Al Gilens captures the remote splendor of the island with the Tamron 16-300mm VC lens.

By Jenn Gidman
Images by Alvin Gilens

Eight years ago, photographer Al Gilens stayed for a little over a week on the Australian island state of Tasmania. He and his wife decided that wasn't nearly enough time to soak up enough of Tasmania's stunning landscapes and fascinating wildlife and culture, so this year they went back for six weeks. "From wallabies to wines to some of the most beautiful shorelines in the world, there's so much about Tasmania to see and photograph," he says. "They even have a huge Penny-farthing festival, which was a unique and joyous one-day event.”

On his trip to the other side of the world, Al brought along his Tamron 16-300mm VC lens. "I had another wide-angle lens with me, too, but I never needed it" he says. "The 16mm end of this lens is wide enough for the landscape shots I wanted to capture—and even some of the interior shots that I took—and the 300mm, converting to about 450mm on my camera, is a wonderful telephoto. No matter where I was traveling on the island, if I came up along something on the side of the road or along the beach, I didn't have to waste any time changing lenses. This lens did everything I needed it to do."

Al and his wife stayed in the heart of Tasmanian wine country during their trip. "We had lodging in a cottage in the northern part of the island, which is heavily populated with vineyards," he says. "They specialize in white wines, so we did a lot of wine tastings—I had probably the best dry rieslings of my life there."

One day the two drove to Velo Wines, owned by former Tour de France and Olympic professional cyclist Michael Wilson and his wife, Mary. "The grapes up north were starting to ripen right before we left," Al explains. "With the 16-300, I could focus on the grapes from 3 feet away and get a razor-sharp image thanks to the imaging capabilities of the 16-300 and its Vibration Compensation (VC) feature, which helped get rid of any camera shake I may have experienced, especially after enjoying a glass or two of their superb wines.”

From portraits of kangaroos, wallabies, and alpacas to close-ups of the island's famous Tasmanian Devils, Al had plenty of opportunities to photograph the island's resident wildlife. "The 16-300 let me focus on my subjects and blur the background as needed so I could really focus on the animals' personalities," he says. "There was one alpaca who was flirting with me. It was pretty big—about 5 feet tall—and I was only standing about 2 feet away, separated by a fence. I think if I had gone any closer it would have given me a kiss!"

Photographing the Tasmanian Devils, now listed as an endangered species because of an epidemic of highly contagious facial cancer, is somewhat trickier. "These marsupials don't exist anywhere else, not even on the Australian mainland," Al says. "They're breeding them now at special facilities so they can ultimately release them into larger protected areas and maintain a population."

Al visited a reserve where they keep the Devils to try to nab some photos. "The Devils are nocturnal, but they've created a blind at the reserve, and the habitat is lit by red light," he explains. "After they've eaten the bulk of their bait and are still wandering around looking for any remaining scraps, the workers turn on the white light for about five minutes. That's when I captured a couple of photos. They look fairly benign in my photos, because they only really look devilish when their mouths are open."

The versatility of the 16-300 allowed Al to experiment with different compositions to create eye-catching visuals in some of Tasmania's most awe-inspiring surroundings. "About 75 percent of the island is parkland or nature reserves, and there are so many gorgeous beaches," he says. "The local tourists' office recommended this particular beach, which has rock formations with 22-million-year-old fossils embedded in them. I thought it would make for a compelling image to focus on the rocks in the foreground, then lead back to the water with the sky and clouds as a dramatic backdrop."

Tasmania boasts a lush landscape with diverse native plant and flower species, including Australian ferns. "They're basically like garden ferns, but they're 10 or 20 feet tall," Al explains. "For this image, I focused on the midpoint, where there's water you don't really notice at first. This balanced out the dark area in front of it and the light area behind it. If I had lifted the camera just a bit, I could have captured the tops of the trees, but then I would've missed the bottoms, and the overall image would not have been well-balanced.

The 16-300 also helped Al capture some of the wider views of Tasmania's spectacular coastlines. "I was able to get some images of Wineglass Bay, on the Freycinet peninsula on Tasmania's east coast," he says. "There are so many inlets and bays like this. The point we hiked up to, one of the highest points on the coastline, is a tough climb. There are hundreds of steps; it was about a 45-minute hike. With the 16-300, I could capture so much of the scene I was viewing to really show how grand this place was."

One of the quirkiest parts of Al's Tasmanian adventure: attending the Australian National Penny-farthing championship races and cycling festival. "They had so many fun events lined up for this," he says. "And the races were amazing. The longest one I saw was a good 10 miles or so. In one of the competitions, the riders had to actually run up a quarter-mile straightaway, mount their bikes, ride them down, then carry their bikes on their shoulders back to the top and ride them down again."

Al captured plenty of photos of the day, showing everything from how the riders actually mount the Penny-farthings—"you have to step up on this little rod that sticks out just above the rear wheel, then hop up onto the saddle"—to how they gracefully navigate the curves of the racetrack. "I've photographed a number of regular bike races, so I know where I need to be to capture the drama," he says. "The only difference is that, for the first time, I had to stand behind hay bales, which race organizers put them there to protect both the riders and the spectators. They simply became another element of my photos."

To see more of Alvin Gilens' photography, go www.gilensphotos.smugmug.com.