CameraPro On The Couch with Peter Eastway

Peter Eastway is an Australian photographer internationally renowned for his striking landscape photography. He is the Better Photography magazine and website publisher and has been involved in photography competitions and judging for over 30 years. He was the author of Lonely Planet’s Guide to Landscape Photography, and his work has been featured on numerous covers and in articles in global publications. Peter was featured in the first season of Tales by Light and is an ambassador for several international photography brands, including Canson, Eizo, and SanDisk, to name only a few. We met Peter to chat about the story of his evolution into the world of photography and all things landscape photography and post-processing.

Initially, Peter picked up a camera to document his first love, surfing. With a small Ricoh camera and underwater housing, he would capture images of his friends in the waves and had no interest in photographing anything else. But photography has a way of getting under people's skin; before long, Peter was shooting other subjects. In his early 20s, Peter submitted an article to Australian Camera Craft, which the magazine printed. It marked the start of his publishing career, which eventuated in him establishing his own publication, Better Photography Magazine. In addition to his fine-art landscape and wildlife photography, Peter also does editorial work and some advertising and portraiture. It's evident from our conversation with Peter that he has an enduring love affair with photography. Years of interviewing other photographers and his own decades of shooting experience have given him a wealth of knowledge and insight that he shares energetically. 

Photo by Peter Eastway

Peter was an early adopter of digital photography technology. He recalls planning a two-month family holiday to Italy in the early 2000s, where he spent $20,000 on an Arca-Swiss film kit to take with him on the trip. Before leaving, Canon Australia offered him a pre-production model of the EOS 1Ds to take along. In the two months he spent in Italy, Peter used the Arca-Swiss twice and shot everything else on the 1Ds, instantly falling in love with the digital workflow and its seemingly endless possibilities.

‘When Photoshop came along suddenly, I could get these colour images and do the same sorts of changes that I was doing in the black and white darkroom … It just freed me. It was like someone coming along and unzipping the top of my head and pouring in a bottle of Tabasco sauce. I thought, WOW, there's just so much that we can do with digital photography.’

Today, Peter relies on a range of camera tools, depending on the demands of each project or location. Recently, he took the Canon EOS R5 on a trip to Kakadu and was highly impressed with the subject tracking technology in the mirrorless camera. He watched a small bird bounce around the branches, and the camera’s autofocus system locked on the eye the entire time.

 Photo by Peter Eastway

Post-production is as much part of photography for Peter as the initial capture, and he explains it has always been that way. Anyone who has spent time developing film and printing images in the darkroom knows that an exposed roll of film is just the launching pad. Customisation and interpretation of the negative or transparency begin in the developing tank where adjustments are made to manipulate contrast or exposure.

Peter puts tremendous effort into getting to remote locations and finding a unique perspective with which to stand and photograph each stunning vista. And he applies just as much consideration to post-production to ensure the final image is a distinctive representation of his personal experience. Sometimes that will just be a tweak to the exposure, contrast or colour balance, and other times it will be much more involved with multiple layers in Photoshop. Peter utilises post-production techniques with considered purpose, redirecting the viewer’s eye to the focal point and often heightening elements to create a sense of irreality, as he likes to say.

 Photo by Peter Eastway

Peter works with Capture One and Lightroom, depending on his camera system. He explains that each program processes RAW files differently, so it is worth trialling both to see which works best for your system and style. For complex post-processing, Peter works in Photoshop and admits to sometimes spending hours or days on a single image. Nowadays, he challenges himself to process within the limits of Lightroom or Capture One, which usually yields a result Peter considers to be at least 90% as good as possible. If the photo is for a book or an exhibition, he’ll take it into Photoshop and finesse it until he is 100% happy with his expression of the image.

‘The camera is just an electro-mechanical device, and the photograph you're taking is a raw file… There's somebody in a coat in a lab somewhere in Japan or Germany that's decided what that photograph is going to look like, so already the photograph that you're getting out of the camera, truly speaking, isn't really straight out of camera. Someone is doing some mumbo jumbo to the photo, and my argument is I would prefer to be the person doing that.’

Producing premium-quality prints is a significant part of Peter’s business, and he strongly recommends all photographers take the time to print their work. He explains how printing makes you a better photographer because it reveals every little error. A few imperfections don't matter if you're just posting on Instagram because the resolution is so low, and most people simply view it on their phones. But when you make a print, all the rich detail is there, including any blemishes. For this reason, Peter will often make a print, pop it on the wall and live with it for a while to work out what it needs. He’ll make notes on it as they come to him and then make the final edit.

Peter has used his 40+ years of publishing experience to produce several exquisite fine art books. In The New Tradition, Peter shares 100 of his favourite photographs, with detailed explanations alongside. Each breakdown explores the thought process behind an image and provides many insights into his shooting and post-production techniques. He hopes other photographers might find it akin to a cookbook of ideas to play with.

To hear more from Peter and his wealth of knowledge, check out the whole conversation here.

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