Fleurieu Peninsula Archives - Page 11 of 21

October 23, 2015

Yulte Conservation Park

Suzanne took us to a section of the Heysen Trail that she’d walked through. The poodles were left in the car as the section of the Heysen Trail that we walked along was Yulte Conservation Park and no dogs are allowed. Suzanne had found this section of of the Heysen Trail attractive compared to the open paddocks of the farming country.

Yulte Conservation Park traverses steep undulating hills south of the town of Myponga, offers panoramic views of the surrounding Myponga Valley and the Sellicks Hill Range country from the higher sections of the walk, and is alive with wildflowers and running creeks in spring.The land was drying out when we visited a few months latter. The creeks were barely running, the wild flowers had pretty much gone, and the scrubby landscape offered little in the way for photography.

The picture of this pile of bricks, for instance, was made outside Yulte Conservation Park. It was household rubbish lying next to the path into the park.

I was a bit disappointed. I had been looking for an area that I could explore photographically over a period of time. Yulte Conservation Park was not it, unfortunately. I also realised that I could not join Suzanne’s Heysen Trail walking group: they are about walking a section of the track, not stopping to take photos or waiting for the right light.

October 16, 2015

a slow decay

My time recently has been spent working on the website’s various galleries Two of the earlier portfolios are now pretty much in place—Bowden and Port Adelaide. They look pretty good. The next step is to reconfigure the rest of the portfolios in this carousel style.

The daily poodle walks in both the morning and evening have been just quicker walks with little time being spent on scoping photography. The grasses are rapidly drying out on the coast and they represent a real problem as they hook onto the standard poodle’s coats, and then quickly work their way into the skin. So I am avoiding areas where there are lots of grass seeds.

The Rambler picture in the old Victor Harbor dump was one of the last scoping photos that I’ve done. Rambler is slowly falling apart from neglect. Rambler was built by Peter Sharp at Cruickshanks Corner, Port Adelaide in 1875 and it was possibly Australia’s oldest racing yacht.

It used to on the slips at Searle’s Boatyard–in the historic boatyards in the Central Basin of the Port River–before Port Adelaide’s oldest surviving boatyard was closed down to make way for the residential waterfront redevelopment of Port Adelaide. The redevelopment at Newport Quays failed to regenerate Port Adelaide. The development of the expensive dog boxes on the waterfront was scrapped but not before it had successfully destroyed the fabric of the history of the port.

It is sad to see Rambler just being left in the ex-dump site to rot. It needed have been so, since it just wasn’t necessary to destroy the Port Adelaide’s oldest surviving boatyard for expensive dog boxes that never eventuated.
Continue reading “a slow decay”

October 3, 2015

staying or going?

Suzanne and I are currently in the process deciding whether we will stay in Victor Harbor or move back into the south-east corner of the city of Adelaide. The latter is the more capital expensive option (an architecturally designed extension to a cottage) whilst living on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast at Victor Harbor means that we are much more isolated. We are currently swinging between staying and going at the moment. There are advantages and disadvantages to both options.

One disadvantage for me in living at Victor Harbor is the limited opportunities that it offers for urban photography–ie., the flâneur, the casual wanderer, observer and reporter of street-life in the modern city. This kind of work now requires either day trips to Adelaide, major trips to Melbourne or road trips. Consequently, my daily photographs made on the morning and afternoon poodlewalks are nature orientated. I do feel constrained by this.

Hence the idea of quickly constructing the image as a still life whilst on the walks, since it is not really possible to bring the seaweed and rocks back to the studio to photograph.
Continue reading “staying or going?”

September 28, 2015

walking Keen Road

The weekend just passed was very springlike with warm temperatures, sunshine and blue skies. Suzanne wanted take us for a poodlewalk along Keen Rd last night, but we left it a bit late to start our and so we didn’t get all that far along the road. It runs over a hill between two valleys–Back Valley and Inman Valley. Unlike some of the country roads in the area Keen Rd has roadside vegetation.

Keen Rd is a section of the Heysen Trail in Waitpinga that she had walked with her group a month or so ago. Most of the Heyesen Trail in the Fleurieu Peninsula region is through conservation parks or farmland and these are off-limits for walking the poodles. We are basically left with country roads to walk along and when we do, we cross our fingers and hope that there there is little traffic in the late afternoon.

Unlike some of the country roads in the area Keen Rd has roadside vegetation. There was little car traffic last night apart from a truck carrying bales of hay from one paddock to the next. It left trails of dust that hung in the air for some time because the air was still— the coastal wind had died.
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September 13, 2015

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.

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”

August 2, 2015

off to Canberra

The Australian Abstractions exhibition at The Light Gallery has opened, the artist talk has been given, and work on the abstraction book with Moon Arrow Press has started. The artist talk addressed why the black and white part of the exhibition is a stand-in for the absent modernist black and white works of the 1950s and 1960s. It also addressed the claim by photographic historians that Australian photography does not have a tradition of abstractions and that Australian photographers are not interested in abstraction.

The preparatory work for my image in the ‘Time’ exhibition at the Lost Ones Gallery for the Ballarat International Foto Biennale 2015 will be done early this week. Then I’m off on a photo trip to Canberra on Thursday to continue working on the Edgelands project.

Meanwhile we continue to walk around the coast if the winter weather permits. It has been very stormy during July, and we have often walked around the town centre or the Heysen Trail to seek protection from the strong off shore winds. Continue reading “off to Canberra”

July 25, 2015

Australian abstractions exhibition

The Australian Abstractions exhibition at the Light Gallery in Adelaide opens at 3pm Sunday 25th July, and all are welcome to attend. Avril Thomas, the portrait painter and owner of the Magpie Springs gallery, will open the exhibition.

Most of the work in the exhibition has emerged out of poodle walk in that these are the representation of the forms and textures that I’m seeing on the walks and in the different lighting conditions.

The abstractions are linked to the 2012 photographic abstractions exhibition that was curated by the Monash Gallery of Art in Melbourne. Many of the images in this exhibition can be seen here.

All of my black and white images in Australian Abstractions are abstractions from nature. Unlike the abstractions of landscape from the air by Richard Woldendorp, my abstractions of both the bark of gum trees and the coastal granite cliffs are done with my feet firmly on the ground.It offers another way of thinking about ‘landscape’.
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July 10, 2015

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.

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”

June 19, 2015

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:

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”

June 15, 2015

picking up the threads

Suzanne returned home last Friday from her 9 day walk on the Larapinta Trail plus some sightseeing at Kings Canyon, then Uluru and Kata Tjuta. She has a a few days at home in Victor Harbor, then she is off to a 4 day Heysen Trail camp at Deep Creek Conservation Park over the weekend.

I’m starting to pick up the threads of my photography which dropped away whilst Suzanne was in the Northern Territory. I have done little scoping of photography shoots during that period:

Most of my effort at the moment is devoted to preparing for the abstraction exhibition at the Light Gallery during the SALA Festival in August, which includes a SALA portfolio.
Continue reading “picking up the threads”