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When Lisa Michele Burns started filming Australia in 2022, she didn’t fully realize how huge it was.
She recalled the second panic on two four-month road trips as she headed down the never-ending highway to the inland highway, surrounded only by rusty mud, spiky spinifex grass and the occasional grey-green mulga trees.
“That road, just–too straight,” Burns said. “There’s a little bit I had to stop, ‘What are we doing? This place is too big.'”
Despite growing up in Australia – migrating from the southern coastline, bushes into the ocean, to the Whiteday Islands in central Queensland – Burns, 40, spent most of his career abroad, capturing images of alpine peaks, quiet bamboo forests and the Mediterranean coastline.
“I probably know Greenland better than the Australian Centre,” she said.
But during the coronavirus pandemic, she found herself at home and unable to travel abroad. “It’s an opportunity for me to see Australia.”
Focusing on the “vibrant palette” of Australian landscapes, Burns travels through the country with her partner to capture its diversity, from ocean blues to white sand beaches, lush green forests to rich red desert plains.
Burns explores places she has never been, develops a new appreciation for her birthplace and hopes that the images, “Sightlines,” written in her book of Light, were published last December and released by the Image Publishing Group, could preserve the “indescribable magic” of the Australian landscape while inspiring conversations about how to protect the disgusted nature’s bizarre weirdness.
“I think it’s important to appreciate the various landscapes across Australia, but also to record them like today because they’re changing,” Burns said.
Explore the Hidden Gem
In this photo of Uluṟu, Burns uses “reflective technology” to construct sandstone boulders with a dim sky. -Lisa Michele Burns
Roebuck Bay in Western Australia is famous for its extreme tides and unusual red sandy beaches. -Lisa Michele Burns
Burns planned a trip in two halves – the first on the East Coast, covering Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, with the second half spread across the southern and Western Australia and the Northern Territory, as well as the Northern Territory – in 2022 about eight months.
When Burns drew the route on Google Maps and studied the location before the trip, she found that on the road, the often different “palettes and patterns” caught her attention.
“Many places that became my favorite places aren’t actually where I research,” she said.
After finishing at a location in southern Australia, Burns rejected a trail leading to Sheringa Beach, a highlight of her trip. “There are no one else out there, we are just us, these dunes are pouring into the turquoise sea,” she recalls.
In Western Australia, Burns visited Gantheaume Point, a “tourist destination” known for her fossilized dinosaur footprint, which surprised her with the unusual patterns and bright colors that have been formed in sandstone for thousands of years. “I was fascinated for a few days,” she said.
Burns said the photos in “Light of Sight” focus more on “small details in the landscape”, providing a deeper understanding and connection to the environment. For example, deserts often appear desolate and desolate, with a bunch of empty sand and sky, “no real survival,” Burns said. “But once you look closely, there are many beautiful flora and fauna in these extreme conditions.”
Changing landscape
Although Burns describes herself as an optimist and focuses on the beauty of the country’s scenery, she can see the effects of climate change.
Over the past decade, Australia has seen increasingly extreme weather events, including severe droughts and storms, bushfires and sea level rises.
For Burns, this is the most obvious around the reefs and coastline, where rising temperatures can cause coral bleaching, which is at the “catastrophic level” of the Great Barrier Reef in 2024. Last year was the hottest year in the world, with average Australian temperatures rising by 1.51 degrees Celsius since 1910.
Lisa Michele burned in Mungo National Park in New South Wales, capturing the geological formations of sunrise. -Lisa Michele Burns
Burns saw the consequences of the 2019-2020 bushfires while driving through southern Australia, during which more than 10 million hectares of land were burned down and more than one billion animals were estimated to die. “It’s incredible. That’s where my family comes from and I know how big the fires and how impact they have,” she said. But, in the scarred landscape, Burns may “see the forest regenerating.”
“I think it’s important to create a collective visual effect on how these landscapes look. It’s really important to have a good balance between the two across media,” she said.
However, even for landscape photographers, certain scenes cannot be captured.
When Burns finally arrived at the Red Centre, she heard a lot about but never seen landscapes, she felt an indescribable awe in Uluṟu – one of the largest sandstone boulders in the world, one of Australia’s most iconic landmarks, and it’s the red of the blue sky, which I didn’t realize. ”
Nearby, in the windy valley, photographs are not allowed because it is sacred: but for Burns, it was “one of the highlights of the entire journey”, which made her new connection with the landscape.
“We lay on a platform and listened to the wind between the dome and the song of the birds,” she said. “That’s really amazing because you really need to look around and watch these ideas. Sometimes you just have to put the camera down.”
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