Category: digital

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Adelaide skyline

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.

Globe, east end

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.

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early morning, Encounter Bay

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:

beach house, Encounter Bay

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.

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at Victor Harbor

I’ve come down to Victor Harbor for a day or so to continue with the 8×10 large format seaside architectural photography series. I plan to photograph this heritage building tomorrow, weather permitting:

Esplanade, Victor Harbor

In the meantime I’m watching a live stream of the judging of the Epson Australian Institute of Professional Photography’s (AIPP) South Australian Professional Print Awards at the Orange Lane Studio in Norwood.

The commercial architectural shots in this competition are nothing like what I’m doing. Mine are very rough and ready compared to the smooth and carefully calibrated celebration of the architect’s work that the commercial photographers do for their clients. They go for the wow factor, but they do seem unreal in their perfection–almost iconic — compared to mine.

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Brunswick St, Melbourne

One of the pleasures of my recent phototrip in Melbourne was walking around Brunswick Street in Fitzroy with a digital camera. It was liberating after the discipline of large format photography.

I was returning to old haunts, as I used to live in nearby Gore Street whilst studying at the Photographic Studies College in Southbank, and working on the Melbourne trams. I started learning how to do photography (then 35mm black and white) on the grungy streets in, and around, Fitzroy.

Brunswick St, Melbourne

This time I was discovering Brunswick Street afresh as a photographer— exploring a world I knew, yet didn’t know, because so much had changed since I’d lived in Fitzroy.

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urban foto exploration

When I arrived in Melbourne last Friday around 6am it was raining, and it rained most of the day. I did some urban exploration with an umbrella and inbetween the rain showers I took some photos. In the early afternoon I stumbled upon this scene from the open roof of a car park.

Melbourne: looking west

I took a number of scoping pictures before the showers sweeping across the car park became too heavy. I thought that I could return here on the Sunday with the 5×4 Linhof, when Suzanne was at her conference. It wasn’t that far from the Oaks on Market hotel where we were staying.

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8 x 10 shoot

It was overcast with little wind at Victor Harbor early this morning. It looks as if a cool change is on the way with rain forecast.

So I was able to take the Cambo 8×10 out to take some black and white pictures of the local seaside architecture in my neighbourhood. It was something that I’d been planning to do for ages.

seaside architecture, Victor Harbor

I have become interested in the old architecture of this seaside town in South Australia for heritage reasons and because they are a graceful form of regional architecture. The seaside residencies along the foreshore are rapidly being pulled down to make way for the McMansion reworking of the modernist style. So I’m documenting them before they are pulled down to make way for the new.

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Inman River: failure

We are down at Victor Harbor for the long October weekend, and I decided that I needed a break from my rock studies. I needed another little project that I could work on with a large format camera now that I’m aware of what is required. I need something that would allow me to become comfortable using an 8×10 monorail using black and white film, but which didn’t require too much walking with the heavy equipment.

So I’ve been hunting around for a suitable subject. I started exploring the bushland along the Inman River today because it is protected from the coastal winds. But very little in the way of possibilities came of it. It was mostly an exercise in frustration:

waterlilies, Inman River

I went there early this morning on my own and then returned late this afternoon with Suzanne and the poodles. The light was hard to handle and you only have a limited amount of time to take photos. So the scene has to be preselected and the exact time of the day:

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word and way

One of the interesting aspects of Melbourne is its many laneways. You just don’t know what you will find when you walk down one. One I stumbled upon whilst exploring Chinatown and Little Burke Street was Heffernan Lane.This runs between Lonsdale and Little Bourke Sts between Swanston and Russell Sts, which is to say, between Greek street and Chinese street.

I walked past the “Commit No Nuisance” signs, on past the Kum Den Bar and Restaurant and Wing Cheong Food Service, then glimpsed what appeared to be a council No Parking sign:

Evangelos Sakaris, Untitled, Heffernan Lane

Heffernan Lane was the site of artist Evangelos Sakaris’s untitled installation for the City of Melbourne’s Laneway Commissions 2001-2002. Sakaris’s work involved the instalment along the lane of contemporary street signs bearing excerpts of ancient Greek and Chinese texts, to highlight the connections between these cultures.

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Melbourne’s rooftops

I’ve always found it hard to get under the surface of Melbourne when I’m there photographing. I’m more like a tourist exploring the alleyways, the street art, the beach huts along the Mornington Peninsula, or the shop windows–along with everybody else. I was getting nowhere.

Melbourne is being redeveloped at high speed–as if there is no tomorrow. This time I was more focused—I wanted to explore the old and new architecture before the old 19th century disappeared. It just didn’t happen on the first couple of days because I was on the street when I needed to be up higher.

from Curtin House

However, Andrew Wurster kindly took me on a photowalk on Wednesday afternoon in and around Little Burke Street and Chinatown on Wednesday afternoon. Andrew runs the fascinating Urban Photo Mag group on Flickr, and he has an intimate photographic knowledge of Melbourne’s CBD.

We decided to check out the urban views from the various rooftops of the old carparks before going on to Curtin House to have a drink at the rooftop bar in the late afternoon light.

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