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Landscape photographer Liz Poon was a recent artist-in-residence at Bundanon.
Spending five weeks in the white weatherboard cottage on the property, Poon roamed the surrounding bushland where she discovered fresh landscapes and vegetation.
The sojourn gave her a first experience of coastal weather, a distinct difference to her western NSW and ACT environment.
'I haven't been lonely as I love the bush and the peace and quiet and I don't miss television or the telephone.'
A self-taught photographer, Poon's interest began when she inherited a Pentax Spotmatic and black and white enlarger from her father when she was 13.
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Her first photographs were of the flowers in her garden.
Later, when she discovered bushwalking at secondary school she shot the Victorian alpine landscapes.
From the beginning she said she has had a keen interest in the textures and patterns found in nature.
She later moved to Buronga on the Murray River where she initially found the landscape to be boring, flat and uninspiring.
'As time passed I became familiar with the area.
'I began to appreciate and love the rich, red colours of the earth, the late-afternoon ripples on sandhills, the wide open spaces, the far horizons, the contrast between stunted mallee trees and majestic red river gums, the Murray, its backwaters and billabongs.'
It was on a visit to the Flinders Ranges in 1990, with a hired panoramic camera, she discovered the perfect medium to convey the feeling of space and the panoramic beauty of the Australian outback.
'I was hooked.'
The following year she bought her own panoramic camera and has been capturing and interpreting the landscape ever since.
For nine years, Poon worked as a professional photographer for CSIRO Horticulture in Victoria and, more recently, spent four years in Canberra at CSIRO Wildlife and Ecology.
Since this position became redundant late last year, Poon has been concentrating on her photography.
Work at CSIRO Horticulture was largely macrophotography of studio specimens and product shots of seed, leaves and fruit, as well as portrait shots of workers on grape harvesting machinery, irrigation and other aspects of the horticultural industry.
While with Wildlife and Ecology, Poon photographed landscape and field subjects but it was the wildlife shoots she said she loved the most.
'We went down to Kangaroo Island for three summers and worked with the animals - fur seals, kangaroos, marsupial mice etc.'
Poon said she tries to reinforce, in her work, the constant change by using time exposures to show the subtle passage of time, like the movement of clouds or shadows, breezes in grasses and trees and rippling over water.
'Looking back through my photographs, I found my most meaningful images are ones where I've been able to spend time in a place and absorb its moods, get the feel for it, see it in different light and then be in a place I've chosen at the right time of the day to catch the light on the image.'
During her stay at Bundanon, Poon has shot panoramic landscapes as well as macros of plants and the forest floor.
'I'll always remember the bushwalking and, every day, I marvel at how generous the Boyd's were.
'The more you see of the bush the more you appreciate the gift.
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'The more you see of the bush the more you appreciate the gift.'
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'I'll also remember the sound of Riley Lee's music as I walked through the bush.
'Little things I've found, like the orchids, five or six different ones.
'A little cave which looks like it's made-made but it's not.
'And also being in a little gully with the yellow-tailed black cockies in the trees above, slowly making their way down closer and closer, just to look at me.
'And the river is so beautiful and clean.
Poon's ambitions and dreams for her photography encompass the desire to go to art school to learn the different ways of applying photography to wanting to work on environmental issues.
'I can see a role as a photographer showing people environmental problems.
'I'm concerned people are not aware of the value of natural bushland out in the western rangeland areas, agricultural lands which are growing cotton.
Poon plans an exhibition of the work she completed while staying at Bundanon.
At this stage, it is uncertain if the show will be in Sydney or in the Shoalhaven.
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