Australia’s Amazing Dust Storm

My Articles and Babble

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On the 23rd of September 2009 people on the eastern states of Australia awoke to an amazing site. The glow in the sky could only be described as something similar to that of a major bush fire nearby.

cc83dOver the news they described the event as once in a life time and the worst dust storm on record. Flight were diverted from Sydney airport to Brisbane and a staggering 75 thousand tones of dirt was being dumped on Australia every hour.

These shots are taken around 7.30am on the 5D Mark II. On returning home my hands were stained red from the dirt and my camera gear was coated as well. They estimated that the clean up bill is in the 10’s of Millions as a result of this even. By mid day it was mostly gone with just a slight haze.

I have uploaded a video to Vimeo showing you some of the shots taken and how amazing the light was straight out of the camera. Click here to go to the link.

21 thoughts on “Australia’s Amazing Dust Storm

  1. Thanks guys. I also shot this on the GX617 and also the Fotoman 6×24. Will be interesting to compare the shots to the digital ones. Now I have to clean all three cameras, their filthy.

    That’s great Mitch. Enjoy the tutorials. There is more coming.

  2. Pingback: Insane dust storm « dan proud photography

  3. wow pretty amazing Matt.
    i reckon if anyone didn’t hear the news- and logged into Flickr last night- they would have been wondering what the hell happened! it was like we had reached Mars or something like that. every second image was orange lol.

    great vid too.

  4. Hi Matt,
    Wow! Simply amazing! Love the panorama version very much. I don’t think you will ever forget about the Red Invasion. I also saw some movies on youtube where people drove ‘into’ a red sandstorm. Not sure if it was this storm but driving into a Red Wall I wondered why don’t they make a u-turn and put the pedal to the metal..
    It has to be a magnificent experience, thanks for sharing your work!
    Best wishes from holland,
    Corné

  5. Thanks for the comments and feedback guys.

    Flemming the 5D held up well no sign of dust issues but cant say the same for myself. Wasnt good breathing in all that dust. Cant believe you saw idiots in Sydney running in the storm.

    Mitch the film will be sent off when I get around to it. No rush these days now that I have the digital. I wait until I have about 10 – 20 rolls. Bit slack but its great when you get it all back as you forget whats on it.

  6. Nice shots Matt – looks like you found a cool spot to shoot it at, I like the old world feel about the subject in the second shot in particular.

  7. oh BTW – way the video I think Tom is referring to is another internet fraud (ie someone gets hold of someone elses pics/video and puts it out as an email after a particular event re-labelling it theirs or from then) – it is NOT the east coast dust storm event from september 2009 at all, I saw that video a year or so ago…

    cheers 🙂

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