is covered in orange lichens – which one might think is the source of the Bay of Fires name but that actually comes from the fires lit by the Indigenous Aboriginal peoples as seen by a British ship.

This particular day at the Bay of Fires Conservation Area was another bright session so after a couple of images I looked for an opportunity to work the shade near the cliff and came up with the main image. I would often look to exploit the blue light from the sky in such conditions but in this case I preferred to adjust the white balance to a more neutral rendition.

We finished the day at another excellent beach and with a bit more cloud forming I made a couple of detail images and looked to set up an image for sunset. As I was making that image standing on top of a large rock, David Ward made this excellent image of me with his iPhone. A great memory of a wonderful trip.