Poodle Walks

April 1, 2014

Rosetta Head

The poodles and I are at Victor Harbor for a couple of days. The weather has returned to summer conditions: it is dry, hot and strong northerly winds. People were out walking before dawn this morning to escape the heat.People have been swimming and surfing at Petrel Cove since Sunday.

It’s autumn but it really feels like summer with families hanging out on the beach in the late afternoon. It was actually too hot to have breakfast on the balcony this morning.

Raffi burned off his energy by chasing rabbits and kangaroos whilst Ari and I scrambled around Rosetta Head. I took the odd snap but I was thinking about how to take a photo of the Petrel Cove landscape through the car window for the April ‘windows’ theme in the 1picaday2014 project.

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March 26, 2014

revisiting Magpie Springs

Ari and I made another visit to Magpie Springs for another photoshoot for their photo competition. The exhibition there was Rita Hall’s Museum bird studies. These were mostly arrange into compositions, singularly rather than in groups.

The emphasis of these drawings/water colours/oils is on the bird’s forms, the shadows they created, their colours, textures and shapes. Rita Hall used the South Australian Museum’s collections in her work.

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March 24, 2014

coastal architecture

I’ve started re-engaging with the local beachside architecture on the early morning poodle walks with Ari given my inability to represent ‘summer on the coast’ this year.

Some of the older coastal architecture is not going to last. A lot of the weekenders built in the 1940s -70s period are shoddier pseudo crap boxes on large blocks of land. The land is more important than the buildings and the latter will be no loss when they are eventually pulled down.

March 15, 2014

wandering in the West Terrace Cemetery

The poodlewalk yesterday afternoon was in the West Terrace Cemetery in the Adelaide parklands that surround the square mile of the city. We returned there because I was sick of all the junk food and rubbish that was tossed on the ground in the Adelaide parklands proper and fighting the dogs over chicken bones. I wanted an easy walk away from the rubbish and the people playing sport so that could concentrate on photography.

sport.

I was looking for material for my 1picaday2014 project. The graveyards in the cemetery have lots of letters and signs to work with as many of the gravestones have been badly damaged by vandals.

March 10, 2014

the clouds have returned

We have had what seems like weeks of blue sky and bright sunshine with only the odd puffy cloud here and there. Finally, the clouds returned to the coast late yesterday afternoon when we were on the Kings Beach walk:

It was a welcome sight. Summer, with its heat waves, is finally over. The patterns the wispy clouds were forming around 7pm yesterday were intriguing.

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March 4, 2014

views from The Bluff

This is a landscape picture taken whilst standing on top of Rosetta Head or The Bluff in the early morning, just after the sun has risen. It is looking west and it shows the cliff top walk and the beaches that we enjoy when we are at Victor Harbor. Petrel Cove is in the foreground, then Dog Beach and in the distance Kings Beach and Kings Head. The ocean is the Southern Ocean.

It has become a very popular spot as it is the beginning of the Heysen Trail. There are lots of locals walking their dogs, people fishing, as well as the usual bevy of day tourists.

We–Ari, Raffi and myself— walked around The Bluff before sunrise this morning before we returned to Adelaide via Mt Barker.

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February 28, 2014

Mad March in Adelaide

‘Mad March’ is here tomorrow and that means its Festival time in Adelaide. Fringe, the Adelaide Festival of Arts, the Clipsal 500 and Womadealide. There’s even a state election for political junkies.

Ari and I continue to cruise the CBD in the late afternoon looking for spots with interesting interplay of light and shadow:

It’s the 1picaday2014 project that has motivated me to get out and walk the city–to get away from the computer and working on images for an exhibition in April.

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February 23, 2014

cliff top walk

The days and nights are cooler now and there is a touch of autumn in the air along the coast at Victor Harbour. The sun is still hot but a strong south westerly was blowing on last evening’s cliff top walk to Kings Beach.

I was on the look out for pictures of shadows for the 1picaday project, but the cloud cover came in whilst we were walking.

I ended up driving to a spot near the cliff tops after the walk; a location I was considering for a large format shoot.

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February 20, 2014

at Magpie Springs

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.

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.

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February 18, 2014

Grunge

The heatwave conditions have passed, as has the high humidity that followed it for several days. It is now pleasant to walk the city streets of Adelaide and explore back alleyways:

Some of the alleyways behind the Gouger St restaurant strip are really grungy.