User Profile

Steve
Roden

Steve Roden is a non-professional photographer who has been taking photographs since he was a child. Whilst he is self-taught, he draws on his background as a teacher of design and technology and his life-long interest in art and architecture, to inform his photography. Born in the UK, he moved to Tasmania in 1976 and work as a teacher of design and technology in several high schools. His main photographic interest is landscape, but his portfolio of work is eclectic and he is willing to experiment with other photographic genres. His second passion bird photography. More of his photography can be seen at steveroden.net.

The Arts

Chasing the light

by Sarah Munks

28 Oct 2021

The sun rises on a stunning winter day in Dulcot, in the Coal River Valley, as Rick Crossland packs up to go to “work”. Impatient to get off before the light changes, he nearly forgets two very important items, his padded jacket and his beanie.

Wilderness

Antipodean light

by Steve Roden

10 Aug 2020

When I received my first developed roll of Kodachrome film in Tasmania, I thought that there was something terribly wrong. It was 1976 and I had left my English motherland, and a lot of my photographic experience, behind. The first photographs of my new home, of the Hobart waterfront, had a harshness to them that shocked me. It’s the light. It is so much stronger in Tasmanian than it is in the UK. Tasmanian skies are bright, clear and very much bluer; horizons are sharp and distinct without the haze found in northern latitudes. The colours of Tasmania are very different from the vibrant palette found in the UK and elsewhere. With the exception of spring time, green is not commonly seen. The sage or grey of eucalypts predominates, while the native grass lands turn to straw soon after spring, creating a dry landscape of brown to golden hues.

Travel & tourism

Antarctica

by Steve Roden

10 Aug 2020

Sometimes during the Tasmanian winter, when the southerly wind blows and I am standing outside, shivering, I swear that I can smell the penguins in Antarctica. A flight of fancy perhaps, but given our close associations with Antarctica and the unencumbered proximity of the fifth-largest continent on Earth, perhaps my olfactory senses do not deceive me.