New Title Image for Lux Mundi

By Administration

Regular readers will notice something very different with our website. Right at the very top, we now have a new high-quality panoramic image working as a background for our Lux Mundi header space.

Spanning 1310 pixels wide and 368 pixels tall, this is the view of the Grant Historic Mining Area from the famous Pinnacles in the state of Victoria, Australia. Taken by Ray Pollanen, a veteran news and sports photographer since 1979, this image brings back plenty of memories for some of us who have lived in Australia and have been longstanding fans of its rural beauty for many years.

Our editor decided to write to him personally to see if he could offer an image for us to use for our website. The criteria was simple. We were looking for an image that would technically fit the space but above that, we wanted one that expressed serenity, tranquillity, natural beauty, lots of greens and generous skies…one that would speak volumes of the beauty that could only come from God’s hands of creation. And being a small church, we were also hoping that he could let us use his photo free of charge if possible. Needless to say the image has to be of the highest photographic quality as well.

We were very surprised at the speed at which we got a reply from Ray who was generous enough to help us out. And it was gratis, compliments of Ray Pollanen! Hence the photo you now see gracing our church website.

This photograph portrays the High Country of Victoria where on the left, you can just about see the fire observation tower on the Pinnacles, which overlooks the mountain range that takes in some historically significance in the state of Victoria. 

For those interested in locating the Pinnacles, Ray has generously provided the link to Bing here. Information on the wonderful Pinnacles area is also plentiful around the Internet such as in the Gippsland official website, the Bushwalking Blog and Parks Victoria and of course, Wikipedia gives a fairly comprehensive overview on the Grampians National Park where the Pinnacles is one of its many great features.

We, the administration of Lux Mundi, and the congregation of Hosanna EFC thank Ray for his generosity in lending the use of this wonderful photo to us. Please do visit his amazing website at http://australianimage.com.au/wordpress/. If you’re a lover of Australiana, you’ll want to bookmark his webpage.

Further information: Some people have asked us why choose an Australiana image when we are a church from Malaysia. We offer you three reasons. Firstly it is not as easy to find a high quality image of Malaysian landscape that fits the technical criteria as we have in this case. We of course have no doubt that Malaysian landscapes are beautiful but that is not the issue here. Secondly the image is offered for us to use on the simple and straightforward condition of a copyright acknowledge. This is what Ray has agreed with us so generously and without further conditions or any expectation of payment. In fact he was not expecting us to write an article just to thank him. Instead this is our effort. This level of generosity is not easy to find, which is why we are grateful for his gesture. And thirdly there are some of us who have a deep appreciation for the great Australian country and a simple gesture of a simple image is all it is meant to be. One should not read too much into it.