Tim Wrate is a landscape photographer based in Sydney specialising in panoramic film photography with a Fuji GX617 medium format rangefinder camera. He is also an excellent writer, and wrote a couple of articles for Focus a while ago, which we have permission to reproduce on this blog. Thanks Tim!
The alarm sounds at 4.30am on a warm summer’s morning, and I pull myself from the comfort of my bed and begin the bleary-eyed early morning migration to Sydney’s Northern Beaches. I arrive at Turimetta, park my car, and peer off the lookout. In the pre-dawn light, Turimetta is lit up like a Christmas tree, with LCD screens and head lamps. I stand there puzzled, but not surprised. After a week of stunning light in Sydney, of course Turimetta would draw a crowd. After all, it is somewhat like Mecca to local-based landscape and seascape photographers. I take my place among the other photographers and slowly slip into a meditative state as the sky bursts into a symphony of colour.
“Through the viewfinder” – Tim Wrate
“Morning’s glow” – Tim Wrate
The morning colour dances through the sky, morphing from purple to fiery red, as I look down the beach to see 15 other photographers all in a trance with their eyes glued to their viewfinders. I think to myself, this is why we love photography, this is photographic nirvana.
Unbeknown to me at the time, I had stumbled across the embryonic stages of the FOCUS Landscape and Seascape Photography Group – a cluster of like-minded individuals who would later redefine my sense of a photographic community.
Turimetta has a long and proud history within the wider photographic community, having been shot by a handful of Australia’s best and most famous landscape photographers – including Ken Duncan on slide film long before the days of digital photography. With the explosion of digital photography in the mid 2000s, the ability to capture dynamic seascapes became easier and cheaper. A community of sleep-deprived, surefooted, tripod-bound light chasers soon grew. It wasn’t long before Turimetta became the epicentre of seascape photography in Sydney. Today, you’re guaranteed to find at least a handful of photographers there on any given weekend.
Turimetta is a 350-metre stretch of beach nestled between the better-known beaches of Narrabeen and Warriewood. Backed by steep bluffs, lined by small but pretty sand dunes, and framed by stunning rock shelves, it is not hard to see why Turimetta is Mecca to local photographers.
If Turimetta is Mecca, then the southern end of the beach is the Holy Grail. It is famous among Sydney photographers as an excellent photographic location – a large rock platform with marvellous textures, position, relief and mossy rocks (in winter), making it a great and diverse seascape spot. Of the many photographic features on the southern end of Turimetta, it is often hard to go past the gutter. The gutter cuts a channel between jagged rocks, allowing photographers to juxtapose the textures of the rock and the silky water with creative shutter speeds.
“Awaken” – Tim Wrate
While the southern end of Turimetta seems to attract the most attention from photographers, the northern end, littered with boulders, sharp cliffs and reflective tidal pools, makes for a refreshing change. The walk around the northern headland may be tricky and more suited to mountain goats than photographers, with boulder scrambling not out of the question, but it is well worth exploring.
If you can divorce yourself from the northern and southern headlands at Turimetta, there is still plenty to occupy your photographic attention. The middle part of the beach is well framed by coastal sand dunes that make for a pretty foreground interest. The remainder of the beach is laden with unsystematic rocky outcrops.
Perhaps the greatest feature of Turimetta is not a physical element at all. Turimetta as a photographic location is dynamic, constantly morphing into something different – whether it be a large storm that washes all the sand away, exposing the entire rock shelf in all its glory, or a low pressure system that creates large swells that pound the beach with the might of the Pacific.
“Morning Rapture” – Tim Wrate
One of the most important dynamic features of Turimetta beach is the seasonal green weed that envelops the rock shelf in an emerald carpet between the months of September and November. The weed only appears for those few months each year, transforming the rock shelf into a tapestry of green textures.
No matter how remarkable Turimetta is as a location to shoot, there is always a downside. As Shannon Sakovitis has remarked, “I remember going there when I first started out [as a photographer]. There wasn’t a soul there taking shots, just myself. It was awesome. Then I went there a year later and to my surprise, it was packed, there was over 50 photographers!” So, if you like your locations to yourself, then Turimetta may not be the ideal location for you, or you should just shoot it on a weekday.
For those who have not previously explored Turimetta, then it is a must. It’s good for the soul.
Tim Wrate
You can find more information about Tim and his work on the following links: