A lo fi visual diary
There is a 3 day holiday in Adelaide this weekend. It’s Adelaide Cup day on Monday.
We left the heat in city of Adelaide for the coast at Victor Harbor. Though it is still muggy, the air is cooler, there is a bit of a sea breeze, and the outside temperature is lower than that inside the house. It’s a pleasant change.
It seems that everybody else has the same idea, as the coast is full of people. The beaches are packed. The cafes are overflowing. The holiday houses are occupied.
The heatwave continue due to the blocking high-pressure system that has set in over the Tasman Sea. This is steering hot continental winds over south-eastern Australia.
The daytime temperature is consistently around 35 degrees C, whilst the night time temperature stays around 21 degrees. There is very little by way of a cooling wind and its mostly bright blue skies. These conditions makes the daily poodlewalks difficult, especially at lunchtime and in the early afternoon. We move slowly, staying in the shade as much as is possible.
This pile of stones has been sitting in the parklands for some time now. I’ve kept on looking at them as we walk past. Yesterday I decided to start photographing them. I did a few snaps in the morning with the Leica with black and white film, then I made some colour snaps with a digital Sony NEX-7 camera on the afternoon walk.
The day dawned warm and bright. I was down at the jetty area by 6.15am, but the light was already intense, even though the sun had just risen above the hills. The wind was warm rather than cool. The day promised to be unpleasantly hot.
So I just sat on the edge of the jetty and made some sea abstracts, with both digital and medium format film cameras:
I gave up after 20 minutes as the light was becoming too harsh. It was a pity because the rocks, seagrass and the strong tidal current were providing good possibilities for abstractions.
The poodlewalk on the last day of our holidays at Victor Harbor was spent mooching around the reserve opposite the studio. The southerly winds had dropped and the days were bright and sunny. It was perfect summer holiday weather for those wanting fun at the beach. Suzanne went for her first summer swim before we left.
I had a sense that a heatwave was coming Adelaide’s way so I spent what time I had photographing leaves and bark in the early morning:
I made number of studies of bark abstracts in both colour and black and white in both medium and large format.
It’s very hot in Adelaide at the moment. The temperature is around 38 degrees on our evening walks and 28 degrees during the night. There are no cool gully winds at night now. So Ari and I just mooched around the shade in Veale Gardens yesterday evening. The sprinklers only come on in the early morning.
We sat for a while by some of the trees that I wanted to photograph. These were abstractions of the bark currently peeling off the trunks of the eucalypts. The colours of the bark and trunk are soft and subtle:
I took some hand held close-up photos with the Rolleiflex SL66, since this medium format camera system doesn’t need closeup rings. Then we move on to the next tree taking care to remain in the shade. We pretty much just sit in the shade and watch the world go by.
The weather is warming up again. It was a gentle meandering walk amongst the eucalypts in the parklands looking at the tree trunks this evening. The trunks of the eucalypts are to loose their bark and to change colour.I started looking for possible abstracts:
I was interested to see if I could take abstractions with the Sony NEX-7 with a Leica Summicron 35m asph lens. This functions as a 50mm lens on the NEX-7, due to the crop factor of the smaller than full frame sensor and it doesn’t allow you to get very close to the object.
This architectural urban decay is locked behind a fence that protects a private carpark for those working in the lawyer precinct. It is difficult to gain access to the car park because the gate is always closed and operated by a card. I was allowed in because Ari did his cute act.
The site is earmarked for development–glass tower office blocks, judging from the advertising. Nothing much is happening, even though this site is in the heart of the CBD in the central market precinct.
It is hot and muggy in Adelaide at the moment. It is around 40 degrees and it is unpleasant to be outside away from the air conditioning. Ari and I stayed in the shadows in the parklands early yesterday evening and we didn’t walk that far. It was too hot. Rain is forecast to be on the way late Friday afternoon, but I’m sure that, in itself, will not reduce the temperature.
I wanted to use the poodlewalk to make some more studies of the Morton Bay Figs in the parklands. I wanted the late summer light on them and I was thinking about the inside and outside of the photographic frame:
I remembered a picture from a year ago, which I’d seen but never returned to photograph. It was in late summer and when I did return the sun had shifted and the last rays no longer fell on the tree. The time difference was only a matter of a week to ten days. I had made some other pictures then, but I felt that I could more.
Summer has arrived in Adelaide. The Morton Bay Figs in the Adelaide Parklands are starting to drop their leaves from heat stress. Many of them died during the long drought and those that survived have only just recovered their canopy.
Our poodlewalks have changed now that the temperatures are in the mid to high thirties. We walk after 6pm and we remain in the shade. We avoid the sun as much as possible. THe experience of the drought indicated that the future of many cities and towns, including Perth and Adelaide, was, and is, threatened through lack of drinking water.
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.