Tag: daily walks

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Xmas holiday comes to a close

The Xmas holiday at Victor Harbor is now over. We return to Adelaide and the routines of work this afternoon. The two weeks have given me the space and the time to find my photographic stride, to explore some new ideas and to wait for the suitable weather conditions for photography.

sea shells, Kings Beach

We’ve never spent two weeks at a time in Victor Harbor—its always been either 2 days on the weekend or the 4 days over the Easterbreak. Those two weeks gave me time to find new photographic locations, namely roadside vegetation and the rocks and foreshore around from Kings Head.

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walking along a country road

It is too hot to take photos at the moment. It’s extremely bright, with full sun, no clouds, and the temperature is around 40 degrees. It’s summer beach weather for the crowds of holiday makers I guess. I’ve given up walking along the coast on the later afternoon or early evening walk –it’s just too hot.

The picture below was taken whilst the temperatures were a temperate 25 degrees and there was some cloud cover in the morning and afternoon:

Heysen Trail, near Kings Beach

During the high temperatures of the last few days we’ve been walking along the coastal backroads. They are dusty but the remnant bush vegetation provides some sort of shade for us from the heat of the late afternoon sun. I can put up with the dust for some shade.

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walking without a digital camera

I’m not posting many pictures from our poodlewalks since my digital camera was stolen in Melbourne. Although I’ve decided to go without one whilst I continue to just shoot film to see what happens, I do miss not having a digital camera with me.

Without one I don’t have any images from the daily walks, or from the photoshoots that I’ve been doing with the large format cameras. So I am relying on pictures –such as the one below—that have been taken on earlier walks.

lagoon, Hindmarsh River

I was exploring the lagoon near the mouth of the Hindmarsh River in Victor Harbor yesterday. I hadn’t been there for a while, and though it was around 6.30 pm, it was still hot and sunny. I recalled the above image and remembered that the bush was in the shade at this time of the day.So I went looking for the bush as part of the poodlewalk.

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an early morning urban shoot

I was out photographing the Adelaide skyline between 6 -7am this morning. This is normally the time I am working out at the gym, but I allow myself to take a break from the gym on Wednesdays so that I can do the early morning shoots. In summer this must be done before 7am.

The picture below was taken around 7pm with a handheld digital camera from the top floor of a 24 hour car park on the corner of Rundle and Pultney Streets. I was on a scoping excursion. This time I wanted to I see what the skyline looked like in the early morning light. Would it look as dramatic?

looking west from Pultney/Rundle

I was also checking out to see whether I could use a tripod in the carpark and still be able to get the camera lens through the grill on the side of the building. It was possible to do this with a medium format camera. Would it be possible with a large format camera? Maybe. Next time I go back with the 5×7 Cambo monorail.

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without a digital camera

I’m lost without the use of my digital camera. I had initially bought the pro-sumer Sony DSC R1 to enter the world of digital imaging, to see how the digital work flow operated, and to judge the quality and look of the digital image.

Over the next couple of years using the Sony had become habitual, with it primarily being used to study a particular object or scene to see how it looked as a photograph. I’d post some of these images on the web–on Facebook, Flickr or on my blogs—and if the picture looked okay I’d go back to reshootthe object with a medium or large format camera.

Kouko's

The digital camera was my scoping instrument and sketch pad–a pocket sketch pad as it were.

When it was stolen in Melbourne I found myself back to using film and not knowing how things would look as a photograph. I didn’t like the process of taking pictures blind, especially when it came to using the 5×4 Technika in Ballarat before I caught the overnight bus back to Adelaide. I stayed close to what I could remember from my previous trip and which I had filed away as suitable subjects.

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Adelaide skyline

I’ve been photo-walking the streets of Adelaide these last couple of days. Ostensibly it was to hunt down and photograph the various pasteups down by Peter Drews for his street art project entitled ‘Adelaide’s Forgotten Outlaws! I wanted to do it before the temperatures reached the high 30’s–which they are today.

Then I realized that I was really using this urban wandering to basically look for new locations for the Adelaide book I’m slowly putting together.

Globe, east end

I was looking for locations from car parks that would give me a skyline perspective for large format photography. I wasn’t very successful in my last exploration as I was looking for car parks with open roofs, but these are few and far between in Adelaide. This time I was happy enough to check out the car parks with open grills to see what kind of perspective they offered.

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… if only I could remember

We had a 2-3 hour poodlewalk along the coast from Petrel Cove, Victor Harbor, yesterday afternoon. It was overcast and muggy, and I was looking for locations to shoot in black and white using the 8×10 Cambo monorail. I found one.

I also found this one on computer this morning, when I was writing on Landscapes, tourism, the picturesque for the Victor Harbor book.

rock face, near Petrel Cove

Unfortunately, I have no idea where this rockface is on the coastline. I just don’t recognize it. It looks suitable–and just what I want– but because I cannot recall its location I don’t know if it is possible to both get the 8×10 down there and to set it up.

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early morning, Encounter Bay

It was a gentle sunny morning on the beach at Encounter Parade this morning. It had rained during the night, the air was moist, and there was no wind. Not surprisingly, everybody was out jogging and walking. I took some snaps of the seaside architecture:

beach house, Encounter Bay

I spent yesterday working on the Preface of the Victor Harbor book and setting up a simple Posterous style blog for the images that I will use in the book. So the book is under way. Thank goodness something is finally happening on this front.

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at Victor Harbor

I’ve come down to Victor Harbor for a day or so to continue with the 8×10 large format seaside architectural photography series. I plan to photograph this heritage building tomorrow, weather permitting:

Esplanade, Victor Harbor

In the meantime I’m watching a live stream of the judging of the Epson Australian Institute of Professional Photography’s (AIPP) South Australian Professional Print Awards at the Orange Lane Studio in Norwood.

The commercial architectural shots in this competition are nothing like what I’m doing. Mine are very rough and ready compared to the smooth and carefully calibrated celebration of the architect’s work that the commercial photographers do for their clients. They go for the wow factor, but they do seem unreal in their perfection–almost iconic — compared to mine.

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Brunswick St, Melbourne

One of the pleasures of my recent phototrip in Melbourne was walking around Brunswick Street in Fitzroy with a digital camera. It was liberating after the discipline of large format photography.

I was returning to old haunts, as I used to live in nearby Gore Street whilst studying at the Photographic Studies College in Southbank, and working on the Melbourne trams. I started learning how to do photography (then 35mm black and white) on the grungy streets in, and around, Fitzroy.

Brunswick St, Melbourne

This time I was discovering Brunswick Street afresh as a photographer— exploring a world I knew, yet didn’t know, because so much had changed since I’d lived in Fitzroy.

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