the little places

I find that I often return to the little local places to take my photos, rather than seek to go to the exotic or distant places, such as Shanghai in China; or Zhouzhuang, Jiangsu Province, China; or anywhere in China This is especially the case when I am based in Victor Harbor, as it feels like nowhere, or the edge of the world.

near Petrel Cove

This would be an example. I’ve gone past this rock many times on poodlewalks but I’ve never really looked at it seriously as a photos. I’ve noted it but maybe taken the odd snap, but I’ve never thought—gee that’s a suitable subject for an 8×10. But is it possible using a heavy duty tripod? I’d have to check.

heritage

One of the intriguing aspects of the central market precinct in Adelaide is the heritage buildings that have been preserved and used by the lawyers. It is my local neighbourhood and I often think about how can we respect and celebrate our heritage and meld it with an exciting future. Yet I rarely take photos of it.

Mill St, Adelaide

I decided that needed to change from taking the sporadic photo. I would force myself to start looking at the precinct as a photographer as opposed to being an inhabitant or local who works, lives, shops, and plays in the precinct.

urban-scapes

I’ve been hunting around the Adelaide CBD looking for some high up locations to take large format urbanscapes. These are few and far between, as the roofs of most buildings in the CBD are inaccessible to the public. The best options so far are the car parks, but these have now been grilled to prevent people from jumping off them.

Franklin St, Adelaide

This is one possibility. It’s easily accessible, is an older style car park with the top roof uncovered and open, and the perspective it offers on Franklin Street is suitable for the Cambo 5×7 view camera. It is the best location that I have found so far.

Bam, Pow, Zapp

Our responses to adverts in the city is often a blase one. In moving around the city we rarely distinguish individual advertisements from those of other campaigns and rarely `read’ the advertisement in a classic sense. It’s a defensive mode.

Pulteney Grammar

This is in spite or advertising companies producing urban mappings of the trajectories, speeds, social groups, and experiences in ways that are instrumentally oriented towards selling or promoting those urban `texts’ they write as efficient consumer-targeting material.

a mummy daddy visual language

Photography in the common visual language of the snap shop would be more than an aesthetics of the fragment.This aesthetic has dominated the poetic since the romantics; including the fragment as transmogrified by modernism, high and low, and more recently retooled in the neoclassical form of the citation—ironic and/or decorative—throughout which is called “postmodernism.

Encounter Bay, Victor Harbor

People ofter refer to the common visual language of the snap shop as the mummy daddy language. What is attractive about the visual language of the snapshot is that it is an anti-hierarchical means of organizing knowledge and of recognizing intersections and engagements between seemingly disparate ideas and things.

the ordinary

Engaging with the ordinary in everyday life is both elusive and difficult to represent. It is also difficult to express or communicate what has been represented in an everyday visual language. Is ordinary visual language something other than, or different to, the visual language of our commodity culture? Do we need to unlearn the normal visual language in order to represent and express the ordinary?

beach house, Victor Harbor

I don’t know the answer to these questions.

I do understand that in a society of the spectacle, such as Australian society, much of ordinary life is constructed by consumer culture. In this sense, the shopping mall is the most ordinary environment and shopping the most ordinary activity. Yet, this kind of ordinary in a consumer culture may be quite opposite to the everydayness a photographer might want to evoke.

seeing what things look like as a photograph

When I’m in Victor Harbor I drive past this scene whenever I go to the shops in the car. I keep on looking at it and thinking, ‘ now, that sure looks interesting’. It looks to be a suitable photographic subject. Would it work as a photograph? I kept on looking as I drove to and from the Woolworth’s shopping centre.

Today I decided to incorporate it into a poodle walk, and I took a couple of snaps to see what it would look like as a photograph. If it looks okay as a photograph then what is the best way to shoot it.

Inman River, Victor harbor

This looks okay to me. In fact it’s looks good enough for me to consider reshooting the succulent with a large format camera (5×4) tomorrow afternoon, weather permitting of course.

banksia

As its been raining off and on in Adelaide this past week my photography has consisted of taking a few quick snaps of the banksia in a pot in the townhouses’ corner balcony that overlooks Sturt St. My photographic time has been spent in front of the computer working on archival photos that I’ve scanned.

banksia

The walks during the week have been done between the showers as much as possible. Today is the first sign that the rain depression may be lifting. We have both sun and rain alternating today.

snap shots

It has been raining in Adelaide for several days straight now. Autumn has gone, winter has arrived. I’ve been trying to take the 5×7 Cambo out between the showers to get some photos of the tree roots of Morton Bay Figs. But I’ve had no luck.

Meet the Whole Family

Although it is clear blue skies when I leave, the apartment, by the time I get to the location the showers are sweeping across the ground. It clears, but then it is too dark and the light is too flat. So I’m down to quick snaps whilst walking the dogs in the parklands.

a new urbanism?

I realize that the changes that are slowly taking in the part of the inner city of Adelaide in which I live are an example of the new urbanism. The changes are slow, but there are signs of a reaction to the spreading out of cities, a mixture of work and home emerging, a mixture of classes and a sense of decreasing the dependence on the car.

Victoria Square

New Urbanist town planners, developers, architects, and designers try to reduce traffic, eliminate suburban sprawl, and create inner city neighborhoods that resemble an old European village with homes and businesses clustered together.