As a break from working on, and uploading, some of the digital work from the Wellington trip, I’ve been figuring out to photograph trees, and, more generally, the local remnant scrub along the coastal sand dunes and on the roadside vegetation along the back country roads.
coastal tree
I see lots of trees on our poodle walks, and I’m finding it hard to both photograph them and do it well. Most of the tree images for the forthcoming Fleurieuscapes photographic exhibition at Magpie Springs never made it past the second cut. That says that I need to lift my game. Continue reading “photographing trees”
Apart from the odd couple of days when we had a cool change, the weather has been hot, with clear blue skies, full sun and glaring light. The land is drying out and there have been bush fires along the Victorian coast of the Great Ocean Rd—–at Wye River on Xmas Day. We had planned to stay near there in February on our way back from Melbourne.
Our poodlewalks are earlier in the morning now and further afield in the afternoon. We are trying to avoid all the runners, walkers, bikers, dog walkers, families, surfers from Adelaide who have just come down to the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast for their summer break.
quartz + seaweed
I am continuing to use my APSC digital camera (a Sony NEX-7) as my everyday walkabout camera, thereby continuing my slow walk from film photography to digital imaging. My everyday walkabout camera used to be a film Leica. No more.I am not a dyed-in-the-wool Leicaphile. Sony’s NEX-7, which was Sony’s flagship camera only three years ago, is a handy, friendly, high-performance compact camera. It’s very functional for the diary-style photos on poodle walks as opposed to the art photography ones on the galleries of my website. Continue reading “Xmas/New Year holidays”
The early morning poodlewalk today was along the beach between the mouth of the Inman River and Police Point near the Granite Island causeway in Encounter Bay. This is the beach east of Kent Reserve and I call it the Esplanade beach in the absence of any official name.
I wanted to have a closer look at the erosion along this section of the beach and to see how the Victor Harbor Council is planning to protect this part of the coastline from the sea eroding the foreshore and the sand dunes. I knew that sections of the foreshore along the Franklin Parade seawall is under threat from sea level rise and storm surges and that it requires upgrading.
After returning from the Wellington trip the early morning poodle walks in Victor Harbor have been around Rosetta Head (The Bluff). We—Ari, Kayla and myself– have started walking on the Bluff at sunrise. This is just before 6am during the early summer months.
Encounter Bay, 6am
I’m still interested in photographing the landscape around The Bluff in the early morning light now that summer is here, and the local landscape has that dried brown look. Continue reading “Rosetta Head, Victor Harbor”
This will be the last poodlewalks for a week or so as we are off to Wellington, New Zealand tomorrow for a few days. We managed to obtain some dirt cheap promotional air tickets, and we decided to use them to drive north to explore the Tongariro National Park —and, hopefully, to walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.
A friend–Heather Petty-— is staying at our Encounter Bay house and looking after Kayla and Ari for a week whilst Maleko is staying at the house of a dog minder in Victor Harbor. That enables Suzanne and myself to get away together, which is a change from the separate trips we have done recently.
twig + rocks
Although I grew up in Christchurch NZ, and worked in Wellington as an economist, I haven’t been to the Tongariro National Park nor the North Island Volcanic Plateau. I did travel though the plateau by train to Auckland once. It was at night so I didn’t see much.
So I’m not sure what to expect photographic wise whilst walking the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, as many of the images that I’ve seen are from the air. From what I can see from the pictures on the internet most of the walk is on raw volcanic terrain with no vegetation. Continue reading “off to New Zealand”
This picture was made whilst I was walking with the three standard poodles around the lagoon of the Hindmarsh River at Encounter Bay, Victor Harbor, late in the afternoon:
Hindmarsh Lagoon
I was scoping as usual— looking for photographic subjects whilst on the poodlewalks.
Basically I am teaching myself how to photograph the bush and, to a lesser extent, the foreshore along the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula. The latter work is mostly abstractions of the rocks on the coastline. Continue reading “along Hindmarsh lagoon”
Suzanne is currently away walking in the Mt Remarkable National Park around the Alligator Gorge area. It’s a short walking holiday based at Alligator Lodge with some friends from the Larapinta walk that they did earlier in 2015. She will explore the Mt Remarkable area again next year when walking section 43 of the Heysen Trail. Hopefully, Suzanne will scout for some good photographic sites.
I’m at Encounter Bay minding the 3 standard poodles and looking for areas to walk in the morning and evening, which are away from people and grass seeds. In the morning that requires me to be walking on the beach at Encounter Bay before everyone else comes out, take a quick photo of objects near the sand dunes, then move on. We are generally back home by 7am.
iron + wood, Hayborough
In the evening the best option is to walk to Kings Beach in Waitpinga, then hang out around Kings Head because nobody goes there other than the odd surfer when the waves are rolling right. People prefer the beach to the rocky outcrops and so they miss the dolphins cruising by around the headland. The Heysen Trail walkers go over the top of Kings Head on their way to the Newland cliffs. Continue reading “an open air studio”
The Australian Abstractions exhibition at The Light Gallery has opened, the artist talk has been given, and work on the abstraction book with Moon Arrow Press has started. The artist talk addressed why the black and white part of the exhibition is a stand-in for the absent modernist black and white works of the 1950s and 1960s. It also addressed the claim by photographic historians that Australian photography does not have a tradition of abstractions and that Australian photographers are not interested in abstraction.
The preparatory work for my image in the ‘Time’ exhibition at the Lost Ones Gallery for the Ballarat International Foto Biennale 2015 will be done early this week. Then I’m off on a photo trip to Canberra on Thursday to continue working on the Edgelands project.
lichen+creeper
Meanwhile we continue to walk around the coast if the winter weather permits. It has been very stormy during July, and we have often walked around the town centre or the Heysen Trail to seek protection from the strong off shore winds. Continue reading “off to Canberra”
We–myself and the poodles—walked along the railway line at Hayborough early this morning. It was stormy and wet. It had been raining overnight. Winter has definitely arrived in South Australia:
morning, Hayborough
At the moment the early morning is the best part of the day, since the rest of the day is overcast, with icy winds and intermittent showers that sweep across the coast. It’s not good photography weather along the coast. Continue reading “winter has arrived”
Suzanne returned home last Friday from her 9 day walk on the Larapinta Trail plus some sightseeing at Kings Canyon, then Uluru and Kata Tjuta. She has a a few days at home in Victor Harbor, then she is off to a 4 day Heysen Trail camp at Deep Creek Conservation Park over the weekend.
I’m starting to pick up the threads of my photography which dropped away whilst Suzanne was in the Northern Territory. I have done little scoping of photography shoots during that period:
