A lo fi visual diary
I spent the last few days taking advantage of the sunny mornings before I left for Alpana Station near Blinman, to go on a 13 day camel trek in the Northern Flinders Ranges in South Australia with Suzanne and some of her Heysen Trail friends.
This fine weather did not last for long. The weather turned story, and I ended up exploring the wild-seas amongst the coastal granite rocks between Petrel Cove and Kings Beach. Continue reading “winter’s wild-seas”
The severe storm that swept across South Australia in early May, produced lots of sea foam amongst the granite rocks along the coast. These wintery conditions, which started as I was returning on the ferry from my brief holiday at American River, forced me to postpone, and then cut short, my photo-camp at Lake Boga for the Mallee Routes project.
I had to wait for the severity of the storm to ease before we were able to walk amongst the coastal rocks. It was wet, the south westerly wind was gale like, and the waves were huge as they rolled into the shore.
I was able to spend a few days on our morning and afternoon poodlewalks with Kayla and Maleko photographing the ephemeral foam amongst the granite rocks. It seems to come with winter. Continue reading “foam”
Suzanne, the 2 standard poodles and I, spent several days at American River on Kangaroo Island with Suzanne’s sister, (Barbara Heath) and her husband (Malcolm Enright) who had flown down from Brisbane.
The days on the island were gentle, balmy late autumn ones. A storm hit the island just as I was leaving on the late Sealink ferry on Wednesday evening.
On Saturday I arrived on the island on Saturday on the 10am ferry from Cape Jervis with the poodles to open up the cottage. That early morning arrival gave me time to go exploring American River with the poodles. I started with places that I was familiar with from previous trips. The last trip with friends was 4 years ago in 2014, whilst the last photo trip was in 2013. Continue reading “At American River”
The early mornings along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula over the summer-holidays were often quite colourful. It’s was very picturesque and uplifting. An example of an early morning at Petrel Cove during the recent heat wave over the Australia Day weekend:
During the short periods of the summer’s heatwaves we would start to walk the poodles before sunrise in order to avoid the intensity of the heat. Then we would spend the rest of the day inside an air-conditioned house powered by our solar panels. Continue reading “the summer-holidays are over”
During the recent January weekend heatwave in South Australia after our roadtrip to, and holiday in, Melbourne I ventured to Kings Head in Waitpinga for the afternoon walk with Maleko.
We did so to find shade and shelter from the hot, burning sun. We usually walk between 6-7pm, and there is little by way of shade along the southern coast when there is no late afternoon cloud cover.
At one stage on the walk we just sat on some rocks in the shade at Kings Head and watched the waves roll in around our feet. It was a section of rocks where the surfers jumped off into the sea when the waves were rolling in between Kings Head and West Island. Continue reading “photographing during the heatwave”
Well, the Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne, Victoria sure was crowded with people holidaying when we stayed there on our roadtrip. Karen, my sister at Safety Beach put us up, and as that stay coincided with a hot spell, that meant both limited documentary photography in Melbourne and walking very early in the morning and late in the afternoon.
The foreshore along the eastern coast of Port Phillip Bay from Dromana to Sorrento was jam packed with caravans, tents, boats and people. The Nepean Highway from Rye to Portsea was crammed with cars, due to people travelling down from Melbourne to Sorrento or Portsea for a day’s outing. The Mornington Peninsula is Melbourne’s playground.
We found very few places where we could walk the poodles off lead along the coast. There was a small off-lead, dog friendly beach at Tassells Cove and a small walking track around Martha Point that went down to Pebble Beach. Continue reading “holidaying in Melbourne”
Cold, wet weather that came in from the south-west replaced the few days of hot weather after my Sonex flight along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula earlier in the week. The temperature is now roughly half of what it was during that hot spell.
Suzanne and I got very wet on a couple of occasions on our walks — we were caught in the fast moving rain that swept in from the southern ocean whilst out walking with the poodles.
There is little shelter along the coast west of Petrel Cove. On an afternoon walk Maleko and I had little choice but to continue walking and to get wet in the process. At least it was not as cold as it would have been in winter. Continue reading “wet weather”
I have decided to upgrade the poodlewalks blog from the free WordPress blog platform that I have been using for so long to more of a website platform with its own blog and galleries. The galleries will bring the offshoots or spinoffs from poodlewalks that are currently on various standalone Posthaven blogs–abstractions, the trees series, and the Littoral Zone. The blog will continue the traditional poodlewalks format with the website titled known as poodlewalks.
My reason is that a lot of my daily photography —outside specific projects like Mallee Routes—centres around poodlewalks. I am walking twice a day –in the morning and afternoon–with each of the walks around an hour’s duration. If the light is right, then the walks are 1.5-2 hours in duration. Often I go back and reshoot for the Fleurieuscape book and portfolio. The new format will bring all the work around poodlewalks together.
During the recent couple of days of warm, sub tropical Spring weather on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast I was able to go on longer, coastal poodlewalks with Kayla and Maleko as well as scoping in the various cthat I would usually walk past, and photographing in my makeshift open air studio.
One of these longer walks was a return to exploring around the mouth of the Inmam River near Kent Reserve with Kayla to re-connect with the Fleurieuscapes project that I am working on.
I was interested in scoping a way to photograph the site of the Ramindejeri’s burial ground in the sand dunes near the Inman River’s mouth. The SA Museum states that the Ramindejeri were a local group of the Ngarrindjeri but the public information the Museum has is pretty minimal
The spring weather has been its usual turbulent normal along the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast of South Australia. Cold south-westerlies and showers one day, sunshine, shorts and t-shirt the following day, then back to cold, overcast weather the next. My afternoon walks amongst the coastal rocks with Kayla and Maleko are a welcome and enjoyable break from sitting in front of the computer during the day working on the text for the Adelaide Photography 1970-2000 book.
I have been taking advantage of these coastal walks to look out for, and find, some safe location amongst the rock formations so that I can explore different ways of making abstracts of the swirling sea:
These sea abstracts are a break from the usual rock and quartz abstracts that I usually do when photographing the present on these walks. This should become writing the present as well.