Author: poodleadmin

Gary is a blogger and photographer based in Victor Harbor on the Fleurieu Peninsula, in South Australia.
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moonrise over the southern ocean

Autumn has been quite warm this year with only a few days of rain that suggest winter is an approaching.

This picture was snapped on the evening before a sou’westerly cold front moved across the coast the next day. It was a mild and warm dusk and it was very still. People were out swimming, walking, fishing, playing at Petrel Cove, fishing and running even though it was dusk.

moonrise
moonrise

I was returning to the car park at Petrel Cove from a walk with Ari and Maleko just as the moon was rising over the southern ocean south of Rosetta Head, or the Bluff. I couldn’t resist taking handheld a snap.
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along Jagger Rd, Waitpinga

Suzanne is currently away walking the Heysen Trail around Burra and Spalding region for a week. I’m at Encounter Bay minding the standard poodles and scanning negatives from local poodlewalks and from the Coorong and previous Mallee Highway trips.

I’m also doing the curation administration for two group exhibitions in September–an abstraction one at the Light Gallery and one entitled Weltraum at Magpie Springs for the Shimmer Photographic Biennale.

roadside vegetation, Jagger Rd
roadside vegetation, Jagger Rd

This is one of the images from the local poodle walks along Jagger Rd in Waitpinga earlier this year. It’s a scoping image that I re-photographed with the 5×4 Linhof Technika the following day.

It was Easter time, as I remember a male sleeping rough nearby. He’d been tossed out of his home by his wife and he was missing his kids. He spun me a story about how he had decided to travel around Australia on the cheap cos he wanted freedom. He added that being disconnected from the digital world—a digital detox?— meant that he could reclaim a sense of self, freedom and creativity and so lead a more authentic and fulfilling life. I wished him luck in his quest.
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a hot and dry autumn

So far autumn—-that is March and April—in southern Australia has been hot and dry with very little rain. It feels unseasonably warm in the sense of the temperatures being above normal. Presumably, the current spike in warm weather is happening partly because of the El Niño that spread a pulse of warm water across the Pacific Ocean in 2015. That El Niño is now dissipating, spreading the warmer water around Australia, raising temperatures.

surfer+fisherman, Petrel Cove
surfer+fisherman, Petrel Cove

These warm temperatures—-there is heat in the sun at 9am in the morning—that is caused by a dissipating El Niño is happening on top of the background of global warming. What we are seeing and experiencing is a continuous process of global warming that is superimposed on to the natural variability. Long term that means longer heatwaves, greater droughts, less water and rising sea levels for southern Australia.
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a tree study

This was one of the last images I made on a poodle walk before the digital SONY NEX-7 went into the camera shop to have its sensor cleaned. The sensor had become really dirty on the road trips to the Coorong and to Wallaroos and the camera’s cleaning mechanism was up to the task. I needed the sensor to be cleaned for the road trip along the Mallee Highway next week.

tree study
tree study

I see the same objects every day, in slightly different light and from slightly different angles on specific poodle walks. This is what contributes to my overall impression and memories of the object: it isn’t a single encounter but a series of experiences. So I select the most suitable–in this case 5×7 format, late afternoon light, and some cloud— rather than going in the composite direction.

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early morning

I have been away on a couple of photo trips without the standard poodles. The last one to the Yorke Peninsula was based on camping out, rather than renting a cabin or house, which is quite expensive. I would like to take one of the poodles with me on these road trips but I’m still finding my feet camping. It’s over 25 years since I last camped.

In between the trips we have gone on our usual poodle walks along the coast and the back country roads in the early morning and in the late afternoon. One in the early morning light:

coastal grasses
coastal grasses

The long summer holiday season has gone and the recreational crowds have vanished. The weather may be cooler and the winds stronger, but we pretty much have the beaches to ourselves once again.
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After Easter

The Easter crowds from Adelaide have come and gone from the southern coast of Fleurieu Peninsula.

It is now possible to return to walking the foreshore and exploring the beaches instead of walking back country roads to avoid the holiday crowd making the most of their playtime. There seems to be a lot more people playing along the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast than there used to be. A lot more cars are cruising around exploring the coast.

quartz, Deps Beach
quartz, Deps Beach

Summer is over and we are now in autumn. The light has shifted, daylight saving finishes this weekend, and the photographs that I had scoped and lined up are no longer possibly because the early morning sun has shifted much further to the west. Continue reading “After Easter”

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at Currency Creek

We all went for a walk at Currency Creek on the previous long weekend–Adelaide Cup Day. I hadn’t been there for ages–several years in fact. The photography that I did then was rather disappointing, and I hadn’t been all that keen on returning. This was a family outing:

Currency Creek
Currency Creek

On previous visits we have had the place to ourselves. Not this time. It was packed. People were camping in the picnic ground that is opposite the historic Kingsbrook estate. There are now a lot more people touring around and visiting the Fleurieu Peninsula these days.

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at Port Adelaide

After I’d taken Maleko to see the Chirovet at Old Port Rd at Albert Park, near Port Adelaide, I drove down to the Port for a coffee at the Red Lime Shack cafe in Vincent Street. Then Maleko and I wandered around the Port. I was going to do some scoping before I returned to Adelaide to pick my negatives from Atkins Photo Lab. Unlike Bond Imaging in Melbourne Atkins still continue to develop roll and sheet colour film.

It had been raining during the night and in the morning in Adelaide, but the cloud cover was starting to break up when we started walking. The Port looked picturesque with Grand Big Top of the Zirka Circus next to Hart’s Mill. Another sign that the revitalisation of the Port was happening. I couldn’t resist taking a snap:

circus, Port Adelaide
circus, Port Adelaide

I had planned to spend a couple of hours exploring, and returning to walk around Mutton Cove Conservation Reserve in Osborne, but it was very hot and humid around midday so the photowalk was cut short.
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Mad March 2016

If it is autumn on the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula, then it is still summer in Adelaide. So I discovered when I walked the city taking in the various Magic Object visual art exhibitions in this years Adelaide Festival of Arts whilst I waited for the Subaru Outback to be serviced.

I was more than happy to return to the cooler temperatures of the coast after spending several hours walking the city in the 36 degrees heat with its high humidity, due to a low-intensity heatwave that has hovered over south-eastern Australia for the past week. We have early autumn temperatures in the mid-to-high 20s on the coast.

Rosetta Head
Rosetta Head

It’s Mad March in the Adelaide with Festival, the open access Fringe and Womadelaide.

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