Benjamin Alldridge Photography

Benjamin Alldridge Photography Landscape Photographer of the Year 2024

Benjamin Alldridge is an award-winning photographer specialising in documenting rare natural phenonema. Benjamin B.

Alldridge is an occasional Pulitzer winner with a D.Sc., the owner of a private jet and a Caribbean island, and an award-winning space and nature photographer. Several of these facts are lies. Aside from prone to writing in the third person for some inexplicable reason, I am:

§ originally from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, but now reside in Launceston, Tasmania (lutruwita), Australia
§ a forme

r marine biologist
§ a current software engineer
§ an amateur space weather forecaster
§ a marginally less amateur space weather photographer
§ likely to drive 750km in a single sitting just because 'the sky was clear'
… or because ‘it wasn’t’
§ something of a fool
§ a part-time music journalist
§ occasionally found taking many photos of people
§ … and their butts
§ way too fond of sarcasm
§ even more fond of interesting vanity basins

So, pretty normal one might say.

“Adam Raised a Cain”, East Coast Tasmania, 2025𝘐𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥𝘔𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘥 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘈𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘱𝘶𝘵...
06/02/2026

“Adam Raised a Cain”, East Coast Tasmania, 2025

𝘐𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥
𝘔𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘥 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦
𝘈𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘱𝘶𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳
𝘏𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘐 𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘥

I’ve documented a lot of aurorae now, but only a handful have felt like the world was ending…

“Chroma”, Tasmania, 2026How’d you go? Did you see her? Getting to bask under chromatic ribbons for hours never tires for...
24/01/2026

“Chroma”, Tasmania, 2026

How’d you go? Did you see her? Getting to bask under chromatic ribbons for hours never tires for me.
anz α1, .star 9mm

23/01/2026

The G4 storm on January 20 was something else hey? It was scraping the northern horizon on the east coast for most of the night.

“Echo”, Tasmania, 2026Righto, I guess I should probably consider starting 2026. May as well do it right. Richea scoparia...
13/01/2026

“Echo”, Tasmania, 2026

Righto, I guess I should probably consider starting 2026. May as well do it right.

Richea scoparia, one of the botanical group broadly referred to as ‘candle heaths’ endemic to Tasmania, flower for a very brief window, and not necessarily annually — but when they do flower, they explode into fields of cream, white, orange, and red, sitting atop complexes of sharp and robust layers of the plant’s body. Some areas they also share habitat with another ancient Tasmanian endemic, the Pencil pine (Athrotaxis cupressoides).

Oh yeah, sometimes there’s an aurora at sunrise, including an incredibly rare and only recently identified subauroral form too. Nbd. There was a bright moon to the northeast which added a beautiful atmosphere to the scene.
anz a7 III, .star 9mm f/5.6

It’d probably taste a bit funky, but platypuses could inarguably provide the majority of ingredients necessary for a sat...
05/12/2025

It’d probably taste a bit funky, but platypuses could inarguably provide the majority of ingredients necessary for a satisfactory custard.

SONY ILCE-1, SEL135F18GM

Some years ago with in Tasmania’s southwest. The area was ravaged by bushfires in 2019, something we have documented th...
03/12/2025

Some years ago with in Tasmania’s southwest. The area was ravaged by bushfires in 2019, something we have documented the recovery of many times. This day was a snowy day early season, draping a charred hardscape in white and grey. This one small emerging sign of recovery fully captured me, the vibrant green emerging from charred bones.

SONY ILCE-7M3, SEL100F28GM .anz

“Echo”, Tasmania, 2025A few months ago, I was tracking the weather to predict the development of hoar frost during the t...
03/12/2025

“Echo”, Tasmania, 2025

A few months ago, I was tracking the weather to predict the development of hoar frost during the transition into sunrise. One morning presented the perfect conditions: cloudless skies, calm air, and some of the rarest trees on earth (Eucalyptus gunnii subsp. divaricata). The stillness of these ancient relics is overwhelming.

SONY ILCE-1, SEL24105F4G

The Tasmanian eastern rosella (Platycercus eximius diemenensis) is normally a pretty vibrant bird - sporting one of the ...
01/12/2025

The Tasmanian eastern rosella (Platycercus eximius diemenensis) is normally a pretty vibrant bird - sporting one of the widest arrays of colour of any Australian parrot, themselves amongst the most colourful globally. But they’re not usually *this* colourful. At least, not to the naked eye.

Up until a few years ago, it was physically impossible to capture an image such as this: biofluorescence in a live specimen under broad daylight. Most of what you’re seeing is the plumage glowing in response to UV – more or less how most of the animal kingdom would perceive them. When it comes to biofluorescence, we are kind of an animal oddity in that we don’t use it!

SONY ILCE-1, SONY SEL135F18GM anz

“sneak”At first glance this little Spotted-tailed quoll (Dasyurus maculatus) looks healthy enough, but sadly looks are d...
01/12/2025

“sneak”

At first glance this little Spotted-tailed quoll (Dasyurus maculatus) looks healthy enough, but sadly looks are deceiving: it had either a broken foot or broken leg, and had clearly been in an altercation with something recently. Unfortunately it scampered off down a cliff before it could be captured, but not before I was on the ground with the camera.

SONY ILCE-1, SEL24105F4G

With all of my focus being devoted to all things that glow, it’s been hard to really devote as much time to what got me ...
25/09/2025

With all of my focus being devoted to all things that glow, it’s been hard to really devote as much time to what got me outside at night to begin with.

I shot this back in May while teaching .photography and some tricks on the foreshore at Bridport directly under a harsh metal halide lamp as a test for the .anz ILCE-1 (that’s the α1 if ya nasty) for astro on my tracker.

Figured it was a good opportunity to show how the process goes from camera to screen to show it off. The final product rarely arrives out of the computer, and is usually finished on my phone for whatever medium it’s going on.

Then there’s the data that ends up on the phone. It has the majority of the detail enhancing work in place at this stage, although the colour balance is often pretty poor. This was about 10 minutes of Photoshop, which on a 50MP stack isn’t a lot.

Then there’s the stacked data – in this case 46x 13s exposures. The data is aligned and median stacked to improve the signal to noise ratio as much as possible, although it’s genuinely unnecessary.

Then there’s the linearised data that the base frames are exported from Lightroom, this has no noise reduction or sharpening, and only has basic WB/luminance adjustments.

The RAW Hα (the deep red details) data is very very good. For an unmodified camera, colour me impressed. With filters and under actual dark skies, and with more than a handful of minutes of data, I am excited to try some summer astro for once.

SONY ILCE-1, SEL135F18GM, Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Mini


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