Dani Watson’s ‘Solitude’, from her exhibition Connection

How does Dani Watson create this otherworldly, sci-fi vibe in her landscape photographs? The answer will tickle you...

“Solitude”, from Dani Watson’s debut solo exhibition “Connection”

It’s funny how life turns out sometimes. When Dani Watson was growing up in outer Melbourne in the early ’90s she had a framed poster by photographer Ken Duncan on her bedroom wall depicting a waterfall with an inspirational quote beneath it: Turn your scars into stars. “That quote has resonated with me ever since,” she says. Watson spent the first 20 years of her working life as a tennis coach, then swapped her racquet for a camera and embarked on a new, creative life as a photographer. Her mentor? None other than Ken Duncan himself, who took her on as his assistant after a chance meeting. After four years of working for him, she’s now striking out on her own. Last night Duncan opened her first solo exhibition, Connection, in Melbourne’s Southgate.

The exhibition is a showcase for Watson’s original and unusual modus operandi. She likes to shoot landscapes half an hour after sunset, at nautical twilight, when there’s a faint glow from the Sun below the horizon and inky blue-black skies above her. She adds a surreal touch to her landscapes, too: bright white lines, circles, squares and other shapes, traced during the long exposure by a DJI Mavic drone ­festooned with LED lights. This image, titled Solitude, was created at the Valley of the Dinosaurs in NSW’s Mugii Murum-Ban State Conservation Area, a place renowned for its striking sandstone “pagodas” and deep slot canyons. Watson made five exposures, with the illuminated drone climbing vertically above key points in the landscape, then merged them into a single image. (It’s all done in-camera, with no Photoshopping, she explains.) “The furthest pagoda is about 500m away, so it helps to give a sense of scale,” says Watson, who’s pictured in the frame. “I’m usually alone in spectacular places like this. The series is really about that sense of connection to the landscape.”

It’s all a far cry from the Ken Duncan style of landscape photography, of course, but Watson is happy to say he ­approves. And she recounts a sweet story: about a year ago, after learning that she was going through a hard time, ­wrestling with health issues and difficulties in her personal life, Duncan gifted her the original print of that waterfall poster that graced her bedroom wall all those years ago, with a little hand-written note on it: Turn your scars into stars, her great mentor wrote. Isn’t that lovely?

Connection is on at the Photography Studies College’s Captured Gallery at 3 Southgate Ave, Southbank, until September 2