Dear Friends,

The cold winds of change are blowing – or is that just the sudden onset of winter? There is certainly change in the air at Scene by Hird.

Read on, McDuff!

Today, I quit my day job!

After threatening to do so for the last 2 years, I’ve finally gathered the courage to leave a nice, secure career in geology in favour of devoting more time to my art. Fifteen years ago, I left university with a degree in geology. Since then, my day job has been in the mining industry, with photography being both a passion and a part time source of income for me. On the ninth of June, I left it all behind.

Unfortunately, employers do not always agree with my valuation - in fact, they never have - so I have always compromised between working in a profession I enjoy and being adequately compensated for spending my time. Now, the time for compromise has passed.

I’m forty years old. I estimate I have between twenty and thirty years of productive time remaining in which I still have the ability to make the photographs I’m proud of. It seems like a long time, but it’s not. For instance, twenty years ago Bon Jovi were topping the music charts and the Chernobyl Disaster had just occurred. Admittedly both were devastating events in the history of the world, but they seem like only yesterday in my memory.

However, what worried most (even more than a Bon Jovi revival) was the thought of sitting in my comfy chair twenty years from now, realising the chance to reach for my dreams had passed just as quickly.

I quit my day job so that I could spend more of my time doing something I love. If I were to delay the decision any longer, I would have festered in my later years regretting the things I had never done – and surely, that’s no way to spend time …..

Plans For Our Second Gallery
Part of my reason for devoting more time to the gallery is to be able to expand our business. To do that, we plan to open another gallery in Perth. I can’t divulge too much just yet, but I can announce that we intend hold our opening night in October.

It also means that, with some reluctance, we’ll be moving to Perth after nearly 13 years in the Goldfields. We will be keeping the Kalgoorlie gallery open because the Goldfields will always feel like home for our family. However, we can’t be in two places at once, so we are currently looking to employ a manager for our Kalgoorlie gallery. Do you know anyone who might be interested? Give us a call or send an email

Would You Like Fries With That?

Have you ever wondered what happens to the ground when lightning strikes? To say “it fries” would be an understatement! The temperature inside a bolt of lightning has been estimated to be over 100,000 degrees Celsius, so you would imagine the consequences of a strike would be severe for any object – including the ground. A strike in the sandy soils of the goldfields almost instantaneously melts the quartz to form a natural glass. Any contained moisture vaporises at the same time, forming a small blob of bubbling, super-hot glass. If the conditions are perfect, the glassy mass remains after the storm passes.

Fries with that?

During the year, the direction of sunrise and sunset changes. It is only near the spring and autumn equinoxes that the sun rises at due east and sets at due west. During winter, it rises and sets further north. During summer, it does so to the south.

Now is the time to get those shots where you need the sun coming from the ENE in the morning or WNW in the afternoon. The low side-lighting which is idea for landscape photography is currently as far north as it gets.

In the Goldfields area, the sun rises about 30 north of due east (ie on a bearing of 060) throughout June. It also sets about 30 north of due west (ie. on a bearing of 300).

Armed with this knowledge of the lighting direction at each end of the day, it is possible plan for landscape photographs which can’t be produced at any other time of the year. Last year, I used winter light to make my shot of the breakaways 70km north of Leonora (which I call "Painted Cliffs”).