An overseas trip to Australia to see my kids and their family in Brisbane, Queensland, afforded me the opportunity to travel to Perth, Western Australia, so I could spend a weekend in Shark Bay and photograph a beautiful abstract world of waterways, sand dunes, inlets, cliffs and salt farms from the air.

Australia consistently has great weather, so off we went. Travelling in a Cessna with the door off, I was treated to an hour of flying time over some amazing abstract scenes with beautiful colours. It was well worth the five-hour flights plus the eight-hour drive each way to and from Perth and back to Brisbane.

From the ground, Shark Bay is relatively innocuous and somewhat isolated, with a typical outback country feel coexisting with a coastal holiday vibe. However, once you are in the air, it is a whole new world of pictures and scenes that you have never seen before and that you just could not picture before flying. There is a myriad of colours, tones, textures, lines, and curves to explore with your camera.

A fast shutter is the trick with this type of photography, as we are moving constantly, and unlike a helicopter, we can't hover. It enables me to get very sharp images despite the movement and vibration of the plane. f2.8 also allows for crisp images, as we are pointing down, so there are no issues with depth of field as it is all one plane.