rocks Archives - Page 5 of 10

September 9, 2017

playtime

Suzanne has gone off to walk the Wilderness Trail on Kangaroo Island. She will be away for most of this week with her bush walking group.

While she is away Kayla, Maleko and I will have some fun, playing with light and shadows:

And I’ll try and do some local photography, start planning another Mallee Routes photo trip, read more about photobook making, continue to edit the essays for the Bowden Archives book and start getting the Adelaide Photography 1970-2000 book (with Moon Arrow Press) off the ground.
Continue reading “playtime”

September 6, 2017February 2, 2018

Petrel Cove: stormy days

The glorious spring weather disappeared completley on the weekend just past. Since Sunday morning strong south-westerly winds and rain have pounded the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast. The wind has been bitterly cold. Fortunately, it was no superstorm, as they experience with the Atlantic basin hurricanes. I cannot imagine what winds of 180 mph or higher would be like. The winds of category 5 hurricanes must be life threatening.

The local storm caused large waves to roll in from the southern ocean, and these have made it very difficult for us to walk around the coastal rocks on our poodle walks. We haven’t been able to go very far around the rocks at all.

It has just been too dangerous for us to walk around the rocks as the huge waves were coupled with high tides. The seventh wave–a storm surge?–has generally been monstrous.

Continue reading “Petrel Cove: stormy days”

September 4, 2017

still life

Suzanne returned home to Encounter Bay late today after finishing walking the Heysen Trail. It was a 3 year commitment. A major achievement. She is home for 3 days then she is off on Saturday to walk the new Kangaroo Island Wilderness Trail for several days.

Whilst she was away I have been working on this photobook project: selecting images from the archives of the digital photos that I have made on the various coastal poodle walks over the last 4 years. I noted that the photos improved in the latter years.

I guess I was becoming more confident in the type of photos that I wanted to make–details of the coastal landscape. During that time I had lots of nagging doubts about the nature of the Fleurieuscapes project, and where I wanted it to go.

My initial selection produced around 150 photos.So there is going to have to be a big cull. Or a volume 2. The next step after the cull is to have Atkins Photo Lab make 6×4 prints of the images and then sort them into a sequence. Once that is done I can then put them into a notebook with blank pages and ring binding to give me a dummy book which I can show people.

August 25, 2017

Vale Ari

We had to put Ari down this afternoon.

He was suffering from paralysed nerves in his larynx which made breathing for him very difficult. He overheated at the dog groomers yesterday, collapsed with a panic attack, and had to be rushed to the Mt Barker Veterinary Clinic to be sedated.

Today he could barely walk up our drive. He was very weak and he could not balance on the tiles in the laundry–his back legs just slide underneath him and he would lie spreadeagled on the floor unable to get up. He was a month shy of being 16 years old. He lived a full life with lots of walks.

This is one of the last photos that I took of Ari. It was in autumn in 2017 on an early morning poodlewalk along Encounter Bay. The photo is from this session in March:

I didn’t take any more after this.

Continue reading “Vale Ari”

July 10, 2017

Jason Blake passes through Encounter Bay

Jason Blake stayed over night at our place in Encounter Bay on his way back to his high rise apartment in Melbourne’s CBD. He was on the return leg of his road trip from Melbourne to Alice Springs and he need to get the compressor in his Ranger Rover replaced at Lonsdale.

He accompanied Maleko, Kayla and myself on a poodlewalk east along the rocks from Kings Beach Road to Depp’s Beach late yesterday afternoon and took the opportunity of the 70 minutes or so walk to make a number of photos as we slowly made away along the rocks. Whilst Jason and I photographed the colours of the various granite rock formations the two standard poodles raced around and engaged in their play fights.

The 3 or 4 days of rain that we’d experienced had just passed, and the light that afternoon around 4pm was gentle and soft. The cloud cover came in just after 5pm and the light became dull and flat.
Continue reading “Jason Blake passes through Encounter Bay”

June 11, 2017

a helping hand

I am fortunate that Madeline, our temporary next door neighbour at Encounter Bay, has kindly offered to walk Ari on the late afternoon poodlewalk several times a week. That frees me up to venture along the coastal rocks on the late afternoon poodlewalks with Kayla and Maleko. I have even been able to use the opportunity to make a couple of photos of the coastal rocks with my Rolleiflex SL66 film camera.

This does make for a welcome change from the routine of walking along the back country roads on the morning walk and the Heysen Trail for the afternoon walk. That routine grinds me down.
Continue reading “a helping hand”

May 21, 2017

an interlude

Suzanne’s return from walking the Heysen Trail freed me up to walk Ari on his in the morning, and then walk with Maleko and Kayla amongst the coastal foreshore on the afternoon poodle walk. I am able to reconnect to what I was doing with the Littoral Zone.

Unfortunately, Suzanne is not at home in Encounter Bay long enough for me to do a road trip to the Mallee to continue to work on the Mallee Routes The week or so that Suzanne is at home before she goes to Cuba and Mexico is a brief interlude.

Then Suzanne is away for four weeks. Continue reading “an interlude”

March 27, 2017January 3, 2018

Ari

Ari is going on 16 years of age and he has slowed down a lot. His hearing and sight are limited, he has dementia, and he is wobbly on his back legs. The course of acupuncture is keeping him going as is the companionship with the younger poodles.

The morning walks have decreased in terms of the time spent we spend walking. We walk slowly along the road down to the beach, shuffling along as it were.

The autumn mornings before sunrise are a great time to be walking. It is soft and gentle time. There a few walkers, runners and bikers but it is pretty quiet. So we can meander and hang out amongst the rocks along the beach . We are able to just enjoy the moments together and he still enjoys having his photo taken.

Continue reading “Ari”

March 7, 2017

Gallery?

I have been trying to create a gallery for poodlewalks, but I don’t seem to be able to with this free theme or template. This was the image that I was trying to kick things off with. Another version of the image on a walk late last year around Petrel Cove is on The Littoral Zone blog.

Whilst I was trying to create a project page, the first of which is abstractions, I lost the WordPress theme for poodlewalks. I have spent ages trying to find the one that I had been using and which I quite liked.

February 15, 2017

returning to normal

The high summer season is over, people have returned to work, and we are back from our holiday in Tasmania. Life on the coast, with its early morning and late afternoon poodlewalks, is starting to return to normal.

I had been busy working on The Bowden Archives and Other Marginalia project throughout January and I didn’t really have the time to update poodlewalks, even though I’d been doing the daily walks.
Continue reading “returning to normal”