A lo fi visual diary
The temperatures have cooled and it is possible to start a poodlewalk around 5.30-6pm, walk to a location and take some photos. Ari and I walked to Kings Head yesterday afternoon, and I took a few snaps— plus some studies for large format photography.
It’s a favourite section of the coastline of the Southern Fleurieu Peninsula, and I have made a number of photographs there. There is something about the location that keeps drawing me back, but I am not sure what that something is.
I was up early this morning–around 4.30 am. I uploaded a photograph for the sea abstraction book that I’m working on, then went out to make some studies for a large format shoot. I was on location at the rocks at the end of Kings Beach Rd by 6am. It was a brilliant morning.
I had around 2 minutes to work in before the shadows disappeared from the shoreline and the scene went flat. I also had about an hour or so to do photography as the coolness of the morning and the slight sea breeze were to be replaced by a hot north wind and temperatures in the high 30’s.
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.
Suzanne is currently in Brisbane for a conference whilst Ari and I are down at Victor Habor. We return to Adelaide today.
The days are still coolish, overcast, and with south easterly winds. The tide has been very low at this time and so we can venture further out on the reef.The evening walks now happen between 6pm and 8pm because, with daylight saving, that is when the afternoon light along the coast softens.
The afternoon walks have been spent looking for material for the gallery and, in particular, this rock form which I’d snapped on a walk the last time we were at Victor Harbor. It looked suitable for the Victor Harbor book, and I wanted to see whether it was possible to reshoot it with a large format camera.
It was a small shape and I couldn’t remember where it was on the rock foreshore between Petrel Cove and Kings Beach. It took two evening walks and 4 hours to find it. I finally found it last night, around 7.30 pm, just as the sun was disappearing behind the hill.
On Tuesday I made a quick visit to Victor Harbor to install a new modem for Encounter Studio.
Ari and I managed to do an evening walk along the coastline west of Petrel Cove and east of Kings Beach; one that involved scrambling amongst the granite rocks on the foreshore and walking along a bit of a goat track on the cliff face that Ari had found. I was looking for a location at low tide to do some sea abstractions.
I’d seen this rusty gas bottle a year or more earlier and I noticed that the rust had become more intense. I was going to walk by because the digital photo I took then was pretty ordinary and bland.
On our early morning along the beach at Encounter Bay, Victor Harbor at 6am there was a hot and strong north wind, heavy cloud cover, and spots of rain. It was around 22-28 degrees. Ari walked in the sea to keep cool.
A cool change was on the way. It looked to be a storm coming in from the south west. Maybe even thunderstorms. Despite the wind gusts of 50 kph people were launching boats to go fishing on the southern ocean. Crazy.
Before we returned to to Adelaide from Victor Harbor Ari and I walked amongst the rocks just east of the road to Kings Beach. I was wanting to do more sea abstracts. I recalled that there was an area of the coast with a small stream from the hills flowing through the rock to the sea and that the rock pools had some strange colours.
The pools looked weird and strange. Were they were conducive to being photographed in the late afternoon?
How would the rock pools photograph as abstractions from nature? What kind of abstractions would emerge? I’d been glancing through Lyle Rexer’s The Edge of Vision:The Rise of Abstraction in Photography–it’s the first book in English to document and contextualize this canon.
Though some of the pictures are formal rather than abstract, and are concerned withe the medium of photograpahy I’ve been impressed by the diversity of the work.
Ari and I cruised the beach at Encounter Bay this morning at sunrise. It was a warm spring morning. The tide was low, the sun light was soft because of the cloud cover, and there was no wind. There was no one around and we had the beach to ourselves. The clouds disappeared and the wind came up after we’d finished our walk.
These rocks are along the foreshore. They are part of a large mass of rocks that had been put there by the council long ago to protect the footpath along Franklin Parade from the sea. They gleamed in the early morning light. I couldn’t resist taking a snap.
I’ve come down to Victor Harbor after hanging some pictures of the Fleuriu Peninsula in the Tin Shed Cafe in McLaren Vale as part of the Shimmer Photography Festival. It’s very low fi because I cannot afford to have a large exhibition with a substantial body of work. I have to work towards it.
Early last Thursday morning Ari and I walked along the beach near Franklin Parade at Encounter Bay in Victor Harbor. We had an hour or so of fine weather after sunrise before the big storm front was due to hit the coastline.
I was interested in seeing the erosion that is beginning to happen along this foreshore, due to the rising sea levels. These are impacting on the South Australian coastline as well as other parts of Australia’s coastline.
There had been more erosion along this part of the foreshore. The Victor Harbor Council is aware of what is happening, but it’s proactive policy response is to replace the sand, rather than protect the footpath with rocks. Rocks are too expensive. But they will have to do something more substantial than sand as the option of planned retreat is not feasible here.
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:
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.