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“urban form”

Tim Horton, the Integrated Design Commissioner for South Australia, has said that too often the idea of vernacular in architecture is dogmatically applied to a Disney-like preconception of quaint pioneering shopfronts and the purse-lipped Georgian strait jacket and is rarely translated into the 21st century convincingly (we’ve all seen the historicist townhouse dwarfed by the three car garage grafted on the front).

He adds that the future of Adelaide’s city form needs to be modeled on a more sustainable response to our climate, not the Centenary picture book, circa 1936, and not a forced idyll long since departed.

Hotel Metropolitan, Adelaide

If these are accurate observation, then we don’t seem to be getting in the buildings for businesses, and residences a shift in Adelaide that is a sustainable response to our environment. Nor is the urban form being reinvented for the 21st century. What we have is piecemeal ad-hockery.

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yesterday

I worked in Canberra in the political world for many a long year as a political and policy advisor. Alas, I only returned to photography towards the end of my time there.

yesterday

That’s a pity.I could have done more when I look at the film archives. But I’d given up photography. It was no longer a part of what I was doing at that time. All my cameras had been put away in a cupboard and forgotten.

I don’t recall what made me start to pull them out and start to take photos again.

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competitions

Whilst Suzanne is having fun in Rome I drove down to Victor Harbor for a couple of days to work on some archived images to submit to some local photographic competitions. I am interested in the credit given at a prof lab for processing my the backlog of my medium format work.

This is where where poodlewalk happened this afternoon. We see it as our backyard to so speak as we are walkalong or around there each morning and evening:

Petrel Cove

There is such a sense of space after being confined in the city.

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marine heritage

The poodlewalk was down at Port Adelaide this afternoon. I had a go at the two marine cranes that have been saved; but you can find two far superior interpretations here and here. Local knowledge derived from living in the locality always wins doesn’t it.

marine heritage

I realize that I don’t really know Port Adelaide, even though I ‘m doing a project on it. I’m basically a fly in. I drive down every couple of weeks or so for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon and take some photos. But I’m not really intimate with it’s character.

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returning to digital

I’m so annoyed with the pro-lab processing of my 5×4 film negatives that I had taken in Tasmania–some of them have very matted skies that I cannot correct using Adobe Lightroom. All that bloody expense in getting the gear to Tasmania and then the film and processing. It hurts, big time.

Those with no sky–ie., detail—were okay, and they delivered the detail I wanted.

So I have switched to digital for the moment, while I lick my wounds. Though I’ve gone back to exploring large format possibilities in the Port Adelaide project, I am very hesitant to shoot urbanscapes with skies in large format after being burned by the results of the Tasmanian work.

stobie Pole, Port Adelaide

I’ve kinda lost my confidence with large format, as it is proving much more difficult to pull off than I’d imagined. It’s less a simple step up from medium format than a big leap, and I’ve lost my footing in making the leap.

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heritage at Port Adelaide

This picture of the former Customs Clearing Office, known locally as the Radio Shack, on the corner of Todd and Divett streets, in Port Adelaide shows the state of heritage at the Port. This area has been earmarked for residential redevelopment, and this historic building, which housed the Port Adelaide Radio Club for more than 15 years, has been left to decay.

radio shack

It is currently owned by the South Australian state government Land Management Corporation, whose “primary aim is to provide social, economic and environmental benefits to all South Australians”. It looks as if it will be quarantined from the waterfront development of the “upmarket” lifestyle residences that has stalled since the global financial crisis.

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at Port Adelaide

I went to Port Adelaide this afternoon with the 5×7 Cambo and the poodles in the car as soon as the wind dropped and the clouds rolled in. I had a couple of shots of decayed industrial architecture in mind that I thought would suit this kind of format.

pink door, Port Adelaide

Unfortunately what looked like a rock band was being photographed as a ‘street hoody gang’ at one of the woolstore locations that I had in mind, and, as the poodles would have destroyed the carefully cultivated ‘outlaw’ look, we moved onto another possible location. As soon as we got out of the car to check it out it started to rain. Damnation.

So we walked around the streets where the old warehouses are located for a bit and I took a few snaps with the digital camera, whilst we waited for the rain to stop.

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rising sea levels

I went back to photograph this scene this afternoon with a medium format camera, only to find that it was nothing like it was yesterday afternoon. All the sand, that had provided a balance to the rock in the picture, had gone. We are talking a half a metre of sand that had been washed away by the tide and several levels of rock had been exposed. I was stunned.

moss+rocks

This only confirms to me this kind of global weirding scenario. As I walked along the cliff tops to the beach I could see the sea was swirling around locations on the foreshore that I often photographed in–they were inaccessible.They were surrounded by water and waves crashing over the top of them.

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the little things

I’m down at Victor Harbor nursing a sick poodle who is suffering from a bad bout of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis. Today was the first day I was able to go out on a poodlewalk taking photos since Monday. As Agtet was barely able to walk, I’ve had no luck with large format photography.I was only able to make do walking a short distance with a medium format camera to this spot this afternoon.

grass, rocks, moss

If its the little, humble things that are there in my local commonplaces that are important, then I have to start seeing what is actually there, and then making it into a photo. I have to forget about Suzanne exploring Italy and the romance of old historic places in Europe (eg., Lucca) and concentrate on what is before my eyes.

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street photography

I don’t do that much street photography, even though I live in the heart of this lawyer precinct in Adelaide. I’ve never had the confidence doing this genre with 35m film, let alone using medium format. It is pretty much hit and miss for me and film is too expensive for this kind of work.

Bean Bar, Adelaide CBD

Digital makes it so much easier to experiment and I can check the results on the spot whilst I wait for the next person to move into the urban space I’ve selected. Its convenient. However, the fundamental underpinning is very simple—film and its processing cost money, digital does not.

With the latter you can correct mistakes right away, experiment, try new approaches or techniques and have fun—and do so at no additional cost. It’s a no brainer.

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