Dunsborough photographer Christian Fletcher nominated for Galah Photography Prize for Cable Beach landscape

Dunsborough photographer and gallery owner Christian Fletcher’s photograph of Cable Beach in Broome has been shortlisted as a finalist for the 2025 Galah Regional Photography Prize. The open prize, people’s choice and excellence in photojournalism winners will be announced at New England Regional Art Museum in New South Wales on May 2, with Fletcher travelling to Armidale to attend the prize ceremony. He said he submitted the image for the prize because he thought the image would “do quite well” after capturing it on a trip to Broome. “Everyone knows Cable Beach as being an amazing, beautiful blue beach with white sand, and we got there, and my wife said, “Come on, let’s go down to the beach and take some photos,”” he said. “So we walked down (to) the beach, and I was looking out to the ocean, obviously, which is the view that everyone looked at . . . I looked over to my left . . . and I saw that figure and the big pile of sand and the palm trees and the people sitting under it. “I thought there’s a view you don’t see every day of Cable Beach.” He said the “weird and wonderful” composition of the photograph made it feel like a “winning” photograph. “I just like the craziness of the scene is these people sitting on this beautiful beach.” “Behind them is this wall of sand with a digger in the middle of it, just shifting sand around and a couple of palm trees...that just make things look a little bit more, all weird and wonderful.” He said when he was capturing an image, he didn’t have a plan or idea in mind and bases it on the environment he finds himself in. “I’ll find a location, and there’ll be some ideas I have about, what might be a good composition, but you generally react to what’s happening around you,” Fletcher said. “Every time you go to a location, it’s different because the light is different, or if it’s on the coast, the amount of sand in the bay or the bush that sometimes is green fields.” I never go out with a real plan. I’m going to put myself in a location and just react to what is around me.It’s like, No, I’m going out shooting all week, and I’ll find that. I find and I see something, I like, I push back.” Fletcher took up photography 35 years ago, when he moved to Dunsborough, after being inspired by his love of outdoor landscapes and wanting to sell his own works in a gallery. “I was inspired because I liked the landscape, like getting out in the field and doing stuff and being in the bush or down the beach,” he said. I consider my photography a lifestyle business where I have the best job in the world, and photography has become more than just a career. Before it was a career, it was a hobby, and then then it was a career, and now it’s a lifestyle. “It’s just the act of of being creative makes my life full and brings me joy and that’s all I want to do.”