When Mark Gumley swapped the sweaty humidity of Darwin for the temperate Tamar Valley, it gave him a chance to pick up his camera again.
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He started getting seriously into photography about a decade ago, but struggled to find time to pursue his passion while juggling long work hours.
But returning to Tasmania had been a pleasure.
He enjoyed exploring the Tamar Valley area, especially capturing the sun rising over the river, Gumley said.
“It’s different every time, it’s never the same,” he said.
Walking into Gumley’s new studio in Gravelly Beach, an interesting mix of history and modern technology was on display.
Along one wall, clippings from The Examiner and The Sun newspapers from 1949 and 1962, he and his family discovered under the floor, lined the surface.
It took two days, a lot of glue and a bit of help for Gumley to complete the feature wall.
“It’s a bit different,” he said.
Wandering through to the back of the room, Gumley has a collection of older camera models.
Two of them were from his father while another in his collection was given to him by a friend.
While only one of them worked sporadically, Gumley hoped to create a burgeoning collection for his studio.
It was still a working progress.
A passion project he had not had enough time to devote to until he returned permanently to Tasmania after a ‘fly in, fly out’ job in Darwin.
But since he decided to move back and study to become a community service worker, Gumley has transformed the room behind his garage into his studio.
Red doors pop with white frames while large prints of his landscape photos line the wall.
There was still more work to be done, but Gumley was enjoying creating the space for his photography passion to develop and thrive.
Gumley is a fitter by trade and spent most of the past five years in the ‘fly in, fly out’ role.
It was difficult to progress his photography when he was spending four weeks on and one week off.
He had embraced staying in one place with a burst of inspiration and experimentation in his photography.
His photos were the product of patiently waiting for the conditions and light to be just right instead of fiddling with colours in post production, Gumley said.
On the other side of his studio was a curious water-dropping contraption attached to a tripod.
Gumley is in the process of experimenting with more abstract photography, capturing coloured droplets as they hit dishes of water.
He hoped he could turn his passion and hobby into a part-time position alongside his study before it turned into a new career.