Poodle Walks

December 7, 2012

Central Market precinct

I went for a quick a walk around the Central Market precinct this morning after breakfast. It was overcast, muggy and the light was soft. I had a coffee at The Marquis amongst the lawyers, and glanced through the AFR for possible material to bounce off for my public opinion blog.

I put some medium format film into Photoco to be developed, and then started exploring the central market area itself.

Would this picture work as a large format shoot I wondered? I was unsure. I’ll keep coming back to it to have a look.

The market is very dark without the artificial lights, and the neon lights in the various stalls makes the light that falls on the produce contrasty and really ugly. I was looking for an area with vegetables and natural light. I had in mind some sort of still life.

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December 6, 2012

organic abstract

The weather is warming up again. It was a gentle meandering walk amongst the eucalypts in the parklands looking at the tree trunks this evening. The trunks of the eucalypts are to loose their bark and to change colour.I started looking for possible abstracts:

I was interested to see if I could take abstractions with the Sony NEX-7 with a Leica Summicron 35m asph lens. This functions as a 50mm lens on the NEX-7, due to the crop factor of the smaller than full frame sensor and it doesn’t allow you to get very close to the object.

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December 5, 2012

tree lines

On a poodlewalk last night I noticed that the Adelaide City Council staff had cut down some of the dead elm trees in the parklands near Veale Gardens. The trees had died a couple of years ago from lack of water caused by the ten year long drought.

The sawn branches and trunks were still lying on the ground last night. I presumed that the logs and branches will taken away today, so I photographed them early this morning between 6.30 and 7.30 am.

Normally I am at the gym between 6 and 7am each morning, but I have decided to take Wednesday’s off so that I can take some early morning photos in Adelaide. It was overcast so I didn’t have to contend with the sunlight.

December 3, 2012

urban grunge

This architectural urban decay is locked behind a fence that protects a private carpark for those working in the lawyer precinct. It is difficult to gain access to the car park because the gate is always closed and operated by a card. I was allowed in because Ari did his cute act.

The site is earmarked for development–glass tower office blocks, judging from the advertising. Nothing much is happening, even though this site is in the heart of the CBD in the central market precinct.

November 29, 2012

remembering a picture

It is hot and muggy in Adelaide at the moment. It is around 40 degrees and it is unpleasant to be outside away from the air conditioning. Ari and I stayed in the shadows in the parklands early yesterday evening and we didn’t walk that far. It was too hot. Rain is forecast to be on the way late Friday afternoon, but I’m sure that, in itself, will not reduce the temperature.

I wanted to use the poodlewalk to make some more studies of the Morton Bay Figs in the parklands. I wanted the late summer light on them and I was thinking about the inside and outside of the photographic frame:

I remembered a picture from a year ago, which I’d seen but never returned to photograph. It was in late summer and when I did return the sun had shifted and the last rays no longer fell on the tree. The time difference was only a matter of a week to ten days. I had made some other pictures then, but I felt that I could more.

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November 27, 2012

summer has arrived

Summer has arrived in Adelaide. The Morton Bay Figs in the Adelaide Parklands are starting to drop their leaves from heat stress. Many of them died during the long drought and those that survived have only just recovered their canopy.

Our poodlewalks have changed now that the temperatures are in the mid to high thirties. We walk after 6pm and we remain in the shade. We avoid the sun as much as possible. THe experience of the drought indicated that the future of many cities and towns, including Perth and Adelaide, was, and is, threatened through lack of drinking water.

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November 25, 2012

small gestures in specific places

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.

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.

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November 24, 2012

an errant meander in western Adelaide

I’ve started to include the western part of the city in our daily walks when I am in Adelaide.

It’s an area that is undergoing change due to the student living connected to the western campus of the University of South Australia, the state Labor government’s investment in a new public hospital and medical research facilities, and the new tramline along North Terrace to the Entertainment Centre. Is an old Adelaide disappearing, as a new cityscape emerges? A vision of a more vital Adelaide.

The real estate agents are talking of a boom. It’s early days. The empty lots, warehouses and workshops are going to be replaced by new housing developments. What sort? High rise? Medium rise? Will there be any concern for the street life? Will new cafe’s and bars spring up?

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November 22, 2012

Nth Terrace reflections

Ari and I went wandering down the west part of the CBD. I had to drop a book— Formless: a user’s guide by Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss-— off at the University of South Australia library library and I wanted to scope the new South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute centre (SAHMRI) currently being built on Nth Terrace.

I’ve tried a few of the more conventional or modernist approaches to photographing the SAHMRI but none have worked. I’ve been frustrated by this as the restricted access to the site provides a photographer with little options.

Maybe this can help to make the shift away from a Greenbergian high modernism that emphasises “significant form,” “the autonomy of the work of art,” “pure visuality,” “transcendence,” the quest for “the essential,” etc without embracing the anti-aesthetic position of postmodernism in the arts.

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November 20, 2012

modern urban grunge

Ari and I wandered around the west part of Adelaide this evening. The north west wind and high temperatures had gone as the cool change had come through. The air was cool, it was overcast and the light was soft. There were lots of young people out and about: walking the streets, sitting on balconies and drinking at pavement tables outside the various pubs.

Adelaide actually felt alive–revitalized.

My starting point, the idea that I had prior to the evening walk, was urban grunge in the form of the stalled development around the Precinct redevelopment of the former Balfours site on the corner Morphett and Franklin Streets in Adelaide. The high rise apartments –the Altitude–reminded me of an Eastern European housing commision site when it was being built.

I had the above in mind and I reckoned that Ari would find a way to get through the fence. He did.

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