Tag: coastline

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at Newland Heads: digital photography

We spent the long weekend just passed (Queens birthday?) down at Victor Harbor. I used the time on the afternoon poodlewalks to refine the focusing on the Sony NEX-7 and to explore its image quality. What I wanted to know was whether could I get most of the pictures I was taking in focus and, secondly, whether the larger sensor could handle landscape detail as good as 35mm film.

rock pool, Newland Cliffs

I mostly succeeded with the focusing issue–all were in focus. And I was pretty happy with the image quality of this picture. The 24.3 Megapixel sensor produces images that are an improvement on those produced by the 10 Megapixel sensor of the old Sony DSC R1 that I used to use.

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beyond Kings Head

We are down at Victor Harbor for a couple of days–the last few days of Suzanne’s holidays. We return to Adelaide on Sunday.The days down here are being spent painting the living room of the weekender and gardening.

The autumn weather is still, overcast and temperate–it’s good coastal landscape photography weather. So yesterday afternoon and early this morning I walked along the Heysen Trail past Kings Head on to the rocky outcrop foot of the Newland cliffs. This is where I’d been photographing before the Queenstown trip.

Victor Harbor, near Kings Head, digital, Olympus, Newland cliffs

Though my Sony NEX-7 has finally arrived, I cannot get it to work with a Leica 35mm lens. I’m finding the user interface to be very complicated indeed. So I took the 5×4 Linhof this morning plus Suzanne’s Olympus XZ-1 digital camera for further scoping.

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exploring the King River

I went up to the Mt Lyell open cut mine this morning as part of the ‘Now and Then’ team. I was unable to do much photography along the lines of rephotographing the old photos. The vantage points the early 20th century photographers used have long gone, and I didn’t have a telephoto lens. So I’ve decided to work off site looking over at the mine site from the hills opposite the mine.

Mt Lyell mine

It was a day of sunshine and passing showers. In the afternoon I walked down to the mouth of the King River where it enters Macquarie Harbour. I wanted to start to explore this riverine landscape, which I’d only seen on google earth maps on an iPad.

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a walk but no photography

Ari and I went on a photowalk early this morning along the Heysen Trail past Kings Head to an outcrop of rock just west of the Kings Beach Retreat. I’d photographed there around there earlier this year. With Agtet gone Ari is depressed and lacking in energy and motivation.

But he did pick up yesterday afternoon when we visited Kings Beach. Hence the decision to do a longer walk this morning; one that would take us closer to the eastern boundary of the Newland Head Conservation Park.

rock detail, Kings Head.

As it was overcast, I carried the medium format camera gear and tripod. My new digital camera–a Sony Nex-7— has yet to arrive in Adelaide. The conditions were hopeless for photography: strong south westerly winds, pounding seas, floating waves of sea spray drifting across the ricks and sea foam swirling through the air. The seals didn’t seem to mind the turbulent conditions though.

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Xmas holiday comes to a close

The Xmas holiday at Victor Harbor is now over. We return to Adelaide and the routines of work this afternoon. The two weeks have given me the space and the time to find my photographic stride, to explore some new ideas and to wait for the suitable weather conditions for photography.

sea shells, Kings Beach

We’ve never spent two weeks at a time in Victor Harbor—its always been either 2 days on the weekend or the 4 days over the Easterbreak. Those two weeks gave me time to find new photographic locations, namely roadside vegetation and the rocks and foreshore around from Kings Head.

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meandering on the seashore

The poodles and I meandered along the foreshore near Petrel Cove on our evening walk yesterday. I had the old Kodak Easyshare camera in my pocket and I used it to play around with a variety of closeups of the flora on the coast.

spiky grass

These are the kind of pictures that I cannot get with my film cameras as working from the tripod does not allow me to access the various knooks and crannies amongst the rocks. Yet some of the more interesting pictures can be found in the detail of the seashore.

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walking along a country road

It is too hot to take photos at the moment. It’s extremely bright, with full sun, no clouds, and the temperature is around 40 degrees. It’s summer beach weather for the crowds of holiday makers I guess. I’ve given up walking along the coast on the later afternoon or early evening walk –it’s just too hot.

The picture below was taken whilst the temperatures were a temperate 25 degrees and there was some cloud cover in the morning and afternoon:

Heysen Trail, near Kings Beach

During the high temperatures of the last few days we’ve been walking along the coastal backroads. They are dusty but the remnant bush vegetation provides some sort of shade for us from the heat of the late afternoon sun. I can put up with the dust for some shade.

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in the studio

My time since Xmas Day has been spent cleaning up, and reorganizing, in Encounter Studio and doing some photography around Victor Harbor early in the morning.The cleanup has also involved me starting to go through the archive of the black and negatives from the days when I used to have a darkroom and I processed my own film. I’m beginning to scan them.

I stumbled across this negative of Bowden in a box of old black and white 5×7 contact sheets. I would have tray developed the film. It was a pleasant surprise to see that the negative was in good condition and was properly exposed. I would have had other 8×10 negatives but I cannot locate them.

The picture below of the boatsheds at Second Valley, near Yankalilla in the Fleurieu Peninsula is in keeping with history, memories and archive as these no longer exist. They were pulled down around 2009.

boatsheds, Second Valley, Fleurieu Peninsula

They were a favourite subject of local photographers and much photographed:—I even think that there was some kind of photographic wake or meet just before they were pulled down.There is an in memoriam Flickr group.

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Xmas day

Whilst Suzanne was walking the dogs along the cliff tops this morning I did a quick photoshoot with the 8×10 Cambo of the pier or causeway to Granite Island near Victor Harbor. As there was cloud cover with little wind it was an opportunity not to be missed.

Granite Island causeway

I had an old and very basic Kodak Easyshare point and shoot digital camera with me to take a few digital snaps. It is 5 megapixels has a tendency to fire the flash at any opportunity and runs on a couple of AA batteries. A digital version of Kodak’s old box brownie?

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in the moment

We spent this weekend down at Victor Harbor, and the fine, early summer weather meant some long walks with the poodles along the beach that were coupled to me exploring the possibilities at the foot of the granite cliffs for rock abstractions.

cliff top walk, Victor Harbor

I was exploring these possibilities in order to use the 5×4 Linhof. I’m becoming increasingly comfortable with this style of photography and I want to devote more of my time and energy to it.

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