A lo fi visual diary
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.
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.
I’m lost without the use of my digital camera. I had initially bought the pro-sumer Sony DSC R1 to enter the world of digital imaging, to see how the digital work flow operated, and to judge the quality and look of the digital image.
Over the next couple of years using the Sony had become habitual, with it primarily being used to study a particular object or scene to see how it looked as a photograph. I’d post some of these images on the web–on Facebook, Flickr or on my blogs—and if the picture looked okay I’d go back to reshootthe object with a medium or large format camera.
The digital camera was my scoping instrument and sketch pad–a pocket sketch pad as it were.
When it was stolen in Melbourne I found myself back to using film and not knowing how things would look as a photograph. I didn’t like the process of taking pictures blind, especially when it came to using the 5×4 Technika in Ballarat before I caught the overnight bus back to Adelaide. I stayed close to what I could remember from my previous trip and which I had filed away as suitable subjects.
I went photographing yesterday afternoon with Stuart Murdoch. The rain and heavy cloud cover cleared whilst I was travelling on the Frankston train into the CBD, and the bright sunshine put paid to the 5×4 car park rooftops scenario I had planned.
So we decided to explore around North Melbourne and Sunshine. We initially explored the areas along Railway Canal or the Moonee Ponds Creek in North Melbourne that I’d started to explore on an earlier trip.
Luckily for me Stuart knew the area quite well as he had photographed in and around there about a decade ago. There is a bike path under the City Link overpass that provides walking access to the area under the Bolt Bridge over pass. The area has everything—nature, concrete architecture, industry, rubbish–and it is fertile ground for an Australian topographics style of photography.
Things were working out fine in Melbourne.
The Melbourne Silver Mine Inc’s Unsensored11 exhibition had been hung, opened on Friday night at the Collingwood Gallery and opening night was a success. I’d seen the work at the Centre of Contemporary Photography and I was settling into urban photo exploration.
Then my digital camera, wallet, credit cards etc, passport etc were stolen from the back of the gallery on opening night. It was a professional job. I was lucky that I still had the daily tram/train ticket in my pocket–its normally in my bag. So I was able to get back to my sister’s at Safety Beach on the Mornington Peninsula that night.
I’m off to Melbourne this week on the overnight bus with my exhibition print for the Melbourne Silver Mine Inc.’s exhibition of analogue photography at the Collingwood Gallery. The exhibition, entitled Unsensored11 opens Friday night.
I’m arriving Thursday morning and I’m staying on until Tuesday to do some large format urban photography, picking up from where I left off on the last visit.
This particular picture wasn’t composed well. I was rushing because it was starting to rain and I couldn’t remember the digital image from the earlier trip. The negative also had bad light leaks.
Sunday morning is allocated to large format photography. Today it was the urban variety. I waited for the rain to stop, then tried to get a 5×7 of Faraway House, around 8am but it was too late. To get the shot I had to stand in the middle of the road across from a major building site, but there was too much traffic. It could only be handheld work.
The light was all wrong anyway–the sun had shifted much further to the east than I had realized. So I tossed it in, and drove to the tramway overpass location on South Rd for the Adelaide-Glenelg tram. This would be a goer I thought in terms of the light and no traffic:
This is an ideal location for a 5×7 shoot as everybody avoids the stairs and takes the lift to the platform to wait for the tram–they were all going to Glenelg this morning. As I walked around and found the ideal location the wind started, and it swirled around the platforms on the steps.
I’ve been photo-walking the streets of Adelaide these last couple of days. Ostensibly it was to hunt down and photograph the various pasteups down by Peter Drews for his street art project entitled ‘Adelaide’s Forgotten Outlaws! I wanted to do it before the temperatures reached the high 30’s–which they are today.
Then I realized that I was really using this urban wandering to basically look for new locations for the Adelaide book I’m slowly putting together.
I was looking for locations from car parks that would give me a skyline perspective for large format photography. I wasn’t very successful in my last exploration as I was looking for car parks with open roofs, but these are few and far between in Adelaide. This time I was happy enough to check out the car parks with open grills to see what kind of perspective they offered.
We had a 2-3 hour poodlewalk along the coast from Petrel Cove, Victor Harbor, yesterday afternoon. It was overcast and muggy, and I was looking for locations to shoot in black and white using the 8×10 Cambo monorail. I found one.
I also found this one on computer this morning, when I was writing on Landscapes, tourism, the picturesque for the Victor Harbor book.
Unfortunately, I have no idea where this rockface is on the coastline. I just don’t recognize it. It looks suitable–and just what I want– but because I cannot recall its location I don’t know if it is possible to both get the 8×10 down there and to set it up.
On Friday morning I raced home after the gym, had a quick shower and breakfast, caught a tram packed with commuters, and went on a photowalk along Hindley St St on Friday morning. I caught a tram packed with commuter.
I wanted to continue finding more locations for a 5×7 shoot, to explore new territory, take some snaps and search for a suitable location to take a photo at 11.11.11.11
I tossed the photowalk in after the 11:11 shot of the Hawke Building because the light was too strong, and there was too much glare.
It was a gentle sunny morning on the beach at Encounter Parade this morning. It had rained during the night, the air was moist, and there was no wind. Not surprisingly, everybody was out jogging and walking. I took some snaps of the seaside architecture:
I spent yesterday working on the Preface of the Victor Harbor book and setting up a simple Posterous style blog for the images that I will use in the book. So the book is under way. Thank goodness something is finally happening on this front.