We’ve started wandering down the lane ways in Adelaide’s CBD on some of our early morning poodle walks. I don’t really know them as I mostly walk past them. It is Ari who wants to go down and explore them. So I’ve started to follow him.
This is a laneway off Gawler Place near North Terrace:
laneway, Adelaide CBD
Most of the laneaways in Adelaide are grungy, dirty and neglected. Unlike those in Melbourne, they are not seen to be places for people to gather or hang about. They are urban spaces that you don’t bother going down because there is nothing there. It is recognised that some do need to be cleaned up and ‘re-vitalised’ through good urban design. It is happening slowly, but Leigh Street is a street not a lane way.
The hot weather in Adelaide has continued. It’s been unpleasantly hot these last few days. Even the southern coast at Victor Harbor has offered little relief. Normally it is about 8-10 degrees cooler.
This photo of shop mannequins in Rundle Mall was made the day before we picked up Raffi, our new silver standard poodle pup, from the airport, and drove down to Victor Harbour.
mannequins, Rundle Mall
The photo was made in the early morning whilst I was on my way to the IMVS clinic at the Royal Adelaide Hospital for my yearly blood test.
I had an hour to fill in this morning whilst I waited for new lenses to be put into the old frames of my glasses. So I wandered around the CBD with my digital camera looking at the shops in and around Rundle Mall, the CBD’s premier shopping strip.
$59.95
Nobody was buying. Some of the fashion shops were empty. The shop assistants looked bored. A few of the fashion chain shops had closed. Plenty of people were having coffee with friends and colleagues though.
I wandered around the Adelaide Central Market precinct on Friday morning trying to make sense of all the activity as a photographer. The neon lighting inside the market makes it very difficult to make photos of the fruit and vegetables in the stalls, so I tend to hang around just outside the market.
Zuma, Gouger St
I mostly avoid pictures of people as I am not a street photographer. I search for the more off beat images or for subject matter that would be suitable for making abstractions:
It was 30 degrees (C) last night in Adelaide. As it is going to be over 44 degrees (C) today, I made some photos very early in the morning. I took a break from working out in the gym around 6.15am and went to take some quick photos before the very bright early morning sunlight hit the streets. Then I went back to the gym.
The Wave, Adelaide
I wasn’t really interested in The Wave per se. This was a snap I did on the way to photograph the deserted building on the King William Street and Gilles Street corner. This used to be a Chinese restaurant before they bought The Brecknock pub on the opposite corner and converted it into a restaurant.
I went for a quick a walk around the Central Market precinct this morning after breakfast. It was overcast, muggy and the light was soft. I had a coffee at The Marquis amongst the lawyers, and glanced through the AFR for possible material to bounce off for my public opinion blog.
I put some medium format film into Photoco to be developed, and then started exploring the central market area itself.
Would this picture work as a large format shoot I wondered? I was unsure. I’ll keep coming back to it to have a look.
The market is very dark without the artificial lights, and the neon lights in the various stalls makes the light that falls on the produce contrasty and really ugly. I was looking for an area with vegetables and natural light. I had in mind some sort of still life.
On a poodlewalk last night I noticed that the Adelaide City Council staff had cut down some of the dead elm trees in the parklands near Veale Gardens. The trees had died a couple of years ago from lack of water caused by the ten year long drought.
The sawn branches and trunks were still lying on the ground last night. I presumed that the logs and branches will taken away today, so I photographed them early this morning between 6.30 and 7.30 am.
tree lines
Normally I am at the gym between 6 and 7am each morning, but I have decided to take Wednesday’s off so that I can take some early morning photos in Adelaide. It was overcast so I didn’t have to contend with the sunlight.
It is hot and muggy in Adelaide at the moment. It is around 40 degrees and it is unpleasant to be outside away from the air conditioning. Ari and I stayed in the shadows in the parklands early yesterday evening and we didn’t walk that far. It was too hot. Rain is forecast to be on the way late Friday afternoon, but I’m sure that, in itself, will not reduce the temperature.
I wanted to use the poodlewalk to make some more studies of the Morton Bay Figs in the parklands. I wanted the late summer light on them and I was thinking about the inside and outside of the photographic frame:
I remembered a picture from a year ago, which I’d seen but never returned to photograph. It was in late summer and when I did return the sun had shifted and the last rays no longer fell on the tree. The time difference was only a matter of a week to ten days. I had made some other pictures then, but I felt that I could more.
After returning to Adelaide from painting the weekender at Victor Harbor Ari and I walked the streets of the CBD around the Central Market Precinct. It was the late afternoon walk and I was looking for some ideas to continue working on the Adelaide book.
Cannon St, abstract
Daylight saving had just started and there is now light in the city until after 7pm. Summer is just around the corner. The urban light has changed and become more hard edged. I stay in the shadows more.
Ari and I wandered around Bowden late this afternoon.
I’d gone there to check out Fontanelle, as I understood that there was a darkroom there and workshops on alternative technologies, processing and printing called The Analogue Lab. I was looking for a darkroom in Adelaide to develop my 8×10 black and white sheet film. I presumed that this photographic facility is run in association with the Fontanelle Gallery and Studio in Bowden. Everything was closed.
So Ari and I went walking around the streets. I took a few snaps. This picture of industrial forms (Conroys Smallgoods) was in Sixth Street, just down the road from Fontanelle before the Drayton Street corner. I used to work at Conroys when studying at Flinders University and the money I earned there enabled me to set myself up with different types of large format cameras.
Conroys, Bowden, Adelaide
Bowden was located close to the city, park lands and the train line and it is where I used to live and work in the 1980s. I had a photographic studio and darkroom in Gibson St near Seventh St, and I used to walk around the area and photograph it with medium and large format cameras. I also spent a lot of time walking in the western parklands with Fichte, my standard poodle.
Though I’d develop the film myself, I was never much good at printing (ie., producing a fine print), so I never exhibited the work about Bowden as a place. I just built up an archive of negatives in a filing cabinet. I’ve started to revisit and to digitalize.
