A lo fi visual diary
Sunday was a day that Suzanne and I planned to spend together, so early this morning I took some pictures through the window of our room in the hotel. We are on the 15th floor of Oaks on Collins, which is in Melbourne’s CBD and are looking south to the Yarra River, Southbank and Crown Casino.
There was sunshine this morning. I took some pictures because rain is forecast for the next couple of days and there may well be no sun tomorrow morning. Without the sun the urban light is dull and flat.
I flew into Melbourne early this morning.
I started taking photos after I checked my gear into the hotel —Oaks on Collins—along Flinders Lane. I had seen a carpark whilst walking on Collins St with my gear from the Southern Cross Station. I hadn’t taken much notice of it before, even though I walk Flinders Lane each time I’m in Melbourne.
As I have been slowly transferring the text and photos from the working draft of my Adelaide book on Tumblr to the Posterous micropublishing software I’ve realized that the image bank or archive of my photos of Adelaide’s CBD is rather thin. I actually don’t have that many pictures to work from.
So Ari and I have been walking the CBD on our poodlewalks so that I can use my digital camera (a Sony NEX-7) to build up the archive:
I have had limited success. It has been frustrating as I realized that most of the work has been been up high on carpark rooftops in the CBD looking at the texture of the built environment with some on shop windows and the West Terrace Cemetery. It has dawned on me that I have a long way to go with the Adelaide book.
Another day, another poodlewalk in the afternoon cruising car parks with Ari scoping for some different urban views of Adelaide for a large format shoot. Sad to say I have little to show for it.
This picture, the best of today’s bunch, was shot through the grill of the iron bars on the edge of the car park. I’m not sure that I could get a tripod close enough to the grill to poke the lens through the grill; or even if I would be able to get a large format lens through the grill.
I reckon I have found one location from my scoping for a large format urbanscape shoot with the 5×7 Cambo monorail. It is a carpark roof in Hindley St looking south along Bank St up to Currie Street.
Today Ari and I set out about 4pm to walk from our Sturt St townhouse to the Hindley St carpark to check out the late afternoon urban winter light in this location. It’s a soft light in winter in Adelaide–such a contrast from summer— and I wanted to get there just before the last rays of the winter sun disappeared. I wanted to see what this urbanscape actually looked like. The location looks a goer:
I have chosen this time because I wanted people in the picture as opposed to photographing at night with no people. I was interested in people walking home to the railway after leaving work –looking small and overpowered by the mish mash architecture.
It’s been raining heavily and consistently this last week in Adelaide. Winter has arrived. So I haven’t been out photographing in the CBD much. However, I did find a couple of car parks in Adelaide’s CBD–Hindley St and Playford—- on a poodlewalk last weekend.
I checked them out again this afternoon for their possibilities for large format urban photography using my 5×7 Cambo monorail.
There are some. The open roof of Hindley St car park is one, and it will require some planning as its open roof ohas a wire grill around it, and I’ll need to use a step ladder to get myself above it.
Our afternoon walk yesterday and today was spent checking out the open access car parks around Adelaide to see what views they offered of the city for the Adelaide book that I am working on.
I’m using the rooftop locations of these car parks to work from to obtain views of the city skyline. I’m running out of locations and I need to find more. The locations I explored on Saturday, such as The Frome Street car park, weren’t that interesting in terms of the view they offered of the CBD.
My last day in Tasmania was spent in Hobart. Since the plane for Adelaide (via Melbourne) didn’t leave until 4pm I had a day to wander the streets with my old Leica film camera. I wasn’t scoping for large format. I was just taking a look at what was there as the New Tasmania features fresher arrivals and returnees, lured by the notion that Tasmania is an optimal testbed for a niche range of clever cultural and economic initiatives.
I started the day with some photos of the view from my hotel window on Collins Street. This overlooked the Royal Hobart Hospital, which is in the process of being renovated, and the Hobart Private Hospital.
I love Hobart. I think it is a delightful city to walk around and explore. It is a city that still retains its 18th and 19th century architecture. In Sydney and Perth these heritage buildings would have been pulled down to make way for the modernist glass towers of the late twentieth century.
Whilst we were in Melbourne waiting to see if Atget would recover from his operation I spent an afternoon on a photowalk with Stuart Murdoch along Gardiners Creek near, and under, the Monash Freeway.
We walked along a small section of Gardners Creek and the first stop was this old Toorak Rd bridge where the creek became more or less a drain, rather than a creek. It was what is called heavily urbanised. The creek has been degraded in much the same way as many of the other Melbourne eastern suburban waterways.
The last poodlewalk in Melbourne was done by car. On my previous visits to Melbourne I’d seen some architecture on the Nepean Highway that caught my eye, whilst I travelling on the Frankston train to the CBD. So we–Suzanne, Ari and myself— cruised the Nepean Highway from Frankston to Mordiallic looking for “Custom Framing” and a big bold blue building.
It was the day that we had Agtet, our grey standard poodle, put down. We were to drive back to Adelaide early the next morning, and we had heavy hearts and time on our hands. A phototrip in the car was my way of filling in the afternoon. Suzanne drove the car whilst I looked out for the building.