rocks Archives - Page 7 of 10

October 3, 2015

staying or going?

Suzanne and I are currently in the process deciding whether we will stay in Victor Harbor or move back into the south-east corner of the city of Adelaide. The latter is the more capital expensive option (an architecturally designed extension to a cottage) whilst living on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast at Victor Harbor means that we are much more isolated. We are currently swinging between staying and going at the moment. There are advantages and disadvantages to both options.

One disadvantage for me in living at Victor Harbor is the limited opportunities that it offers for urban photography–ie., the flâneur, the casual wanderer, observer and reporter of street-life in the modern city. This kind of work now requires either day trips to Adelaide, major trips to Melbourne or road trips. Consequently, my daily photographs made on the morning and afternoon poodlewalks are nature orientated. I do feel constrained by this.

Hence the idea of quickly constructing the image as a still life whilst on the walks, since it is not really possible to bring the seaweed and rocks back to the studio to photograph.
Continue reading “staying or going?”

September 13, 2015

Spring

Winter has passed and spring has arrived in South Australia.

It is becoming warmer and the light is changing very quickly: sunrise is an hour earlier, sunset is an hour latter and the light is more intense and brighter early in the morning and in the late afternoon. The change in the seasons was very sudden.

The warmer weather means that there are more people on the coast, such as joggers, fishermen, dog walkers, walkers, surfies, day trippers, children swimming and playing on the beaches etc, which in turn makes our poodlewalks more complicated. People say that winter on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast is to be avoided, as they find it too cold.I enjoy the winter on the coast.
Continue reading “Spring”

August 2, 2015

off to Canberra

The Australian Abstractions exhibition at The Light Gallery has opened, the artist talk has been given, and work on the abstraction book with Moon Arrow Press has started. The artist talk addressed why the black and white part of the exhibition is a stand-in for the absent modernist black and white works of the 1950s and 1960s. It also addressed the claim by photographic historians that Australian photography does not have a tradition of abstractions and that Australian photographers are not interested in abstraction.

The preparatory work for my image in the ‘Time’ exhibition at the Lost Ones Gallery for the Ballarat International Foto Biennale 2015 will be done early this week. Then I’m off on a photo trip to Canberra on Thursday to continue working on the Edgelands project.

Meanwhile we continue to walk around the coast if the winter weather permits. It has been very stormy during July, and we have often walked around the town centre or the Heysen Trail to seek protection from the strong off shore winds. Continue reading “off to Canberra”

May 24, 2015

moments of sunshine

The poodle walks blog is now a part of my new thoughtfactory website and over time it will change from being hosted by WordPress to being hosted by my hosting company. It’s part of the consolidation of my various bodies of online work and a more professional look.

Thought Factory will continue to be slowly built over the coming months, and I’ll provide the new url when this modest blog becomes a part of Thought Factory. I don’t want to let it die.The bog that is the public face of Thoughtfactory is based on is the Encounter Studio blog which will be allowed to die.

In the meantime we–Ari, Kayla and myself— have returned to the walking the beach in the early morning now that the weather has improved.

The rains have gone for the moment, and there are brief moments of sun in the morning before it disappears behind the early morning cloud cover.

Continue reading “moments of sunshine”

March 14, 2015

Chiton Rocks

Ari and I have been walking around the Hayborough section of Encounter Bay on our early morning walks this week. It has expensive townhouses, bush between the houses and the beach and a white sand beach. This area is missed by most tourists and is frequented more by the locals—generally surfers, runners and dog walkers due to its access being hidden away.

My photography has been minimal but, I have been looking for locations along the road that would be suitable for an arial photograph of the beach, sea and sky and then one looking back to the township of Victor Harbor. The best time for this photography is just after sunrise. This morning we walked along the road and the beach around Chiton Rocks.

The early mornings are clear, crisp and there is no cloud cover. The light is very bright 30 minutes after sunrise. It’s classic autumn weather in South Australia. Continue reading “Chiton Rocks”

January 10, 2015

on Sellicks Beach

After dropping off an Edgeland’s catalogue to The Arts Centre at Port Noarlunga I drove to Port Willunga to photograph the cliffs I’d scoped a few days earlier. It was pouring with rain so I drove onto Sellicks Beach and waited in the car for the rain to pass. We then walked the beach whilst I scoped the sandstone base of some of the cliffs bordering the beach.

We walked to the end of the sandstone cliffs but the rain returned about halfway back. As we’d walked past the caves at the base of the cliffs that would have provided us with some shelter from the rain, we were in the open on the beach and got wet. Once again there were 4 wheel drives whizzing up and down the beach and parking is allowed on the sand. Continue reading “on Sellicks Beach”

December 7, 2014

the big shift

The shift to living at Victor Harbor has started after our return from the Edgeland exhibition in Canberra.

The things in the townhouse in Adelaide are slowly being decluttered, we are tarting the place up, the painters come in on Monday, and the carpet layers the following week. My photography equipment, the books and the digital suite are being driven down to Encounter Studio at Victor Harbor early tomorrow morning. The poodle walks will be mostly along the cost of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast from now on.

We have been living in the townhouse in the CBD of Adelaide and travelling to Victor Harbor every second weekend for about 15 years. The townhouse will be sold early 2015. This is a major shift. In the future we will be visiting Adelaide on a day trip.

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November 1, 2014

spring time on the coast

The weather on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast during Spring is turbulent. There are days of strong south easterly winds, hot days with a strong northwesterly wind, broken by cold southerly winds with a plunge in temperature. Generally its blustery with a few calm days. This year there has been very little rain.

The landscape is becoming drier. I would hate to have to exist on rainwater tank given the predictions for much less rain for southern Australia.

Often the light during spring can be quite eerie.

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September 18, 2014

at Petrel Cove

It was just a trip to Petrel Cove this afternoon. Maleko was tired from an earlier afternoon walk around the Inman River and Kent Reserve and he didn’t want to walk that far. So Petrel Cove it was.

We mostly hung out on the beach on the Rosetta Head side of the cove. We wanted to sit in the sun and avoid the cold south easterly wind that cut through our clothes. It had been raining all morning at Encounter Bay so the sun was more than welcome.

I realised that the photography done whilst on poodle walks has a conceptual emphasis on the exploration and development of ideas surrounding those moments and aspects in everyday life that are often deemed as just normal, ordinary, perhaps even non-essential, but are in fact potentially worthy and notable and should not simply be overlooked.

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April 25, 2014

hanging out at Kings Head

We are at Victor Harbor for the Easter to Anzac Day break. As it’s also school holidays we have been trying to avoid the crowds by going to Kings Beach and Kings Head for our poodle walks.

These locations have had fewer people than Petrel Cove, Dog Beach or the mouth of the Hindmarsh River. We have had to be careful walking around the rocks in this area because it has been a high tide in the late afternoon, and the waves have been very big because of the full moon.

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