Tag: colour

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Spring

Winter has passed and spring has arrived in South Australia.

It is becoming warmer and the light is changing very quickly: sunrise is an hour earlier, sunset is an hour latter and the light is more intense and brighter early in the morning and in the late afternoon. The change in the seasons was very sudden.

Old Victor Harbor dump
Old Victor Harbor dump

The warmer  weather means that there are more people on the coast, such as joggers, fishermen, dog walkers, walkers, surfies, day trippers, children swimming and playing on the beaches etc, which in turn makes our poodlewalks more complicated. People say that winter on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast is to be avoided, as they find it too cold.I enjoy the winter on the coast.
Continue reading “Spring”

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struggling with photography

I plug along trying to scope photos of the landscape whilst on our poodlewalks without making much progress in finding material that I would go back and re-photograph with a large format camera. I take snaps on the walk with a digital camera  and that’s about it. Sometimes I don’t even bother taking my digital camera with me.

roadside vegetation, Heysen Trail
roadside vegetation, Heysen Trail

I find a situation where light, form and landscape converge at a particular location  in space and time, but the result is banal. Uninteresting. Dull. Boring. Empty,  pretty pictures that don’t do anything much at all.

So where do I go from here? How do you bring the history of this landscape into this picture making? Power or politics? How do you move beyond pretty pictures–the pastoral? It can be done in words.

Continue reading “struggling with photography”

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day trips to Adelaide

I have been travelling up to Adelaide once a week for the day since my return from Melbourne. The trips are centred around going to  see  the printer at the Atkins Photo Lab to prepare  the prints for my abstraction exhibition at The Light Gallery during the SALA Festival in August.

As I have been taking Maleko with me on the day trips that means lots of short walks throughout the day in Adelaide.These are mostly in and around Veale Gardens as I can park the car easily for an hour. Often I do the afternoon walk in Adelaide before I drive back to Victor Harbor. The last time we did this the afternoon walk was in the western parklands and in and around the West Terrace Cemetery.

West Terrace Cemetery
West Terrace Cemetery

It has been six months since we did a poodle walk in the Cemetery and little has changed there. What does change is more smashed gravestones and objects placed on the gravestones. This teddy had been placed on one of the gravestones in the Catholic section of the cemetery. Continue reading “day trips to Adelaide”

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winter has arrived

A few days after returning from walking the Larapinta Trail Suzanne is off to a 4 day Heysen Trail camp at Cape Jervis Station. I am looking after the three poodles, and working at Encounter Studio on my abstraction exhibition for the SALA Festival. 

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
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”

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living with constraints

Suzanne leaves Victor Harbor today for 2 weeks or so walk to the Larapinta Trail in the western Macdonnell Ranges, and then go to explore other areas east and west of Alice Springs, such as Kings Canyon. I’ve just dropped Suzanne off at the Seaford railway station so that she can catch the train to Adelaide to stay overnight with her friend Sally, before they  both catch the Qantas flight  to  Alice Springs tomorrow morning.

My task is to look after the 3 dogs at Victor Harbor. Our walks in the morning and evening will be in limited areas in order to keep Kayla and Maleko crazy chase and play games contained and controlled. So my photography is going to very limited, unless I can find a way to do it without having the dogs in tow. I cannot do large format tripod based photography with 3 dogs racing around the place.

clouds, Encounter Bay
clouds, Encounter Bay

The best that I can do is some handheld snaps on the walk. The above picture is an example. I was  driving Ari and Kayla   to the Victor Harbor beach  for a dawn walk when I saw this view as I started to drive along Franklin Parade towards  the Victor Harbor township.  I stopped the car, took a snap, jumped back in the car, and continued driving to the township. The trouble is, not every morning is like this one.
Continue reading “living with constraints”

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taking it easy

During the recent week of rain and wind we mostly walked around the Victor Harbor township in the morning and along back country roads in the afternoon. I’d badly damaged my back when walking around Wellington and I had great difficulty in walking, due to the pain.

I needed easy walking terrain whilst my back was slowly beginning to heal. So no stairs or steps and no climbing over rocks on the foreshore.

gums +Maleko
gums +Maleko

I couldn’t walk for that long so I just explored the afternoon light on the roadside vegetation. Maybe I could use my limited mobility to uncover some  photographic possibilities amongst a landscape of  pasture and scrubland left after the clearing during the white settlement.Maybe I could reconnect with this body of work.
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a fading autumn

Winter is fast closing in. The clear, still, sunny autumn mornings are fast becoming a memory.

We have had a week or so of strong winds, storms, on and off showers throughout the day, lots of cloud cover  and the occasional sunny period. So we have increasingly avoided the southern beaches in our morning and evening walks in order to seek shelter from the incessant wind.

Kayla
Kayla

The poodles love the bush for it is full of fresh animal smells, but I find it extremely difficult to photograph the chaotic messiness of the bush or woodlands whilst we are walking through it. It is almost impossible to try and impose strict visual order upon this subject matter  since  the clear visual patterns  are  not really there.

Continue reading “a fading autumn”

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autumn

Prior going to Melbourne Ari, Kayla and I walked around the Victor Harbor township for our early morning poodle walks. I was interested in finding out what was happening with the early morning light in autumn. The light has been shifting quite quickly.

Victor Harbor beach
Victor Harbor beach

The photographic possibilities are not that numerous in and around the township, and I’m using the poodlewalks to find out what is there. At this stage it’s more about the light than the subject matter. Continue reading “autumn”

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a poodle walk with Heather Petty

Whilst Suzanne walked Ari and Kayla Heather Petty, Maleko and I went on a photowalk along the foot of the cliffs east of Kings Beach yesterday afternoon. We were photographing for about 3-4 hours in the warm autumn weather:

Heather Petty near Kings Beach
Heather Petty near Kings Beach

Heather was using her brand new DSLR —–a Nikon Df—–with a super duper zoom lens—a AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 VR11— that allowed her do everything she needed along the coastal strip.That big impressive lens looked like Nikon’s workhorse lens. Continue reading “a poodle walk with Heather Petty”