A lo fi visual diary
We spent the 3 day Queens birthday weekend (7-9th June) at Victor Harbor trying to avoid the day tripper crowds on our poodlewalks. People are discovering that winter on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula is quite pleasant.
Kings Beach was one option as winter time means that there is no one swimming or sunning themselves on the beach.
People were mostly walking along the Heysen Trail, which meant that we could walk the beach slowly around to the rock coast of Kings Head.
Since 1am our town house has been included in the police lockdown in Adelaide’s CBD as part of their manhunt for an armed Rodney Clavell. The police say they have Clavell cornered just around the corner in King William St. We are surrounded by police. It is difficult coming and going.
I had difficulty getting back into the house at 5.45 am after walking Ari. Suzanne wasn’t allowed to enter our house through the roller doors at the back of the house when returning from walking Raffi at 6am. I had managed to talk my way in when returning from walking Ari at 5.45am. Suzanne had to come to the gym to get my house keys to enter through the front door. I then had trouble getting into the house after the gym.
The 2-3 weeks of the so called “Indian Summer” that southern Australia experienced in late Autumn has finished. The rains have come along with the storm clouds. The rain was really needed.
It rained steadily all day yesterday at Victor Harbor on the Fleurieu Peninsula. We got very wet on both the morning and evening poodle walks.
Ari and I wandered around Adelaide’s CBD early this morning.It was Sunday and so the city streets were relatively quiet apart from people (young males) spilling out from the nightclubs. The early morning light was flat and drab as there was fog hanging around. There was no early morning sunlight.
We walked to the Morphett Street Bridge then returned to Sturt St via the University of South Australia.
I was looking for material for my 1picaday2014 project and keen to have another look at the University of South Australia’s new Jeffrey Smart Building on Hindley St that was designed by architects John Wardle and Phillips/Pilkington.
I’ve registered for Fleurieu Four Seasons Prize for Landscape Photography. However, I’m finding that it takes a lot of time and petrol to explore and scope the west side of the Fleurieu Peninsula. I dropped Suzanne off at the Seaford Railway station so that she could return to Adelaide for work on Monday sand I could return to Victor Harbor via exploring the west side of the Fleurieu Peninsula.
We pretty much hung around Lady Bay, which is just south of Normanville and Yankillia:
I was checking out to see whether the late afternoon sun in autumn had moved to the right place for a picture that I had in mind. Here is the picture:
We have 6 days at American River on Kangaroo Island with friends. The time is spent relaxing, going for walks, reading, taking photos and enjoying the calm and overcast autumn conditions.
Ari and wander around the wetlands between the road and Pelican Lagoon. There is more water around the wetlands because of the very high tides.
We are at Victor Harbor for the Easter to Anzac Day break. As it’s also school holidays we have been trying to avoid the crowds by going to Kings Beach and Kings Head for our poodle walks.
These locations have had fewer people than Petrel Cove, Dog Beach or the mouth of the Hindmarsh River. We have had to be careful walking around the rocks in this area because it has been a high tide in the late afternoon, and the waves have been very big because of the full moon.
On Sunday mornings when we are in Adelaide Ari and I generally walk the CBD. It’s reasonably quiet and safe to wander the streets and this allows me to concentrate on photographic scoping with my digital camera.
This particular building–Sir Samuel Way Building, which was formerly Moore’s Department Store –is at the end of the street in which we live. It fronts onto Victoria Square and it was transformed from a department store into a comprehensive law courts building in the early 1980s.
Whilst walking the streets that morning I kept on thinking how the photographic culture has changed as a result of the digital revolution. Its not just the steady improvement in digital cameras or the existence of community-based photo sites like Flickr; it is also the emergence of online galleries and photography magazines, such as Refractions which are sifting and winnowing the published work that is a core part of the culture of 21st century image-making.
I spent a couple of days at Encounter Studio in Victor Harbor scanning a variety of negatives that had been taken earlier this year. Rolls of 35mm colour, 6×6, colour, black and white, and tranny and 5×4 colour sheet film needed to be done.
Scanning film is a slow, tedious task. I do not enjoy it. So I welcomed the break in the late afternoon to walk the poodles around the mouth of the Hindmarsh River in Encounter Bay, along the beach and through the estuary.
I’d initially checked the Hindmarsh estuary out because I wanted to do some large format studies of the melaleucas in the estuary that I’d scooped last year. But they were still flooded. There hadn’t been enough rain for the river flow cut through the sand bar and open the mouth of the river. So the water was backing up.
We’ve started wandering down the lane ways in Adelaide’s CBD on some of our early morning poodle walks. I don’t really know them as I mostly walk past them. It is Ari who wants to go down and explore them. So I’ve started to follow him.
This is a laneway off Gawler Place near North Terrace:
Most of the laneaways in Adelaide are grungy, dirty and neglected. Unlike those in Melbourne, they are not seen to be places for people to gather or hang about. They are urban spaces that you don’t bother going down because there is nothing there. It is recognised that some do need to be cleaned up and ‘re-vitalised’ through good urban design. It is happening slowly, but Leigh Street is a street not a lane way.