The Australian outback is one of the most photogenic environments on the planet. It’s also one of the most hostile places you can take a camera. Dust gets into everything. Temperatures can hit 45 degrees in the shade (if there is shade). The light at midday is so harsh it’ll flatten any scene into a washed-out mess.

I’ve shot extensively across central Australia, the Kimberley, the Flinders Ranges, and western Queensland. Here’s what I’ve learned about keeping your gear alive and getting good images in conditions that cameras weren’t really designed for.

Dealing with Dust

Outback dust is fine, pervasive, and insidious. It’s not like beach sand that you can brush off. Red dust particles are microscopic and get into sealed compartments, lens barrels, and sensor cavities. This is the number one gear threat in the outback, ahead of heat and humidity.

Prevention

Sealed bags for storage. When you’re not actively shooting, your camera belongs in a sealed bag. Not your camera bag — inside a sealed plastic bag inside your camera bag. Ziplock bags work. Dry bags work better. I carry a Sea to Summit dry sack specifically for camera storage during transit on dirt roads.

Minimise lens changes. Every lens change in dusty conditions is a chance for dust to reach your sensor. If you’re shooting a full day in the outback, consider carrying two bodies with different lenses rather than swapping lenses on one body. If that’s not practical, change lenses inside a sealed bag or at minimum with the camera pointing downward in the most sheltered spot you can find.

Tape the seams. For bodies that claim weather sealing but don’t inspire total confidence, a strip of gaffer tape over battery compartment doors and card slot covers provides an extra layer of protection. Paranoid? Maybe. But I’ve seen dust get inside a supposedly sealed Canon R5 after a day on the Oodnadatta Track.

Lens filters. A UV or clear protective filter is worth its weight in gold in the outback. Dust particles that hit a $30 filter can be cleaned off. Dust particles that scratch your front element are there forever. I keep filters on all my lenses in dusty conditions, even though I normally prefer to shoot without them.

Cleaning

Blower first, always. When dust gets on your lens or sensor (and it will), use a rocket blower before anything touches the surface. Wiping dust particles across glass creates scratches. Blow them off first, then clean with a lens cloth if needed.

Carry sensor cleaning supplies. If you’re on a multi-day outback trip, bring sensor swabs and cleaning fluid. Don’t wait until you get home to deal with sensor dust — it’ll accumulate and affect every subsequent image. I clean my sensor every evening after a dusty day.

Wipe down the body. Use a slightly damp microfibre cloth to wipe down the camera body and lens barrel each evening. This removes the film of dust that accumulates in control dial crevices and around buttons, which can eventually work its way inside the camera.

Managing the Heat

Camera electronics generate heat, and when the ambient temperature is already 40-plus degrees, thermal management becomes a real concern.

Gear Protection

Never leave gear in a car. Interior car temperatures in the outback regularly exceed 70 degrees. This will damage sensors, melt adhesives, and cook batteries. If you must leave gear in a vehicle, place it in a hard case in the boot with reflective material over it, and accept that it still might be too hot to use immediately when you return.

Shade your camera between shots. A hat over the camera, a light-coloured towel, anything that prevents direct sun exposure on the body will help. I’ve measured camera body temperatures above 50 degrees in direct outback sun. That’s within the operating range for most cameras, but it’s not ideal and it’ll drain your battery faster.

Batteries drain faster in heat. Plan for 30-40% less battery life than your camera’s rated performance. If your camera is rated for 500 shots, expect 300-350 in extreme heat. Carry spares and keep them in an insulated pouch — hot batteries perform worse than cool ones.

Be careful with LCD screens. Extended use of the rear LCD or electronic viewfinder generates additional heat. Use the optical viewfinder if your camera has one (unlikely on mirrorless, I know), or limit your chimping. Review images periodically, not after every shot.

Personal Safety

This isn’t a photography tip, but I’ll say it anyway because it matters more than any image: carry more water than you think you need. Dehydration impairs judgement, and poor judgement in remote areas gets people killed. I carry a minimum of five litres per person per day, plus emergency reserves. Plan your shooting around the heat — early morning and late afternoon, rest during the middle of the day.

Working with Harsh Light

The outback light is extraordinary at dawn and dusk and absolutely brutal from about 10am to 3pm. The midday sun creates hard shadows, blown highlights, and flat, contrasty scenes that look nothing like what your eyes perceive.

The Golden Hours Are Everything

This is true everywhere, but it’s especially true in the outback. The quality of light in the first and last hour of the day is dramatically different from midday. Colours are richer, shadows are longer and more defined, and the landscape has depth and dimension.

At Uluru, the difference between a sunrise shot and a midday shot isn’t subtle — it’s the difference between a good image and a postcard cliche. Plan your key compositions for golden hour and be in position before the light arrives.

When You Must Shoot Midday

Sometimes you can’t avoid midday shooting. You’re on a tour schedule, you’ve reached a location that isn’t accessible at dawn, or the weather has cooperated only during the middle of the day. Here’s how to make it work.

Embrace the harshness. Instead of fighting the hard light, use it. Strong shadows create graphic compositions. The stark contrast between deep shadows and bright highlights can produce powerful black-and-white images. Switch your thinking from “landscape” to “abstract” and look for patterns, textures, and geometric shapes in the landscape.

Expose for highlights. In harsh light, protect the highlights and lift the shadows in post. Most modern sensors have enough dynamic range to recover shadow detail, but blown highlights are gone forever. Underexpose by a stop or so and bring up the shadows in Lightroom or Capture One.

Use a polarising filter. A circular polariser is essential for outback photography. It cuts atmospheric haze, deepens blue skies, and reduces glare from rocks and vegetation. The effect is strongest when shooting at 90 degrees to the sun, which in the Australian outback means pointing roughly north or south during the middle of the day. A good polariser recovers contrast and colour that harsh light strips away.

Shoot details. When the wide landscape is too contrasty for a pleasing image, go close. Rock textures, dried creek beds, spinifex patterns, peeling bark — the outback is full of intimate details that work in any light. A macro lens or a standard lens at close focus can produce compelling images when the big vista isn’t cooperating.

Composition in Big Spaces

The outback is vast, and vast can easily translate to empty in a photograph. The biggest composition mistake I see is wide shots with no anchor point — all sky and flat earth with nothing for the eye to settle on.

Find foreground interest. A dead tree, a rock formation, a pattern in the sand, a creek bed — something in the lower third of the frame that gives the composition depth and leads the viewer into the scene.

Compress with telephoto. Don’t just shoot wide. A 70-200mm lens in the outback can produce stunning images by compressing distant features and creating layers in the landscape. Distant mountain ranges stacked against each other, a line of ghost gums disappearing into heat haze — these are telephoto compositions.

Include scale references. The outback’s scale is hard to convey without a reference point. A person, a vehicle, a lone tree — something that tells the viewer how big this landscape actually is. Without scale, a massive gorge can look like a roadside ditch.

The Practical Kit List

Here’s what I carry for a multi-day outback photography trip:

• Camera body with weather sealing (two bodies if possible)
• Wide-angle zoom (16-35mm equivalent)
• Mid-range zoom (24-70mm equivalent)
• Telephoto zoom (70-200mm equivalent)
• Circular polariser for each lens
• UV/clear protective filters for each lens
• Sturdy tripod (carbon fibre for weight savings)
• Remote shutter release
• Rocket blower and lens cloths
• Sensor cleaning kit
• Minimum 4 batteries per body
• Sufficient memory cards for the trip plus one spare
• Dry bags for dust protection
• Portable hard drive for nightly backups

The outback doesn’t have camera shops. Whatever you forget, you’ll do without for the entire trip. Pack carefully, check twice, and always carry a backup for anything critical.

The effort is worth it. The Australian outback, photographed well, produces images unlike anywhere else on earth. The colours, the scale, the raw geology — it’s all there waiting. You just need to keep your camera alive long enough to capture it.