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a “Kodak moment”

I just couldn’t resist. I was seduced by the light.

Sunday had been overcast, still and cold at Victor Harbor and on the evening walk around Petrel Cove the sun came out briefly. It illuminated the rocks at the base of Rosetta Head just before it sunk behind the hills. So I took a quick snap:

Rosetta Head, Victor Harbor

It is one of those “Kodak moments”–those most intensely personal moments of our lives that needed to be recorded for memory? Those times when you reached for a camera to stop life for a second, to grab a memory. Remember those when film was king and Kodak was dominant?

Analogue photography then became a piece of nostalgia with digital.Nostalgia turned into something old-fashioned. Old-fashioned became unfashionable. The unfashionable has become hip.

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Hindmarsh River mouth

I’ve come down to Victor Harbor this weekend to scan some old large format negatives that I came across in a box in the storage room. I’d forgotten all about them. The 8×10 negatives are in okay condition. So are the 5×7 negatives. But the 5×4 negatives have deteriorated badly. I’m not sure why that would happen to the 5×4 negatives and not to the larger sized others. Thicker film?

Yesterday’s poodlewalk was around the mouth of the Hindmarsh River. This is a favourite spot for people to walk their dogs, and that meant that Ari could hang out with the dogs and I could take some photos of the beach:

Hindmarsh River mouth, Victor Harbor

It is one part of the coastline that is still in sunshine in the very late afternoon. In winter the light is soft and gentle.

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a long way to go

As I have been slowly transferring the text and photos from the working draft of my Adelaide book on Tumblr to the Posterous micropublishing software I’ve realized that the image bank or archive of my photos of Adelaide’s CBD is rather thin. I actually don’t have that many pictures to work from.

So Ari and I have been walking the CBD on our poodlewalks so that I can use my digital camera (a Sony NEX-7) to build up the archive:

Bartels St, Adelaide

I have had limited success. It has been frustrating as I realized that most of the work has been been up high on carpark rooftops in the CBD looking at the texture of the built environment with some on shop windows and the West Terrace Cemetery. It has dawned on me that I have a long way to go with the Adelaide book.

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Adelaide: looking north

Another day, another poodlewalk in the afternoon cruising car parks with Ari scoping for some different urban views of Adelaide for a large format shoot. Sad to say I have little to show for it.

Sebel Playford, Adelaide

This picture, the best of today’s bunch, was shot through the grill of the iron bars on the edge of the car park. I’m not sure that I could get a tripod close enough to the grill to poke the lens through the grill; or even if I would be able to get a large format lens through the grill.

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stormy weather

I scanned the remaining 5×4 negatives from the Queenstown, Tasmania trip last night. They look good, given the wet conditions I was working under.

The weather at Victor Harbor this weekend has been stormy with lots of rain and wind from the south west. Ari and I got drenched on both the walks yesterday afternoon and early this morning due to heavy rain squalls.

early morning, near Kings Head

There has been little photography even though I carried the Sony NEX-7 with me. The weather was too wild to return to my favourite location at the base of the Newland Clifs on the Heysen Trail to explore the photographic possibilities with the 5×4 Linhof.

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at Victor Harbor

I’ve come down to Encounter Studio at Victor Harbor this weekend to scan the 5×4 negatives from the Tasmanian shoot. Suzanne is staying in Adelaide this weekend.

Rain squalls were sweeping across Adelaide as we left, but the weather at Victor Harbor was sunny and a cool wind was blowing. Ari and I went on a poodlewalk along the cliff tops and the rocky foreshore. The tide was very high, there was more erosion of the dunes on the beach and the seals were hunting along the coast. There was the odd jogger but no southern right whales to be seen. The afternoon walk was very enjoyable after several weeks in the city suffering from the flu and hanging out in car parks.

looking towards King Beach

I got drenched from a rogue wave whilst I was taking photos of the rocks on the shore. I was so busy trying to figure out why the bloody Sony NEX-7 switches to video so easily that I didn’t see it coming.

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urbanscapes

I reckon I have found one location from my scoping for a large format urbanscape shoot with the 5×7 Cambo monorail. It is a carpark roof in Hindley St looking south along Bank St up to Currie Street.

Today Ari and I set out about 4pm to walk from our Sturt St townhouse to the Hindley St carpark to check out the late afternoon urban winter light in this location. It’s a soft light in winter in Adelaide–such a contrast from summer— and I wanted to get there just before the last rays of the winter sun disappeared. I wanted to see what this urbanscape actually looked like. The location looks a goer:

Bank St, Adelaide

I have chosen this time because I wanted people in the picture as opposed to photographing at night with no people. I was interested in people walking home to the railway after leaving work –looking small and overpowered by the mish mash architecture.

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architectural studies

It’s been raining heavily and consistently this last week in Adelaide. Winter has arrived. So I haven’t been out photographing in the CBD much. However, I did find a couple of car parks in Adelaide’s CBD–Hindley St and Playford—- on a poodlewalk last weekend.

I checked them out again this afternoon for their possibilities for large format urban photography using my 5×7 Cambo monorail.

architectural study

There are some. The open roof of Hindley St car park is one, and it will require some planning as its open roof ohas a wire grill around it, and I’ll need to use a step ladder to get myself above it.

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looking for carpark rooftops

Our afternoon walk yesterday and today was spent checking out the open access car parks around Adelaide to see what views they offered of the city for the Adelaide book that I am working on.

Gilbert St, Adelaide

I’m using the rooftop locations of these car parks to work from to obtain views of the city skyline. I’m running out of locations and I need to find more. The locations I explored on Saturday, such as The Frome Street car park, weren’t that interesting in terms of the view they offered of the CBD.

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on a carpark rooftop

I’m back to exploring Adelaide skylines from the rooftop of carparks for future large format shoots. Ari was quite happy tagging along on his afternoon poodlewalk on this one –ie., riding in lifts and hanging out on the rooftops.

Ari, carpark

There is a bit of a construction boom taking place in the CBD—an urban renewal now that the money is beginning to flow to the developers from the banks. The views that existed before I left for Tasmania have changed. What were buildings that were having their foundations laid before I left now rise above the Pitt Street carpark roof.

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