When Australians are unwelcome in their own country ...

And in September 2009 I was refused permission by the park’s Media Office to publish an image of Uluru (that is derive “commercial gain”), which I had slightly tweaked in Photoshop to add some vignetting and a faint blue cast. My “alteration” of this previously approved picture may apparently have caused cultural upset to some of the park’s traditional owners but the far greater insult involved was that to my own intelligence. By doing this, the park service told me in one absurd moment that even an artistic interpretation of the landscape by photographers was verboten as far as Uluru was concerned.

Uluru Viewed from the Coach Parking Area in Mid-Afternoon

The author took this picture of Uluru from one of the two sunset viewing areas for Uluru in June 2001. The image has been used in a number of publications since then and was re-approved for usage by the park's Media Office in 2009.

Uluru Viewed from Coach Parking Area in Mid-Afternoon (tweaked in PS)

This is a variant of the original image made by the author in 2001 which has been tweaked in Photoshop via a Plug-In called Filter Forge. (It has been given a LOMO Effect.) The author was refused permission to publish this image by the park's Media Office in September 2009 on the grounds that "this treatment does not constitute enhancement of natural colours".

Plenty of other photographers have also fallen foul of the over-regulation at Uluru. Award-winning photographer Darren Jew posted this anecdote on an Arts Freedom Australia blog on July 2nd:

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park is a magnificent place. But on my last visit there I found the restrictions so frustrating that instead of experiencing the sense of reverence that I’d felt on previous visits, I just drove around with a heavy heart and left earlier than planned. As a photographer my skill is to interpret my subjects, not just snap pictures. The so-called “Ulurules” have taken away the ability of all photographers to create images with their own personal style.

Jew went on to recall how on that last visit he travelled the Lasseter Highway that links Uluru with the distant domes of Kata Tjuta. As he drove back along the sealed road on his final morning after a period of frustration on the “bouncing Kata Tjuta viewing platform”, he wondered how it was that he, as an Australian photographer, “could have become so unwelcome in my own country”.

“I was contemplating the ‘damage’ I would cause if I was to wander across the dunes with carefully chosen steps and my simple tripod.”

Then as he came around a bend on the road he encountered a herd of wild camels, feral animals, which were moving through the sand dunes chomping up fragile desert plants as they went along.

“I wondered if the camels had read the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Regulations; and more practically, why the heck the park rangers weren’t bothered to be seen protecting the national park from this blatant damage?”

Then a thought occurred to him. Perhaps the rangers would only act “if the camels carried tripods”.