Sequencing and a koala.

I met the wonderful Susanne Helmert on Substack.

When I say I met her, I've never really met her and probably never will, however I feel I can describe her as wonderful, and through her writings I feel like I have met her and know her just a little, and I hope she's fine with that, because she introduced me to the concept of sequencing in photography.

I've long been a fan of the triptych and diptych and have used the process in my own work many times, most recently on a walk across Europe.

Like this one.

With these diptychs I stuck with the typical way of working, that is to arrange a couple of shots together, the images having a relationship to each other in some form, that form might be tonal, structural or containing similar objects or patterns.

Like this one above.

What Susanne introduced to me in her post about sequencing is something altogether different.

She talks passionately of the photographer Robert Adams, who, I'm embarrassed to say, I know almost nothing of.

It seems that Robert is famous for the work he does using a unique style of sequencing of his images, he will photograph a scene in several ways, each time he will change his point of view in a subtle way, he might walk up a bit closer to the subject or change his perspective by moving across the plane a little.

It's quite unusual to see these together as a finished product and Robert is an expert in the style.

I was immediately excited by this technique, I find it quite compelling, and it takes a distinctive style of photography and of seeing to pull it off, and I find, for me anyway, that when it works, it works best if there is a focus point for the third image in the triptych.

If there's no point of interest, you just end up with three individual frames that potentially are nothing special.

To be fair though, if you look at Robert Adams’ work, a lot of the individual frames are just that, nothing special.

It's when they combine in a meaningful sequence that the magic happens.

When it does work, it works very well, but it's not easy to be successful.

Like many things in life, seeing something that looks easy to do, and then actually going out and producing something of a similar quality is usually pretty hard and almost certainly bound to produce frustration and probable failure.

With that in mind I decided to try my luck, not in the style of Robert Adams, but more in my own style.

Which is usually the best idea, your own.

I tried to create a series of triptychs that would work as a journey for the viewer, to see the path ahead as we, together, make our way along and end at a point of focal interest.

Not all of these worked out as I had hoped, and in fact most of them I would not have even taken an individual image, but with the idea of sequencing in mind, things look a little different through the viewfinder.

I decided to try my first attempt at these in a local State Park, The Belair, just outside of Adelaide.

It's the oldest National Park in South Australia, dating back to 1891, in fact it's the second oldest National Park in Australia.

My walk around the park took just over three hours and I covered 12klms.

I went past two waterfalls, both dry now in summer, saw two koalas, one snake and no people.

Slow but enjoyable going.

I like to think these images convey an idea of what a walk around Belair is really like.

This sequence works for me, with a focal point of interest in the final frame, we journey together along the path, with a pleasant surprise of the koala in the middle and final frames.

Here we make our way together towards a tunnel leading through a mountain.

Here we continue through the bush towards the grass tree in the distance.

Gums along the path.

Fallen logs.

Picnic shelters.

Here we make our way towards a gum on the left and its companion grasstree.

Making our way towards a fallen log.

Heading towards a rest area.

Down a fire trail.