We drove up to Magpie Springs winery this afternoon to scope some photos for their photographic competition. It is situated in the Adealide hills just past the township Willunga on the road to Meadows.
The poodle walk consisted in us slowly walking around the 80 acre property seeing what was there.
stone, Magpie Springs
There is a lot to look at on the property–ponds, water lilies, trees, old machinery, buildings, landscape, vines— and these would change with the morning and afternoon light. Several visits would be needed to become familiar with the property and the different lighting conditions. This makes for an interesting competition.
Ari and I wandered around the Victor Harbor rubbish dump this evening whist we were out looking for material for the pink gum + Xanthorrhoea book. The dump has gone. The whole space was empty.
I was left with dead foxes on a fence and nothing much else.
So we ended up walking down a bush section of the Heysen trail that ran along the edge of grazing land looking for interesting pink gum + Xanthorrhoea combinations.
American River is charming as well as picturesque and peaceful. It teems with bird life and has interesting, low profile walks along the edge of Eastern Cove. Both the northern (Red Bank) and southern sides (Pennington Beach) of the island are easily accessible.
bird sanctuary walk, American River
It is a little world unto itself that allows one to relax and unwind. It’s a gem of a place. Yet Kingscote, the main main town, is close by, if and when you need household supplies.
I was up early this morning–around 4.30 am. I uploaded a photograph for the sea abstraction book that I’m working on, then went out to make some studies for a large format shoot. I was on location at the rocks at the end of Kings Beach Rd by 6am. It was a brilliant morning.
Kings Beach 6am
I had around 2 minutes to work in before the shadows disappeared from the shoreline and the scene went flat. I also had about an hour or so to do photography as the coolness of the morning and the slight sea breeze were to be replaced by a hot north wind and temperatures in the high 30’s.
Ari and I have come down to Victor Harbor to escape the Adelaide heat and to scan a 5×7 negative for a print that has been selected for the Adelaide City Council’s Snap Your City competition. It is refreshingly cool and pleasant on the coast. Summer has arrived in South Australia.
monolith, Victor Harbor
This seascape work is topographical in that represents the surface of a landscape and a place–topographical in the sense of place (topos) and modes of perception (tropos). These are small gestures in a specific place.
Gestures in the way of a map that is not ‘mimetic’ – ie., will not straightforwardly represent the actual space, but one that reflects or expresses the distortions and omissions of the individual’s personal experience of living in this place now being affected by climate change.
It was a frosty morning and the light on the salt fields around 8.30am was bright and clear. Perfect conditions. I’d gone back to take some pictures with the 5×4 Linhof that I’d scoped on the earlier trip:
Cheetham salt field, Adelaide
I wasn’t happy with the pictures of the salt crystallisation ponds I took with the Linhof. I need to be there earlier in the morning. So I’ll go back tomorrow and have another go around the time the sun lightens up the salt mounds.
When we were down at Victor Harbor last weekend Ari and I walked along the back country roads on one of our afternoon walks. It was quiet and peaceful with very little traffic–a healing walk through nature. It had been raining and the roadside vegetation looked green and refreshed. As we walked along I started taking a few photos whilst I waited for the sun to go behind a cloud for a large format shoot I had in mind.
I find the Australian bush very hard to photograph and so I tried to simplify things as much as possible. ‘Walk down a country road on the Fleurieu Peninsula and take ten modernist photographs of pink gum and a Xanthorrhoea’ was the rule I set up. Ari was more interested in taking on the bulls.
In performing this instruction I thought that most writing on Australian photography was in the art history mode that assumed artistic autonomy, authorial agency, medium specificity and its conventions. The photographic art historians –eg., Helen Ennis and Gael Newton— make little or no reference to conceptual art and its core idea that the locus of the work was deemed to be the idea or statement with the work being a performance of that statement.
I’ve been meaning to return to the Cheetham salt field ever since taking this aerial picture. I’d been back a couple of times with the poodles on an afternoon walk on the north and west sides looking for a spot to photograph the piles of salt without much luck.
Earlier this week, when the weather cleared for a day, I found a location that I could access to photograph with a 5×4. This picture was taken on the east side of the Dry Creek salt pans looking west.
Cheetham Salt field, Adelaide
There are plans to develop the salt field site into a mixed-use urban waterfront precinct. The State Government’s 30 year plan for Greater Adelaide identified the Dry Creek salt field area and the adjacent Globe Derby Park as a “key urban expansion” site.
I’ve come down to Victor Harbor this weekend to scan some old large format negatives that I came across in a box in the storage room. I’d forgotten all about them. The 8×10 negatives are in okay condition. So are the 5×7 negatives. But the 5×4 negatives have deteriorated badly. I’m not sure why that would happen to the 5×4 negatives and not to the larger sized others. Thicker film?
Yesterday’s poodlewalk was around the mouth of the Hindmarsh River. This is a favourite spot for people to walk their dogs, and that meant that Ari could hang out with the dogs and I could take some photos of the beach:
Hindmarsh River mouth, Victor Harbor
It is one part of the coastline that is still in sunshine in the very late afternoon. In winter the light is soft and gentle.
Rain squalls were sweeping across Adelaide as we left, but the weather at Victor Harbor was sunny and a cool wind was blowing. Ari and I went on a poodlewalk along the cliff tops and the rocky foreshore. The tide was very high, there was more erosion of the dunes on the beach and the seals were hunting along the coast. There was the odd jogger but no southern right whales to be seen. The afternoon walk was very enjoyable after several weeks in the city suffering from the flu and hanging out in car parks.
looking towards King Beach
I got drenched from a rogue wave whilst I was taking photos of the rocks on the shore. I was so busy trying to figure out why the bloody Sony NEX-7 switches to video so easily that I didn’t see it coming.
