AUSTRALIAN LANDSCAPE ICON

Christian Fletcher has been a professional photographer for 27 years and still retains all of the passion and enthusiasm for taking a great photograph. At the core are three aspects of photography: capturing the beauty in landscapes, teaching his technical skills to others, and using his photography to reinforce the connections we all have with our natural environment.

When Christian moved to Dunsborough back in 1990, he dived into photography as a career; which meant that he took photos in between paying the bills with two manual jobs not related to photography. In the pre-digital and pre-Photoshop days, Christian had to perfect working with the only tool at his disposal—his camera—which remains the essential skill in creating the best images possible even today. He ‘marinated’ himself for many years developing black and white images in a secluded darkroom in his parents’ house, and eventually started to sell his images in a local restaurant.

Following six hard years of effort doing commercial, portrait and wedding photography, he was ready to give up, until he walked into a gallery in Esperance that inspired him to focus on building a gallery full of landscape images. He returned to Dunsborough with a renewed purpose, and sold his images in market stalls and in a small gallery space at the local framing shop. As his sales increased, he then established his galleries in the early 2000s and Christian Fletcher Photo Images was born.

Christian has perfected the art of light, composition, colour and post processing. He believes that all great landscape images have to have the ‘perfect light’ at their core, and it is this light that he is most respected for:

“Christian’s pictures are not souvenirs, but images that help us to ‘see’ and to understand landscape as art. Light literally exudes from Christian’s pictures like few others, and this luminescent enlightenment startles us with its clarity and perception”.

-Les Walkling, professional photographer