The silken seas & painterly paddocks of Warren Reed.
With a remarkable eye for capturing Gippsland's coastlines, you'll get lost in Warren Reed's paint like photography.
Feb 22, 2021
“Take bathers every time!” is the surprising yet practical advice masterful photographer Warren Reed provides when queried about better capturing the ocean, “but don’t swim where it’s dangerous”.
With his lush seascapes enlivening the pages of Coast Magazine for several years now, many of us have gotten lost, wistfully, through Warren’s imagery. As with the photographs appearing here, Warren has a remarkable eye, ability and patience for capturing Gippsland in a veritable painter’s palette of colour, and not always in the shades that you’d expect.
Warren shares that his favourite view of Gippsland is a line of trees on the horizon of a farm, which can be found on his route home from Wonthaggi.
“Take bathers every time!”
“I could photograph it every morning and night! People drive past every day and probably don’t even look at it, but to me, the hill, trees and the clouds that rush past are poetic.”
Other than the obvious choices of sunrise and sunset, Warren says the best time to experience the Gippsland coastline is during winter.
“It never lets you down. The power of the storms coming in, huge swells, wild winds, waves exploding on rugged rocks, and then peace with a stunning sunset. Last winter, I jumped in the ocean almost every day. [It makes you] aware that every cell in your body is alive!”
For a gent who has spent so much time documenting the hundreds of kilometres of coastline in our region, Warren reveals that it is Walkerville that always lures him back.
“It is the most beautiful, rugged yet calm, varied coast for me. Full of life, yet with so many spots to find peace and quiet to soak nature in.”
We’re elated to hear that Coast Magazine will be releasing a digital annual this summer. An outstanding achievement considering the challenges the past year has thrown at the publishing industry. Warren divulges that it will also include some of the best stories that they’ve published over the last 14 years (!), and that it will be available for download in early December.
“It is the most beautiful, rugged yet calm, varied coast for me."
(Warren also provides Gippslandia with some of the loftiest and amusing praise we’ve ever received: “We devour every edition. It’s the one newspaper that will never end up on the bottom of the budgies’ cage, but lives on our coffee table”. So good, thank you!)
Currently, Warren and his wonderful wife Maria are setting up a gallery space and café in Bear Street, Inverloch. Their goal is “to establish a creative hub, a place to socialise, enjoy good food and coffee, experience art workshops and create community after a challenging year”.
It’s cool that, as an artist, Warren captures quite fleeting, transitory moments, but that as a local entrepreneur, he and Maria create projects that become more deeply embedded in the Gippsland community. The visual metaphor is that they’re the rocky outcrop holding firm against the swirling ocean. And just like Warren’s richly coloured photography, the vibrancy radiates out.
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To see more of Warren’s work please visit warren.photodeck.com and coastmagazine.net.
As well as his Instagram (@warren_reed) and Facebook (CoastMagazineAustralia).
Also, if you or someone you know is a talented, passionate and visionary chef, please reach out to the Reeds for their Bear Street project.