trees Archives - Poodle Walks

October 6, 2021October 9, 2021

them’s the lucky breaks

My days during the first week of October have been spent in front of my old iMac computer struggling to get The Bowden Archives and Industrial Modemity into shape as a book project. The roots of the project are in an unfinished MA (in images and dissertation) at Flinders University in the 1980s. Unfinished because I’d put it and the photography to one side to do a PhD in philosophy.

The title of the proposed book has been recently changed in response to criticism that the original title The Bowden Archives and Other Marginalia was very misleading because it down played the non-Bowden sections.

I have been working on, and reworking, the No Longer, Not Yet text for the Roadtrips photo gallery, as this text has been causing me a lot of grief. I have only managed to produce a rough draft so far. Finally, this draft text does connect with the reset of the book, and at this stage, I am happy to count the small steps as big achievements. Giant steps in fact.

So there has been very little photography done over and above what was snapped whilst on the various poodlewalks:

Sometimes, on these walks, there were photo possibilities, other times there was nothing. It was pretty much hit and miss. Some days I don’t even bother taking the camera out of the car as I wanted to get the walk over quickly because I felt compelled to get back to the computer to keep working on the text. It’s like returning to being in PhD mode.

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February 16, 2021March 4, 2021

photographing: large format

We are at the mid-February point of summer and the weather has been more of the same: cool and overcast with just the odd hot day with a north easterly wind. The hot weather started this week but it is forecasted to last for only several days this week — not the normal two weeks. Maybe that will come in March.

I have stepped up the training programme for the camel trek by walking Rosetta Head twice a week and climbing up steeper approach and been working on a website for the Bowden Archives and Other Marginalia. I have also taken advantage of the cooler weather to photograph roadside vegetation in the early morning with the 5×7 Cambo monorail. I have been inspired by Mark Darragh’s large format photos on Flickr.

Cambo5x7 monorail — am, Baum Rd, Waitpinga,

At the moment I ‘m running my film stock down before I make the major annual purchase through B+H in New York. I have only half a box of the 5×7 Kodak Portra 160 ASA left.

It’s been a matter of selecting the location, knowing the time the light shines on the trees, setting the camera up, then waiting for the light to shine through the trees at the required time. Often the moving cloud cover means that there is no sunlight. So the large format equipment is packed away in the Forester and I continue the poodlewalk with Kayla.

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September 4, 2020September 21, 2020

bush + coast

The afternoon walks through the local bush will soon be coming to an end as we came across a brown snake the other afternoon whilst we were walking along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga. I was surprised to see it on the side of the road because it was still late winter, and the day temperatures up to that date had not been that warm.

From now on the poodlewalks in the bush or scrub will need to be in early morning as its too cold for snakes. Kayla and I usually start walking around sunrise and I am looking out for the early morning light. It is changing.

The late afternoon walks with Maleko will, by and large, be along the coastal rocks between Petrel Cove and Kings Beach. We have to walk part of the way along the Heritage Trail to reach the rocks. As we have seen the odd brown snake along this path in the past, I keep an eye out.

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July 16, 2020July 16, 2020

Waitpinga bushland

As part of building up some supplementary images as a background for the forthcoming online walking/photography exhibition at Encounters Gallery I have been photographing in a small patch of bushland in Waitpinga. I needed a contrast to the Littoral Zone images.

The roadside vegetation that I see whilst walking the back country roads is limited in terms of photographic subject matter. So I have been wandering and exploring this bushland on both the early morning with Kayla and at the late afternoon poodlewalks with Maleko.

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June 3, 2020June 10, 2020

winter starts: walking and thinking

June 1 dawned with cold, blustery south westerly winds, dark clouds, driving rain and big seas. Winter had arrived on cue.

This cloud formation is what greeted Kayla and myself on the early morning poodlewalk on June 1. We hugged the northern edge of Rosetta Head to escape the 50 km south-westerly wind. I was looking across Encounter Bay to Goolwa and to the Coorong.

The weather was too wild to continue to the top of Rosetta Head and down the southern side, so we turned away from the coast, which is where we normally walk and photograph, jumped in the car and drove inland to seek some protection from the gusty, driving wind. We walked up and down Depledge Rd for about 30-40 minutes before I decided to return to exploring the bush “reserve” that ran adjacent to the western side of Depledge Rd in Waitpinga. We had had walked within this “reserve” a few days before.

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November 17, 2019December 28, 2019

November: am

During the first two weeks in November the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula has been buffeted by strong westerly winds. Only the odd days here and there have been without the wind. It is only in this third week of November that I have returned to walking along the beach around the mouth of the Inman River in the early morning or amongst the rocks west of Petrel Cove in the late afternoon.

It is usually quiet on the Esplanade Beach early in the morning. There are not very many people walking along this beach—just the odd local person walking their dog. So Kayla and I have the beach pretty much to ourselves.

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July 22, 2019September 19, 2019

Inman River walks

During the autumn of 2018 I made a number of afternoon poodlewalks with Maleko and Kayla along a couple of the walking trails by the Inman River. One of these trails was a walk around the small redgum loop trail by the river near Armstrong ( Ring Route ) Rd. I did this several times, including a few in the morning, before the trail became flooded. On the odd occasion on the redgum woodland loop walk I photographed with a film camera.

Another walk we sometimes did was the linear one along the floodplain on the eastern side of the river amongst that is populated by kangaroos. We would start from the old SA Water waste treatment plant on Canton Place and then make our way along the redgums on the floodplain to where the river passed the Victor Harbor cemetery. We would then slowly make our way back to the Forester in Canton Place as dusk started to fall:

I meant to return to the floodplain area during the winter of 2018 when the river was flowing with a film camera and tripod, but I never did. I only ever scoped the floodplain as I found the floodplain difficult to photograph: just trees, a dry river bed, and leaves on the ground.

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February 21, 2019May 15, 2019

returning to the Heysen Trail

In the last week or so I have returned to walking along the Waitpinga section of the Heysen Trail in the morning with Kayla and in the afternoon with Maleko. This section of the Heysen Trail is a narrow strip of scrub or bush that runs between two roads, and it is bounded by two grazing paddocks (cattle and sheep). The narrow strip is a corridor that is quite dense in parts.

The mornings and afternoons have been overcast with minimal wind, and this has allowed me to do some black and white film photography of tree subjects that I had photographed in colour a couple of years ago. I started the scoping here.

Whilst walking to and from the photo sites on both the morning and the afternoon poodlewalks I made some exploratory/scoping studies of different subject matter in the scrub/bush for some future film photography. This is an example:

I would have walked past this branch on the edge of the path of the Heysen Trail many times without ever having seen it. I only saw it this time because Kayla went exploring in the undergrowth behind the branch. I quickly made a snap and moved on.

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January 2, 2019May 15, 2019

the Xmas break 2018

The weather along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula over the Xmas break was surprisingly cool; surprisingly so, given the record breaking heatwave across central and south-eastern Australia.

Despite having several friends stay with us in and around the Xmas break, it was a quiet holiday for me. I’d sprained my right shoulder one morning just before Xmas day whilst helping Suzanne to make the bed.

The shoulder became inflamed and, as it involved shoulder bursitis pain, I was obliged to rest the right arm in a sling for a couple of days over Xmas before seeing a physiotherapist late in the Xmas/New Year Day week. I was given a set of exercises to do for a week to strengthen the strained shoulder muscle.

Then the injury would be reassessed. The prognosis was that it could take 2-8 weeks to heal, depending on how I responded to the various exercises. I’ve had good days and bad days so far. Continue reading “the Xmas break 2018”

July 19, 2018July 20, 2018

at Kuitpo Forest Reserve

We usually visit the Kuitpo Forest Reserve for the afternoon poodlewalk when we are on our return journey to Encounter Bay after the poodles have spent the day at the Mt Barker dog groomers. These occasions are once every six weeks–poodles are high maintenance— and we when we are walking in the forest we routinely avoid walking in the pinus radiata plantation areas .

We prefer to wander within the small sparse areas of eucalyptus in the forest reserve:

All goes smoothly on the walk, if we avoid the campers, the campsite foreplaces and the various kangaroos in this part of Kuitpo Forest.

I usually walk around with a digital camera. The light in the forest after 4pm during the winter is often too low to be able to use hand held film cameras:

And during summer months the light at 4pm is very bright and contrasty. The gates are closed around 4pm during the fire season to prevent any camping.

So winter is the time for photography Kuitpo Forest Reserve as the sun in the late afternoon is low enough to gently lighten up the trees.