Melbourne’s skyline

As I suspected most of the photography done whilst I was in Melbourne and Ballarat over the weekend were snaps taken whilst travelling to and from Ballarat. Unfortunately I had no time for a photographic walk in either city.

on Kings Way, Melbourne

This snap was taken from a car whilst travelling on Kings Way to the Nepean Highway.

Though I’ve always been seduced by Melbourne’s skyline, I’ve rarely had the time to explore it in any systematic fashion. It is difficult to do from the street level with a handheld digital camera.

low light photography

I haven’t done night photography up to now. Judging from Flickr nocturnal photography is very popular and I admire the work of those who photograph at night.

last stand

Objects and scenes look very different at night and in the early morning before dawn. What often looks drab and grey during the day in winter frequently comes alive at night. They are much more atmospheric.And more interesting.

The Coorong: being humbled

I have spent the last day or so scanning some old medium format negatives that I’d taken with my old Linhof medium format camera–Technika 70. The results have been disappointing.

The 6×9 camera back wasn’t working properly, the colours are all over the place, some of the images are underexposed and out of focus, and Silver Efex Pro will not work on them for some reason.

near Salt Creek

It’s all rather humbling. The mostly landscape pictures of the Coorong and the River Murray’s wetlands looked quite okay on the contact sheets, but unlike the work at Andamooka that was done with a Rolleiflex TLR, they have failed to live up to their promise.

fuzzy imagery

Normally my photography is within the crisp focus big depth of field tradition and I usually avoid the out of focus smudgy lens look. This image happened because a wave crashed over the top of me whilst I was photography a rock, drenching me in the process.

I pulled the camera away but it still got wet the camera in the process.The tide was high and the seas were big that day.

flowing water

Though I dried the camera body and the lens,the latter was still rather smudgy when I was taking some shots of flowing water. That kind of picture is the result. It’s a poetic approach to photography that emphasises subjectivity.

boardwalk, Hindmarsh River

The solar photovoltaic electricity system is up and running and I was able to concentrate on doing some photography. This is was the subject that I had in mind for a large format shot, and so I went and checked it out late this afternoon in terms of lighting and composition.

boardwalk, Hindmarsh River

It is a boardwalk along the Hindmarsh River just before it enters the sea at Victor Harbor. So the melaleucas are part of the river’s estuary. I’m standing next to the old railway track. I have room to work in to do either a 5×7 in colour of and an 8×10 in black and white.

red bag

What becomes very noticeable walking with the poodles is the amount of rubbish lying on the streets and in the parklands. Whereas I would have just walked by without a second look–rubbish is just part of the urban background for me—Ari and Agtet check it out very thoroughly. So I am forced to stop and look:

red bag

There is just so much waste.

In the parklands it is mostly the junk food scraps that people leave lying on the ground where they have been sitting. In the city it is mostly packaging and objects that are no longer deemed useful, or have broken down. They have been put on the footpath to be collected.

It was on these walks that I started to realize just how much Australian society throws away as waste. Often the waste is the leftovers from excess consumption. Or the object—including digital cameras— is so badly made that it falls apart and is tossed away. It is not cost effective to repair.