Aerial photographer’s hunt for salt lake ‘Easter eggs’ yields hanging photos in WA

Scott McCook hunts “eggs” from the air, however not the normal Easter sort.

He’s spent eight years photographing the altering hues of salt lakes in WA’s Wheatbelt, hoping to seek out swimming pools of yellow and orange left behind because the water begins to evaporate.

Mr McCook found the “eggy” phenomenon when he first started photographing bigger salt lakes from helicopters and lightweight planes.

“Every now and then, I’d look beyond the lake and you’d see these little isolated round lakes,” he stated.

“They always just fascinated me.”

Long drives

The Perth-based photographer stated the small lakes normally appeared in wheat and canola fields.

“They fill in winter … they start green, and then as they start to evaporate, these colours start shifting,” he stated.

Mr McCook makes use of close to real-time satellite tv for pc imagery to scope out potential areas.

“Once I was sort of armed with that knowledge, I was able to drive thousands and thousands of kilometres because they’re in the most random spots,” he stated.

Hunting pure hues

The lakes’ pure colors normally transition from a “rotten egg” inexperienced to orange or yellow.

“A lot of the poached egg, fried egg ones are like that,” Mr McCook stated.

“The surrounding part that looks like the sort of white of the egg is the area that’s already evaporated and gone white.

“And then the little space within the center is the final of the water that is left.”

Mr McCook occasionally edits the images to make some of the colours more vibrant, especially photos of the pink and red lakes, to make them look “like fairly little Easter eggs”.

A artistic concreter

A concreter by trade, Mr McCook pursues his passion for photography in his spare time.

“That’s the place my images stemmed from, I needed to flee the town and simply go and do panorama images,” he stated.

But he did not inform folks about his blue-collar job when he first began promoting his photos, fearful a few perceived stigma.

“As I’ve acquired older and extra into this, I’ve realised that is a extremely foolish means to have a look at it.”

Mr McCook said he hoped other people would be inspired by his photos of WA’s natural beauty — from its eggy lakes to rolling fields.

“It was solely once I took up aerial images that I realised, ‘Holy cow, we’re sitting on a gold mine,'” he stated.