History by JayDaley

Thanks for stopping to look at my photo. All of my images are available for sale and can be shipped world wide. Please email jay@jdlphotography.com.au for any enquiries. Just starting to go through some of my old images and finding ones to share. This image was taken on July 31st 2013. There’s been times over the past few years when I have had a photo I simply HAD to get and when the opportunity to shoot it came along I took it with both hands. This is one of them. Many years ago I watched a documentary on traditional cormorant fishing in the Li River of China and thought “wow – what a window into the past that is” and decided that if ever the opportunity came along I WOULD photograph a traditional cormorant fisherman. This year myself and 20 others from the University of Sydney are working in China throughout the month of August for a subject in International Strategy – here was my opportunity. So I started the research, and I researched more, and more. It was NOT going to be easy. Eventually I stumbled upon Jack from Yangshuo – Jack is a terrific English speaking tour guide in the Guilin area and once I explained what it was I wanted to do he was able to help me make it happen. So I arrived in Guilin late at night, raining and extremely hot after almost 24hours of travelling from Sydney. My driver was waiting for me at the airport and drove me to the XingPing area where we would meet the fisherman the next morning. 4am came and Jack and I were on a Bamboo raft going downstream on the Li river, incredible karst peaks all around me were slowly showing their silhouettes against the night sky. Jack asks “where is your tripod?” Leading up to this shot I had been thinking how I would go about shooting it – how would I make sure, in a small amount of time, that I could nail this once in a lifetime opportunity. My flaw when it comes to photography is that I often give myself too many options and I waste time experimenting so I decided I would eliminate the variables and focus on the shot. I took with me a light stand, a small Profoto RFi 1 ,3x2” softbox, 1 speed light, 2 pocket wizards, 1 camera and 1 lens. Should I have bought my tripod? It was very dark – now I was worried. We got to our location on the river bank and everything started to happen pretty quickly – before I knew it, in front of me, in this amazing wilderness was a traditional cormorant fisherman. Luckily my plan worked and I didn’t need a tripod. The morning light was illuminating the sky exactly as I had planned for and the softbox was throwing out the beautiful fill light just as intended. I reeled off shot after shot after shot and than it was over. This is a single frame taken just after sunrise. I’m sitting in my hotel room in Beijing and just going through my bag of shots from the past week in rural china. From fisherman to remote villages to the Great Wall – it’s been an incredible journey and one I won’t forget in a long time. I’ll be meeting up with the rest of the crew in Shanghai tomorrow and won’t have a chance to post many more shots until I arrive back in Australia but stay tuned. –there’s a lot to come ;) via 500px