Panoramist, David Dyson, has been a regular visitor to alpine and sub-alpine areas of Australia for nearly fifty years. The original attractions were primarily bushwalking and fly fishing. In particular, his frequent visits to the northern end of Kosciuszko National Park (New South Wales, Australia) and the Central Plateau of Tasmania, inculcated in him an unusual ability to recognise and capture the beauty in alpine plains and other landscape features of alpine and sub-alpine ecosystems.

Through a combination of flyfishing, bushwalking, driving and just ‘enjoyment of the bush’, he developed a very perceptive eye for the moods of the countryside, and for the essence of its beauty. In the alpine areas of Australia – indeed, throughout the world – scenic attraction is most commonly deemed to reside in the ‘spectacular’. However, many of these areas also offer a beauty which is understated and much more subtle.

It is one of the outstanding features of Dyson’s photography that he has been able, almost abstractly, to capture a quiet splendour where it passes many observers by.  Perhaps his photography offers, in fact, a small lesson in how to look at the Australian bush – not only in terms of its overt loveliness, but particularly in its more elusive - some may even say, drab - aspects.

His panoramas from the Tasmanian Central Plateau differ from much photography of the Tasmanian wilderness genre. He shoots it as it is – weather from fine to miserable, often in the absence of a feature of interest, inclusion of ‘man’, and, of course, with wonderfully embracing dimensions.

All of his panoramic photographs are built up from a series of conventional shots, on film, across the subject matter. Using complex computerised techniques, the photos are joined together to produce the finished vista. As a matter of photographic philosophy, Dyson avoids embellishment as far as possible so that the finished product is close to the original images and landscape.