Tag: daily walks

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urban foto exploration

When I arrived in Melbourne last Friday around 6am it was raining, and it rained most of the day. I did some urban exploration with an umbrella and inbetween the rain showers I took some photos. In the early afternoon I stumbled upon this scene from the open roof of a car park.

Melbourne: looking west

I took a number of scoping pictures before the showers sweeping across the car park became too heavy. I thought that I could return here on the Sunday with the 5×4 Linhof, when Suzanne was at her conference. It wasn’t that far from the Oaks on Market hotel where we were staying.

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…it rained and rained in Melbourne

I was in Melbourne for four days for the photo shoot and it rained three out of the four days. Sunday was the only fine day. On Friday the temperature was 17 degrees, Sunday it was 33 degrees and on Monday it was back down to 18 degrees. On Monday it only stopped raining as I was leaving in the bus at 8.30pm.

I found the 5×4 gear (pack and tripod) heavy to lug around the CBD. I was mainly shooting large format between the showers, or before the rain started, and the bad weather meant that I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked. I pretty much walked to a pre-selected location, set up the Linhof, take the pictures, then move onto the next one pre-selected location.

taxi hut, King's Way, Melbourne, digital, Sony

I did a 5×4 version of this on Monday, before the wind came up and the rains swept in. It rained the rest of the day–just like Friday, the day I arrived. A large part of the time on Friday and Monday was spent on urban explorations with handheld (digital and film) cameras.

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along the seashore

The beaches at the foot of the cliffs west of Victor Harbor are mostly deserted outside of school holidays and public holidays so we can wander along them. When we are on a daily poodlewalk along the beaches around the cliffs west of Victor Harbor I’m usually looking out for interesting objects lying scattered on the beach. These are mostly seaweed, dead birds and shells.

Often I wonder what would these objects look like as a photograph.Sometimes I bring them back to Encounter Studio to do close ups. Other times I just photograph them on the beach and move on:

crab, shell, sand

This particular one was constructed. I’d seen the crab on the walk up the beach in the late afternoon, then on the return, I wondered what it would look like sitting atop a cuttlefish bone.

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Inman River: failure

We are down at Victor Harbor for the long October weekend, and I decided that I needed a break from my rock studies. I needed another little project that I could work on with a large format camera now that I’m aware of what is required. I need something that would allow me to become comfortable using an 8×10 monorail using black and white film, but which didn’t require too much walking with the heavy equipment.

So I’ve been hunting around for a suitable subject. I started exploring the bushland along the Inman River today because it is protected from the coastal winds. But very little in the way of possibilities came of it. It was mostly an exercise in frustration:

waterlilies, Inman River

I went there early this morning on my own and then returned late this afternoon with Suzanne and the poodles. The light was hard to handle and you only have a limited amount of time to take photos. So the scene has to be preselected and the exact time of the day:

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returning to Ballarat

I plan to return to Melbourne for several days in October (21st-24th) with Suzanne who is attending a conference. In looking over the digital work I did on the last trip I’ve decided to take the 5×4 Linhof Technika to shoot the urban skylines in Melbourne around Chinatown from the rooftop of the car parks.

I’ve also decided to use the time in Melbourne to make a quick trip up to Ballarat in the train:

University of Ballarat

Some of the studies that I did with the digital camera when I was in Ballarat are suitable for reshooting with a large format camera.

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word and way

One of the interesting aspects of Melbourne is its many laneways. You just don’t know what you will find when you walk down one. One I stumbled upon whilst exploring Chinatown and Little Burke Street was Heffernan Lane.This runs between Lonsdale and Little Bourke Sts between Swanston and Russell Sts, which is to say, between Greek street and Chinese street.

I walked past the “Commit No Nuisance” signs, on past the Kum Den Bar and Restaurant and Wing Cheong Food Service, then glimpsed what appeared to be a council No Parking sign:

Evangelos Sakaris, Untitled, Heffernan Lane

Heffernan Lane was the site of artist Evangelos Sakaris’s untitled installation for the City of Melbourne’s Laneway Commissions 2001-2002. Sakaris’s work involved the instalment along the lane of contemporary street signs bearing excerpts of ancient Greek and Chinese texts, to highlight the connections between these cultures.

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Melbourne’s rooftops

I’ve always found it hard to get under the surface of Melbourne when I’m there photographing. I’m more like a tourist exploring the alleyways, the street art, the beach huts along the Mornington Peninsula, or the shop windows–along with everybody else. I was getting nowhere.

Melbourne is being redeveloped at high speed–as if there is no tomorrow. This time I was more focused—I wanted to explore the old and new architecture before the old 19th century disappeared. It just didn’t happen on the first couple of days because I was on the street when I needed to be up higher.

from Curtin House

However, Andrew Wurster kindly took me on a photowalk on Wednesday afternoon in and around Little Burke Street and Chinatown on Wednesday afternoon. Andrew runs the fascinating Urban Photo Mag group on Flickr, and he has an intimate photographic knowledge of Melbourne’s CBD.

We decided to check out the urban views from the various rooftops of the old carparks before going on to Curtin House to have a drink at the rooftop bar in the late afternoon light.

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adult products

I’m off to Ballarat and Melbourne tomorrow morning for 6 days. I’m minding the Woolshed gallery for the Melbourne Silver Mine Sets Show on Saturday. This is part of the Fringe Program of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale.

I then pick up my prints in the exhibition on Sunday, and stay on in Melbourne until Thursday to do some urban photography in the CBD:

adult products

I’m picking up where I left off when I was over there about a month earlier: I’ll be poking around in the grungy alleyways off and around Flinders Lane and exploring the architecture of the city in Australia.

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8 x10 photography

I’ve came down to Victor Harbor for a couple of days before I fly over to Melbourne to do some 8 x 10 black and white location photography. I haven’t done any for a while mainly because I’ve had no way to scan the negatives.

My Epson V700 can only scan 8×10 as a negative, and up to now I’ve had no way to invert it into a positive. So I’ve ordered Photoshop from B+H in New York, as this professional software enables me to invert the negative into a positive.

8x10 Cambo

It was overcast and still today so I struggled down to the foreshore with the 8×10 gear (monorail camera in the right hand, the heavy duty Profi Linhof tripod with its centre post and heavy duty pan tilt head on my left shoulder, and the computer bag with the darkslides + darkcloth, lightmeter etc on my right shoulder). I was accompanied by the two standard poodles.

My aim was to take two photos of a particular rock. One photo was in portrait mode and the other in landscape mode. That was it. I struggled back to the car, unloaded my gear, and then took the poodles for a walk.

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AAMI

How do you order the chaotic flow of the city? How do you arrange the different elements in the picture plane so that relate to one another in some coherent fashion?

I avoid “street photography”–that is, representing the everyday flow of the city — because I cannot satisfactorily resolve the above problems. I started working by sitting in a tram and taking shots but I found that very limited.

Sturt St, 5.30pm

The next step was to stand in front of a building and wait for someone to walk past. That didn’t work that well for me as I wanted to cram more urban stuff into the picture plane. The city is full of flowing stuff–eg., ever changing and moving events and situations.

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