Poodle Walks

February 21, 2013

Raffi

I am very constrained with respect to my photography at the moment, as we have an 8 week old silver standard poodle pup that requires a lot of attention to burn off the energy. We have taken a weeks holiday to adjust and are down to Victor Harbor to help ease him into our routines. Despite the high energy the places that we can go to are limited.

I’ve pretty much lost the early morning photography as I am walking Raffi along the foreshore to get him used to the life of the seashore whilst Suzanne walks Ari. Then I am walking Ari and Raffi in the early evening.

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February 18, 2013

along Rundle Mall

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.

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.

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February 14, 2013

hidden treasures

We are experiencing a week of high temperatures in the mid-to high 30’s C in Adelaide at the moment.

That means the buildings and pavement in the city retain their heat in the early evening, we live and work in the buildings with the airconditioners running most of the time, and we avoid walking around the city during the heat of the day.

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February 11, 2013

lost bearings

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.

That ends my photographic exploration of the dump within a coastal landscape.

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.

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February 7, 2013

filling in time

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.

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.

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February 4, 2013

empty shops

One of the things that we keep on coming across on our poodlewalks in the CBD are the empty shops and offices. They seem to be everywhere we walk. Does that suggest that small business is doing it hard because consumers are not spending?

Some of the signs on the windows say that some of the small businesses are moving out of the CBD to the inner suburb, presumably due to the lower rents. I would think that others would have gone into debt and they have to sell up. The dreams become nightmares. The economy is not booming and the job opportunities are no longer abundant.

However, what I do notice is that the empty shops are not being filled with new tenants. They remain empty for long periods of time. What does that mean for the CBD’s economy? Is it structurally changing? Or are people just hanging on?

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February 2, 2013

Gouger Street

I wandered around the Adelaide Central Market precinct on Friday morning trying to make sense of all the activity as a photographer. The neon lighting inside the market makes it very difficult to make photos of the fruit and vegetables in the stalls, so I tend to hang around just outside the market.

I mostly avoid pictures of people as I am not a street photographer. I search for the more off beat images or for subject matter that would be suitable for making abstractions:

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January 27, 2013

at Dog Beach

We are at Victor Harbor for the Australia Day weekend. Most of the afternoon was spent in the digital suite of Encounter Studio getting the iMac up and running after its hard disc was replaced through Apple’s Seagate call back programme.

The late afternoon poodlewalk along the cliff tops to what we call Dog Beach was a quick one. The rock studies that I took basically picked up from where I’d left off before we went to American River on Kangaroo Island.

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January 25, 2013

‘a slight mistake’

A phone call from my pro-lab. There’s been a slight mistake made. We have crossed processed your colour negative film (C-41 process) as slide film (E-6 process). My heart sank. So much time and effort had gone into making those photos. I quickly went down to have a look. The negatives have an image–they’ve been exposed okay and there were no light leaks–but they look very orange.

The picture below was taken on an early morning poodlewalk. A similar one was made with the 5×4.

The 5×4 negatives have been given to the pro-lab’s scanning and art department to see if they can be rescued.

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January 22, 2013

Independence Point trail

On our second to last evening at American River Ari and I walked along a section of the Independence Point trail. We have been out at the Redbank Cliffs earlier in the day but, once the cloud cover went around midday,the sun and heat defeated us. We could only work at midday because the high tide at early morning and late afternoon prevented access to the foot of the cliffs.

So we wanted an easy walk in the late afternoon where we could mooch around:

I was basically looking for more landscape possibilities for the 5×4 Linhof, but I didn’t find that much that was worthwhile. Maybe the above picture. Still, it was a pleasant walk.

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