A lo fi visual diary
An example of me slowly finding my feet in the scrub/bush. Ari, Malek and I walked along the Heysen Trail in Waitpinga in the late afternoon and hung out at this spot:
I am increasingly shifting to photographing the bush in black and white, even though I scope the bush that we are walking through in colour with either a digital camera or an iPhone.
Continue reading “photographing”
It’s Xmas/New Year summer holiday time.
Apart from the odd couple of days when we had a cool change, the weather has been hot, with clear blue skies, full sun and glaring light. The land is drying out and there have been bush fires along the Victorian coast of the Great Ocean Rd—–at Wye River on Xmas Day. We had planned to stay near there in February on our way back from Melbourne.
Our poodlewalks are earlier in the morning now and further afield in the afternoon. We are trying to avoid all the runners, walkers, bikers, dog walkers, families, surfers from Adelaide who have just come down to the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast for their summer break.
I am continuing to use my APSC digital camera (a Sony NEX-7) as my everyday walkabout camera, thereby continuing my slow walk from film photography to digital imaging. My everyday walkabout camera used to be a film Leica. No more.I am not a dyed-in-the-wool Leicaphile. Sony’s NEX-7, which was Sony’s flagship camera only three years ago, is a handy, friendly, high-performance compact camera. It’s very functional for the diary-style photos on poodle walks as opposed to the art photography ones on the galleries of my website.
Continue reading “Xmas/New Year holidays”
After returning from the Wellington trip the early morning poodle walks in Victor Harbor have been around Rosetta Head (The Bluff). We—Ari, Kayla and myself– have started walking on the Bluff at sunrise. This is just before 6am during the early summer months.
I’m still interested in photographing the landscape around The Bluff in the early morning light now that summer is here, and the local landscape has that dried brown look.
Continue reading “Rosetta Head, Victor Harbor”
This picture was made whilst I was walking with the three standard poodles around the lagoon of the Hindmarsh River at Encounter Bay, Victor Harbor, late in the afternoon:
I was scoping as usual— looking for photographic subjects whilst on the poodlewalks.
Basically I am teaching myself how to photograph the bush and, to a lesser extent, the foreshore along the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula. The latter work is mostly abstractions of the rocks on the coastline.
Continue reading “along Hindmarsh lagoon”
I returned to an old country road that I used to walk along in winter yesterday evening with Maleko and Ari. I was tempted because the late afternoon light was soft due to the cloud cover, and I hoped that the various grass seeds along the roadside vegetation the side of the road would be manageable with Maleko racing around. I was wondering how much of the roadside vegetation had changed during the spring.
We normally walk on the beach this time of the year because of the grass seeds. The previous night’s walk along Hall Creek Rd–to see if things would be okay— was a disaster grass seed wise.
The land is drying, the temperatures are warmer than usual (starting to be in the early 30s) and the dust is forming on the roadside vegetation. Southern Australia looks to be in the grip of an El Niño that has been established in the Pacific for the last six months and it is not expected that El Nino will break down until after the start of 2016. That means below-average rainfall across eastern Australia in winter and spring, and also warmer-than-normal daytime temperatures over the southern half of the country.
Continue reading “Xanthorrhoea”
Suzanne is currently away walking in the Mt Remarkable National Park around the Alligator Gorge area. It’s a short walking holiday based at Alligator Lodge with some friends from the Larapinta walk that they did earlier in 2015. She will explore the Mt Remarkable area again next year when walking section 43 of the Heysen Trail. Hopefully, Suzanne will scout for some good photographic sites.
I’m at Encounter Bay minding the 3 standard poodles and looking for areas to walk in the morning and evening, which are away from people and grass seeds. In the morning that requires me to be walking on the beach at Encounter Bay before everyone else comes out, take a quick photo of objects near the sand dunes, then move on. We are generally back home by 7am.
In the evening the best option is to walk to Kings Beach in Waitpinga, then hang out around Kings Head because nobody goes there other than the odd surfer when the waves are rolling right. People prefer the beach to the rocky outcrops and so they miss the dolphins cruising by around the headland. The Heysen Trail walkers go over the top of Kings Head on their way to the Newland cliffs.
Continue reading “an open air studio”
My time recently has been spent working on the website’s various galleries Two of the earlier portfolios are now pretty much in place—Bowden and Port Adelaide. They look pretty good. The next step is to reconfigure the rest of the portfolios in this carousel style.
The daily poodle walks in both the morning and evening have been just quicker walks with little time being spent on scoping photography. The grasses are rapidly drying out on the coast and they represent a real problem as they hook onto the standard poodle’s coats, and then quickly work their way into the skin. So I am avoiding areas where there are lots of grass seeds.
The Rambler picture in the old Victor Harbor dump was one of the last scoping photos that I’ve done. Rambler is slowly falling apart from neglect. Rambler was built by Peter Sharp at Cruickshanks Corner, Port Adelaide in 1875 and it was possibly Australia’s oldest racing yacht.
It used to on the slips at Searle’s Boatyard–in the historic boatyards in the Central Basin of the Port River–before Port Adelaide’s oldest surviving boatyard was closed down to make way for the residential waterfront redevelopment of Port Adelaide. The redevelopment at Newport Quays failed to regenerate Port Adelaide. The development of the expensive dog boxes on the waterfront was scrapped but not before it had successfully destroyed the fabric of the history of the port.
It is sad to see Rambler just being left in the ex-dump site to rot. It needed have been so, since it just wasn’t necessary to destroy the Port Adelaide’s oldest surviving boatyard for expensive dog boxes that never eventuated.
Continue reading “a slow decay”
Suzanne and I are currently in the process deciding whether we will stay in Victor Harbor or move back into the south-east corner of the city of Adelaide. The latter is the more capital expensive option (an architecturally designed extension to a cottage) whilst living on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast at Victor Harbor means that we are much more isolated. We are currently swinging between staying and going at the moment. There are advantages and disadvantages to both options.
One disadvantage for me in living at Victor Harbor is the limited opportunities that it offers for urban photography–ie., the flâneur, the casual wanderer, observer and reporter of street-life in the modern city. This kind of work now requires either day trips to Adelaide, major trips to Melbourne or road trips. Consequently, my daily photographs made on the morning and afternoon poodlewalks are nature orientated. I do feel constrained by this.
Hence the idea of quickly constructing the image as a still life whilst on the walks, since it is not really possible to bring the seaweed and rocks back to the studio to photograph.
Continue reading “staying or going?”
The weekend just passed was very springlike with warm temperatures, sunshine and blue skies. Suzanne wanted take us for a poodlewalk along Keen Rd last night, but we left it a bit late to start our and so we didn’t get all that far along the road. It runs over a hill between two valleys–Back Valley and Inman Valley. Unlike some of the country roads in the area Keen Rd has roadside vegetation.
Keen Rd is a section of the Heysen Trail in Waitpinga that she had walked with her group a month or so ago. Most of the Heyesen Trail in the Fleurieu Peninsula region is through conservation parks or farmland and these are off-limits for walking the poodles. We are basically left with country roads to walk along and when we do, we cross our fingers and hope that there there is little traffic in the late afternoon.
Unlike some of the country roads in the area Keen Rd has roadside vegetation. There was little car traffic last night apart from a truck carrying bales of hay from one paddock to the next. It left trails of dust that hung in the air for some time because the air was still— the coastal wind had died.
Continue reading “walking Keen Road”
Winter has passed and spring has arrived in South Australia.
It is becoming warmer and the light is changing very quickly: sunrise is an hour earlier, sunset is an hour latter and the light is more intense and brighter early in the morning and in the late afternoon. The change in the seasons was very sudden.
The warmer weather means that there are more people on the coast, such as joggers, fishermen, dog walkers, walkers, surfies, day trippers, children swimming and playing on the beaches etc, which in turn makes our poodlewalks more complicated. People say that winter on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast is to be avoided, as they find it too cold.I enjoy the winter on the coast.
Continue reading “Spring”