A lo fi visual diary
I have spent many an early morning during the late summer of 2022 wandering through the local bushland with Kayla. There are lots of smells for her (eg., foxes, rabbits, kangaroos) and there are some photographic possibilities for me.
It had been raining during the previous day, which was very unusual for summer in the Fleurieu Peninsula. This was in early January during a cool summer. Summer is normally hot and dry with no rain for 5 or so months. The rains normally start in late April.
In the last week or so I have returned to walking along the Waitpinga section of the Heysen Trail in the morning with Kayla and in the afternoon with Maleko. This section of the Heysen Trail is a narrow strip of scrub or bush that runs between two roads, and it is bounded by two grazing paddocks (cattle and sheep). The narrow strip is a corridor that is quite dense in parts.
The mornings and afternoons have been overcast with minimal wind, and this has allowed me to do some black and white film photography of tree subjects that I had photographed in colour a couple of years ago. I started the scoping here.
Whilst walking to and from the photo sites on both the morning and the afternoon poodlewalks I made some exploratory/scoping studies of different subject matter in the scrub/bush for some future film photography. This is an example:
I would have walked past this branch on the edge of the path of the Heysen Trail many times without ever having seen it. I only saw it this time because Kayla went exploring in the undergrowth behind the branch. I quickly made a snap and moved on.
South Australia was been battered by a violent storm from the south west during the last three days– from Thursday to Saturday. We experienced gale force winds, solid rain, high tides and surging seas along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula.
Our usual morning and evening poodlewalks were curtailed due to the water cutting off access to parts of the littoral zone. So I could not photograph the water flows. It was also too dangerous to venture around the rocks to Petrel Cove to do some macro due to the huge waves. Continue reading “stormy days”
These clouds and early morning light are what I saw on early on Friday morning when Kayla and I were walking along the Heritage-Trail through a familiar coastal landscape. It was so very still that morning.
These are the kind of conditions that indicate that a dramatic change in the weather is about to happen; usually, they mean that the hot weather is coming to an end, and a big storm will be sweeping into the coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula from the south west.
It was the morning of the 13th April, which is when the cold front with its wild winds and driving rain, hit the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula in the late afternoon.
I was taking advantage of the lull before the storm to walk to a specific site amongst the granite rocks around the point from Dep’s Beach; a site that I had selected for a large format photo session. Continue reading “along the Heritage-Trail”
It was a relief to return to the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula late yesterday afternoon, after spending around 5 hours walking the CBD of Adelaide in 35-40 degrees heat.
I had taken the Subaru Outback into the West Terrace Jarvis in Adelaide for its regular service. Walking the city and photographing it with the new Sony A7r111 seemed like a good way to fill in time until I could pick up the car. I could then see how Adelaide had changed from when I had lived there.
Adelaide was on the cusp of change as we were living –becoming a post-industrial city. The urban life was more vibrant.
So I walked around the CBD from 8am to 1pm. However, I struggled in the summer heat and gave up the photography after walking around the new medical precinct along the western part of North Terrace.
Eventually I packed walking the city in for some air conditioned comfort. I ended up at the Flinders University City Gallery, and relaxed by looking at the impressive Helen Read Collection of Aboriginal art from the top end of Australia.
Continue reading “walking the CBD in 35-40 degree temperatures”
During the recent couple of days of warm, sub tropical Spring weather on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast I was able to go on longer, coastal poodlewalks with Kayla and Maleko as well as scoping in the various cthat I would usually walk past, and photographing in my makeshift open air studio.
One of these longer walks was a return to exploring around the mouth of the Inmam River near Kent Reserve with Kayla to re-connect with the Fleurieuscapes project that I am working on.
I was interested in scoping a way to photograph the site of the Ramindejeri’s burial ground in the sand dunes near the Inman River’s mouth. The SA Museum states that the Ramindejeri were a local group of the Ngarrindjeri but the public information the Museum has is pretty minimal
I came down with a severe cold at the end of the July Mallee roadtrip. It has knocked me around, and this ill health coupled with the wet stormy weather, has meant minimal poodle walking and limited local photography. Suzanne has been doing most of the bigger walks with Kayla and Maleko during the wet cold weather whilst I walk Ari on short walks down to the Encounter Bay foreshore.
This picture was made whilst I was walking the poodles in Kuitpo Forest on the way back from the Mt Barker grooming parlour. This was a few days before I left to make photos for the Mallee Routes project:
It was school holidays in South Australia and there were a lot of people camping in Kuitpo Forest.It would be a different story now with the wild, wet winter weather that we have been experiencing this last week. The mornings start off fine and sunny on the coast, then the storm rolls in around breakfast time and the temperature plunges.
Jason Blake stayed over night at our place in Encounter Bay on his way back to his high rise apartment in Melbourne’s CBD. He was on the return leg of his road trip from Melbourne to Alice Springs and he need to get the compressor in his Ranger Rover replaced at Lonsdale.
He accompanied Maleko, Kayla and myself on a poodlewalk east along the rocks from Kings Beach Road to Depp’s Beach late yesterday afternoon and took the opportunity of the 70 minutes or so walk to make a number of photos as we slowly made away along the rocks. Whilst Jason and I photographed the colours of the various granite rock formations the two standard poodles raced around and engaged in their play fights.
The 3 or 4 days of rain that we’d experienced had just passed, and the light that afternoon around 4pm was gentle and soft. The cloud cover came in just after 5pm and the light became dull and flat.
Continue reading “Jason Blake passes through Encounter Bay”
The morning and evening poodlewalks have become limited in scope and diversity. Ari is now 15 years old. He has slowed down and he is unsteady on his back legs. He can no longer walk over rocks, and so we are limited to walking along the beach. That limits the walk for the other standard poodle (Kayla the morning and Maleko in the afternoon) and it restricts my photography severely.
One option that I have explored has been to make a return to Petrel Cove:
Another reason why we havre limited to the beach is the grass seeds among the roadside vegetation of the back country roads or the costal reserves. The grass seeds are drying out and, as they cling to the poodle’s woollen coats and feet, the back country roads are becoming increasingly becoming out of bounds.
Continue reading “restricted walks”
The recent stormy, winter weather has meant that our poodle walks have been mostly along the back country roads since they offer some protection from the wind. We have only infrequently walked along the coastline because it is usually windswept: battered by the south-westerly winds and intense rain.
The picture below is from one of the rare occasions during July that we ventured onto Rosetta Head. We waited in the Subaru Forester for the squalls to pass through, then we went for our walk around Rosetta Head keeping an eye on the incoming squalls coming from the south.
Whilst we were waiting in the Subaru for the squalls to pass I took some photos of the landscape through the windscreen of the Forester.
Continue reading “After the storms”