In association with the the opening of the annual Blue Mountains Portraits exhibition 2025, Australian portrait photographer Ben Pearse setup a portrait studio at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre. The result was 120 portraits of the community who came and sat for a portrait with Ben. All of the images were shot live and tethered to a monitor so that participants could choose their favourite image for keeping after their brief portrait sitting. The images were available to the public to see via a nightly projection at Civic Place Katoomba until April 13th, 2025. They were also available for the public to see via a digital display at the Cultural Centre until the close of the portrait exhibition 2025. Below is all the portraits captured during this wonderful Blue Mountains community project.
Ben Pearse is an Australian portrait photographer based in the Blue Mountains, NSW, Australia.
Weather forecasts for some snow around June 10th, 2021 in the Blue Mountains had me intrigued. It was starting to look good for a decent dumping. I’ve been trying to get a great snow photo of the iconic Three Sisters for many years and I thought, perhaps, just perhaps, this could be it, as they had forecast snow down to 600metres. As I packed my camera bag the night before, I’d sneak a peak out the window every few minutes, to see if the snow had started to fall.
I woke up about an hour before sunrise and the snow had begun to fall. You could tell that the snow flakes weren’t as large as the last snowfall and perhaps a little on the wet side. I decided there was no point in trying to shoot the three sisters at sunrise as it was very overcast and not enough snow had fallen yet. After a couple of hours I decided it was time to walk down, (yep I live just up the road from echo point). The snow was falling pretty consistently down at echo point, however the jamison valley was a complete white out at this point and you couldn’t see anything of the 3 sisters. You could barley see out a few metres from the hand railing at times…
Enjoying the snow at Echo point- June 10th 2021
I decided that I would wait and see if the heavy fog in the jamison valley might lift over time. As there wasn’t that much option for still images, I decided to film some video of the snow around the echo point lookout areas…You can watch it on my YouTube channel link below.
It was evident after a few hours that the valley was not going to clear and provide an opportunity for my Three sisters image. I was quite sure that the 3 sisters did have an amount of snow on them, how much, well that I guess I’ll never know…So the quest continues and I’ll continue to try until I click the camera shutter, on the image I’ve had in my head for many years. I only took a few more still images that day and I’ve posted them below….
After the promise of snow in the blue mountains from the weather bureau came and went a few weeks ago without even a flurry, it was finally great to see a decent amount start to fall on thursday night (16-07-2015). Now over the last few years I’ve been trying to capture an image that combines the iconic three sisters in Katoomba and some snow in the scene as well. Each time there has been a snowfall I’ve raced off down to the three sisters to capture this image that has been sitting in my head for a good few years. Anyone familiar with the landscape side of my photography knows that I’ve attempted to capture the three sisters in as many different moods and weather scenarios as possible over the years. So with family and friends in tow we set off on foot down the street as the snow started to blanket the streets into a winter wonderland.
As we walked and slid our way down to echo point and the lookout, the wind was really starting to howl. I remembered the last time it snowed I had come down and my umbrella blew inside out in the first few minutes, luckily for me it was 90% rain and there was no shot to get. So this time armed with a few handy assistants I liked my chances allot more. Knowing the three sisters are lit up at night was a real deciding factor for coming here in such horrid conditions. So with my partner holding the umbrella for me and a friend giving me some light via the phone light I set up my tripod and camera. A big part of photography is pre visualising a scene in your head before you take the shot. Prior to coming down I was 90% confident of the shot I wanted without even knowing how much snow was around. As I set up the conditions were rapidly getting to the point where it was really hard to keep the camera covered from the elements. The floodlights though strong, were not going to shed enough light to highlight the snow which was rapidly swirling around us. I attached my trusty speedlight (flash) and metered the scene in camera. I manually dialled in how much fill light I wanted in the flash, wiped down the lens element of snow for the umteenth time and pressed the shutter……..got it!
I was really happy with the outcome of the shot and was glad to have finally captured the iconic three sisters in some snow. I came back in the morning on sunrise hoping to get the sisters covered in snow, you know that picture perfect postcard esque scene…. but alas that wasn’t to be. The snow hadn’t settled on them as the wind had been far too strong (you can see this clearly in the B&W image below) overnight and the sisters elevation in the valley proved a little low for a decent snow dusting….with any luck it might snow again this winter and I’ll be able to tick a few more of my “must have”images of my list.
I also went out and captured some images of the blue mountains township of Katoomba when it was covered in the beautiful snow. See the photos here
About Ben– Ben Pearse is a commercial and wedding photographer who works and resides in the beautiful blue mountains, Australia. Ben also sells and licenses his portfolio of blue mountains landscape images. These are available from this website in the shop section.
benpearsephotography 