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Editor’s Note

Welcome back, everyone! What a wonderful response we had to last month's photo competition  - your entries were truly inspiring, and we're thrilled to celebrate our winners in this edition's Community Spotlight. Make sure you scroll down to see their stunning work.

This week we're easing into our monthly theme, Colours of Spring, with a gentle focus on spring pastels - those soft, dreamy hues that make this season so magical. Think blush blossoms, lavender skies, and soft morning light.

Haven't entered this month's comp yet? Share your best images of the Colours of Spring for the chance to win a great prize.

Monthly photo competition

Week 2: Colours of Spring | Topic: Spring Pastels

We're continuing this month's theme, Colours of Spring, and easing into something a little softer this week: pastels. Blush blossoms, lavender skies and soft morning light all share that same gentle, dreamy quality — and getting it right in-camera takes a slightly different approach to chasing bold, saturated colour. Handled well, "Spring Pastels" is about restraint as much as technique, keeping those delicate hues looking airy and luminous rather than washed out or oversaturated.

⚠️ Weekly prompts are just a guide — interpret them your way, as long as your shot captures the spirit of the month's theme.⁠

How to enter:

To participate, simply complete the submission form on our portal on our website. Make sure your entries align with this month's theme. For additional guidance, check the photographic tips below.

Prizes:

1st Prize: Sony Tough 64GB SDXC UHS-II 300MB/s Memory Card Valued at $249.95

2nd Prize: Sony MDR-7506 - Monitoring Headphones Valued at $199.95 RRP

Deadline:

All entries must be submitted by 30th September, 2026.

Make sure to read the FAQ on the competition page at the link below to understand all the details and rules of the competition.

We look forward to receiving your photos and celebrating your creativity

Learn more about the Sony MDR-7506 - Monitoring Headphones

The Sony MDR-7506 Monitoring Headphones are fundamental for many audio and film recording professionals. Their low impedance and closed ear design effectively reduce background noise, allowing you to closely monitor audio when you are in a professional environment like a studio or out shooting on location.

Sony FE 8-14mm F3.5 Fisheye G Announced

Sony has unveiled the FE 8-14mm F3.5 Fisheye G Lens, a versatile ultra-wide addition to its full-frame lineup that promises stunning 220-degree diagonal coverage and impressive close-focus capabilities. Whether you're shooting sweeping spring landscapes awash in pastel blooms or dramatic architectural curves, this lens delivers extraordinary creative range.

Spring has a way of bathing the world in the softest, most delicate hues imaginable, and capturing those dreamy pastel tones in your photography is one of the genuine pleasures of the season. Blossoms in blush pink, lavender wisteria, pale lemon wattle and soft mint new growth all offer a palette that rewards a thoughtful approach. With a few adjustments to your shooting technique and settings, you can preserve that gentle, airy quality rather than letting your camera render it as something harsher and more saturated than the real thing.

Dial back your saturation in-camera:

Whether you shoot JPEG or use a picture profile as a reference, reducing saturation by one or two stops prevents the camera from overworking those delicate hues and pushing blush pinks into hot pinks or soft mauves into vivid purples.

Shoot in soft, diffused light:

Bright midday sun is the enemy of pastels, crushing tonal subtlety and introducing harsh shadows, so aim for overcast days, the hour after sunrise, or open shade where the light wraps gently around your subject and preserves its softness.

Expose to the right:
Pastel tones live in the upper midtones, so give your exposure a nudge of plus half to one stop beyond what your meter suggests, being careful not to clip the highlights, as a slightly brighter exposure keeps those colours looking airy and luminous rather than muddy.

Choose complementary backgrounds deliberately:
A soft pastel bloom photographed against a cluttered or heavily saturated background loses its delicacy instantly, so look for clean expanses of pale sky, white walls, or areas of soft bokeh from foliage that sit in the same tonal family as your subject.

Spring is the perfect season to refresh your kit and chase those dreamy pastel tones blooming all around us. To capture the delicate hues of spring florals and soft golden-hour light, consider adding these recommended accessories. A macro lens is ideal for intimate flower close-ups. Use a circular polarising filter to reduce glare and boost colour saturation. A reflector will help you wrap subjects in that gorgeous diffused light. A sturdy tripod is essential for tack-sharp detail shots. You can use a colour calibration card to nail those subtle pastel tones in post. Finally, a weather-sealed camera body will help you handle unpredictable spring showers with confidence.

NEED HELP? TALK TO AN EXPERT 1300 365 220

"Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow."
- Imogen Cunningham

Your photo question of the week:

When photographing spring pastel tones such as soft pinks, lavenders and pale yellows, which white balance adjustment will most effectively preserve the delicate, desaturated quality of these colours rather than allowing them to shift towards either a cool blue cast or an overly warm orange tone?

A) Set a very high colour temperature of around 9000K to warm the entire scene and boost saturation across all hues.

B) Use a slightly cool colour temperature between 5000K and 5500K combined with a mild negative tint adjustment to maintain the subtle neutrality of pastel tones.

C) Apply a strong green channel boost in post-processing to counteract the natural pink shift common in spring foliage.

D) Always shoot in auto white balance and allow the camera to make all decisions, as pastel tones are too complex to manage manually.

Last Week's Answer:

And the answer we were looking for was A) Attaching a Circular Polarising Filter (CPL) to your lens and rotating it. A CPL filter works by blocking certain angles of reflected light as you rotate it, which is what allows you to cut through glare on water or glass and deepen the colour of a blue sky in a way that simply cannot be replicated in post-processing. Well done to everyone who got it right!

Let's face it. Not all of us are professionals, and even still, pros still need to learn a thing or two about photography or cinematography. That's why we've put together this section. We want to highlight some of the common and not-so-common questions people face when attempting a particular genre.

I want to capture those soft, dreamy pastel tones you see in spring blossom photos, but my images always come out looking oversaturated and harsh. What am I doing so wrong?

The secret is shooting in soft, diffused light rather than harsh midday sun. Overcast days are perfect for spring pastels, as the cloud cover acts like a giant softbox. Also try pulling your saturation down slightly in post and lifting your shadows a touch. A gentle fade applied to the blacks can give that airy, washed-out quality that makes pastel tones sing.

B&W Competition Winners Announced

What a stunning collection of images came through for last month's Black and White competition -  thank you to everyone who picked up a camera, found the light, and shared a piece of their world with us. The standard of entries was genuinely impressive, and choosing the winners was no easy task. This community never ceases to inspire us, and we are so grateful to be part of your photographic journey.

1st Place - Richard Misquitta

Congratulations to Richard Misquitta, whose first-place image "Early Morning Surprise" captured one of those perfectly unguarded, fleeting moments that remind us why having a camera in hand at the right time is everything. The expression on his subject's face as she reacts to the news of the water temperature is priceless, and the conversion to black and white gives the image a timeless, editorial quality. A well-deserved win, Richard.

“Early Morning Surprise”, Nikon D750 & Tamron SP 24–70mm f/2.8 G2 Lens,
( 70mm, f/3.2, 1/250 sec, ISO 320)

2nd Place - Nitin Saksena

Our second-place congratulations go to Nitin Saksena for their atmospheric fog study taken in Ivanhoe, Melbourne. Shooting into a valley that traps fog between the Dandenong Ranges at sunrise, Nitin has produced something genuinely ethereal -  the treeline holding the mist in place creates a scene that feels almost otherworldly, and the choice of monochrome was inspired.

Nikon D810 & Nikon 70–300mm, (250mm , f/8 , 1/500 sec).

Shoutouts

We also want to shout out a few entries that caught our eye and deserve a moment in the spotlight. Natvar Bilimoria's aerial-style shot of the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone was breathtaking in both scale and composition. Sue Hare delivered a gorgeous sunrise silhouette of ibis roosting in a willow beside a farm dam — shooting almost directly into the rising sun with wonderful results. And Warren Griffiths brought us something quietly powerful from the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, using contrast and conversion to let light and shadow do all the talking across the memorial's arch forms. Wonderful work from all three of you.

If last month's entries have stirred something in you, now is the perfect time to grab your camera and get involved - our current competition is open and waiting for your vision. We cannot wait to see what you create.

Reader’s gallery

Navigate to our reader’s gallery to see a selection of entries to help inspire your vision. You can also see the past winners there. Thank you to everyone who sent in their images. We love seeing them!

Sometimes, all we need is some visual motivation, like these images, to spark our creative thoughts. What will you create with your camera this week? Enter your images via our online portal, and we look forward to showcasing them.