The hot weather in Adelaide has continued. It’s been unpleasantly hot these last few days. Even the southern coast at Victor Harbor has offered little relief. Normally it is about 8-10 degrees cooler.
This photo of shop mannequins in Rundle Mall was made the day before we picked up Raffi, our new silver standard poodle pup, from the airport, and drove down to Victor Harbour.
mannequins, Rundle Mall
The photo was made in the early morning whilst I was on my way to the IMVS clinic at the Royal Adelaide Hospital for my yearly blood test.
I had an hour to fill in this morning whilst I waited for new lenses to be put into the old frames of my glasses. So I wandered around the CBD with my digital camera looking at the shops in and around Rundle Mall, the CBD’s premier shopping strip.
$59.95
Nobody was buying. Some of the fashion shops were empty. The shop assistants looked bored. A few of the fashion chain shops had closed. Plenty of people were having coffee with friends and colleagues though.
I started out using the Leica with a 35mm lens (a Summicron F2-ASPH) as I walked through the dense shopping precinct that is Rundle Mall. It was just as I would have done in my pre-digital days. But I actually ended up using the Sony a lot more. I did so without thinking about it. It was instinctive in a photographic sense.
exclusivity
The film Leica with its expensive lens was basically put away in favour of the pro-sumer digital Sony because the latter was more flexible, I could get more shots with the variable Zeiss lens, and I felt a lot more more comfortable experimenting with digital than film. Film costs money. Towards the end–on the way back through Rundle Mall after having the blood test—I only used the Lecia if I thought that I had a worthwhile image.
So this confirms what I said in my earlier post about using 35mm cameras. The shift to digital at this format is a worthwhile investment. That means the film camera is used in order to get that film look. Or the Leica ‘look’.
I combined yesterday’s walk into the city to pick up the rubbish for the still life photoshoot with a few snaps. They were taken on the way into Hindley Street.
window shopping
The initial part of my walk left me rather down. Adelaide is so boring and depressing. Nothing much happens here. Its dead. The streets are empty. The place feels asleep. There seems to be little potential for urban change. Culture here is about big festivals and keeping old buildings from falling down.
The only real opportunity I had to do a photowalk yesterday on the trip from Hobart to Tasmania was at Oatlands, a historic Georgian town in Tasmania’s Midlands
wedding dress, Oatlands
The westerly wind was strong and bitter. It was extremely chilling so I didn’t hang around for too long, exploring the Georgian architecture that the town is known for.
There are not that many retail shops in the urban neighbourhood in which our town house is located. It is part of the south-western corner of Adelaide’s CBD. It was mostly light industrial plus working class housing area in the 20th century. In the 21st century it is undergoing regional regeneration as residents, lawyers and small business move in.
The most fascinating part of this regeneration are the international students and the emergence of educational and other supoorting services (food, hairdressers, supermarkets, fashion etc) in and around the Central Market precinct.
white belt
This has bought some energy and life to Adelaide’s deadened CBD —-this precinct is now overflowing with people going about their everyday lives; relaxing in the coffeeshops and restaurants; and just hanging about enjoying themselves.
One of the afternoon walks we often do when we are at Victor Harbor is a cliff top walk to King Beach. I often then cut back along the rocky foreshore to explore the rocky cliffs with my point and shoot digital camera.
The walk along the cliff-top is part of the Heysen Trail; a 1,200km long distance walking trail in South Australia that extends from Cape Jervis, on the rugged south coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula, to Parachilna Gorge, in the Flinders Ranges.
rock face, Kings Beach
On these kind of walks I am looking for objects, landscape details and scenes that would be suitable for taking a photo with a large format camera. I did return to photograph this rock detail with a 5×7 Cambo monorail, but I have yet to have the sheet film processed at a pro-lab.
There are not many shops on the poodle walk to and from our inner city Sturt Street townhouse to the Adelaide Parklands. One of the few is the Salvation Army shop on Whitmore Square:
Salvation Army shop
The shop is set up to make money for the Salvation Army. The goods–furniture, clothes, nick-knacks, accessories–must be in good condition and desired by consumers. To all intents and purposes it is a retro shop selling vintage gems. They are fussy about the quality of the goods that you can give them free and their window display is varied and interesting.
