The Mentawai Islands sit off the west coast of Sumatra, remote enough that most visitors arrive by boat and stay for the surf. The palm trees here have a particular character – tall, slightly irregular, leaning into the coastal wind in ways that a symmetrical plantation palm never does. In black and white, against a bright sky, they become something more graphic than photographic.

Mentawai Palms is a black and white vertical fine art photography print of palm trees in the Mentawai Islands, Indonesia. The monochrome treatment removes the distraction of colour – the blue sky, the green fronds – and focuses the eye on shape and contrast. The tall, narrow portrait orientation follows the height of the palms, the fronds reaching toward the top of the frame, the sky bright behind them.

Not everything I photograph is on the Sunshine Coast. This image came from time spent in one of the world’s great surf destinations, and it carries that quality – remote, tropical, completely removed from the Australian coast but connected to it by the same Pacific swell.

Available as a fine art photographic print, stretched canvas, or glass-mounted acrylic. Custom sizing available on request.