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.

Keen Rd, Waitpinga
Keen Rd, Waitpinga

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.
Continue reading “walking Keen Road”

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”

at Magpie Springs

Maleko and I wandered around Magpie Springs last week. It was a break from photographing whilst walking on the beach or sitting next to the computer scanning film for days on end.

The winery and gallery is in the hills just behind Willunga I was scoping for subject matter for their 2015 photo compeition. Submissions have to be in by the 7th May and I’m running out of time, especially when I’d planned to use the 5×4 Linhof and sheet film.

log+blackberry
log+blackberry

It is difficult running an art gallery in this part of the Adelaide Hills region—people consider it to be too far from the Adelaide CBD to drop in, and the passing traffic to the winery is limited. So Magpie Springs have trouble selling their wine, coffee and exhibited art works through door sales.  Continue reading “at Magpie Springs”

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”

hidden treasures

We are experiencing a week of high temperatures in the mid-to high 30’s C in Adelaide at the moment.

Cacti, Adelaide
Cacti, Adelaide

That means the buildings and pavement in the city retain their heat in the early evening, we live and work in the buildings with the airconditioners running most of the time, and we avoid walking around the city during the heat of the day.

too windy to photograph

It was very muggy early this morning in Queenstown. A very gusty north west wind was blowing. The locals say that rain and thunderstorms are on the way. If so, then this brings to an end to the spell of hot weather on the south west coast of Tasmania.

The large format photoshoot this morning didn’t turn out as planned. I went to the location above the town that I’d scoped yesterday. Although I managed to set the Linhof up, the gusts of wind blew the gritty white dust into my eyes and ears as well as into the camera.

photoshoot, Queenstown

I had to bail out and wait for another day and walked along the Queen River looking for possible photographic subjects of the contaminated river. It was protected from the wind and the light was soft.

in Queenstown, Tasmania

This is my second day in Queenstown, Tasmania. The first morning was very similar to what I’d encountered when I was here in April last year—very heavy fog in the valley until about 11am:

fog, Queenstown

The early morning walk with the standard poodles was in the fog until we climbed above it on soem kind of fire break or electricity track. When the fog lifted around 11am the rest of the day was bright, still and very hot. The night was quite mild.

Hindmarsh River, Victor Harbor

This study for a 5×4 shoot was done before I left for Ballarat last weekend.It is of the estuary and the mouth of the Hindmarsh River at Victor Harbor. It was taken around 4.30 pm. A few minutes later and the sun’s rays disappeared.

Hindmarsh River, Victor Harbor

I went back the next day around the same time and took a similar shot with the Linhof 5×4. Of course, the man who was fishing the day before was no longer there. It’s not a memorable image, but it is part of my exploration of the coastline in my local neighbourhood and the Fleurieu Peninsula.

a mummy daddy visual language

Photography in the common visual language of the snap shop would be more than an aesthetics of the fragment.This aesthetic has dominated the poetic since the romantics; including the fragment as transmogrified by modernism, high and low, and more recently retooled in the neoclassical form of the citation—ironic and/or decorative—throughout which is called “postmodernism.

Encounter Bay, Victor Harbor

People ofter refer to the common visual language of the snap shop as the mummy daddy language. What is attractive about the visual language of the snapshot is that it is an anti-hierarchical means of organizing knowledge and of recognizing intersections and engagements between seemingly disparate ideas and things.

West Terrace Cemetery

I had intended to take my cameras on a heritage walk at the old Torrens Island Quarantine Station at the mouth of Adelaide’s Port River, this afternoon, but the city was gridlocked due the Clipsal 500 car race. It took me ages to get out of the CBD and by then it was too late to make the run down to the Port before 6pm.

So the poodles and I went to the West Adelaide Cemetery instead, and I picked up my photography from where I had left off in the early summer:

West Terrace Cemetery

We forgot about clock time during our wanderings and I didn’t realize that all the gates had been closed. We were locked in and the old hole in the fence that we’d often used had been repaired. We were locked in, so we had to search for a place in the fence for the poodles to scramble under the wire fence and for me to climb over it.