photos Archives - Poodle Walks

November 24, 2012

an errant meander in western Adelaide

I’ve started to include the western part of the city in our daily walks when I am in Adelaide.

It’s an area that is undergoing change due to the student living connected to the western campus of the University of South Australia, the state Labor government’s investment in a new public hospital and medical research facilities, and the new tramline along North Terrace to the Entertainment Centre. Is an old Adelaide disappearing, as a new cityscape emerges? A vision of a more vital Adelaide.

The real estate agents are talking of a boom. It’s early days. The empty lots, warehouses and workshops are going to be replaced by new housing developments. What sort? High rise? Medium rise? Will there be any concern for the street life? Will new cafe’s and bars spring up?

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August 1, 2012

returning to the Cheetham Salt Fields

Ari and I returned to the Cheetham salt fields early this morning with Adam Jan Dutkiewicz. He is from Moon Arrow Press and the convenor of the Facebook Art Photographers group.

It was a frosty morning and the light on the salt fields around 8.30am was bright and clear. Perfect conditions. I’d gone back to take some pictures with the 5×4 Linhof that I’d scoped on the earlier trip:

I wasn’t happy with the pictures of the salt crystallisation ponds I took with the Linhof. I need to be there earlier in the morning. So I’ll go back tomorrow and have another go around the time the sun lightens up the salt mounds.

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July 24, 2012

Adelaide: Gouger St

My local urban neighbourhood in the inner city of Adelaide is changing rapidly due to re-emergence of urban renewal after the global financial crisis and the influx of international students. Since I may be leaving this neighbourhood in a year or so, I’ve started taking a closer look at it–wandering around the Central Market Precinct looking for photographic possibilities amongst the daily life.

And so we step into the technological apparatus of the camera and its relationship to memory and history in modernity. Often what photograph’s preserve as remembered history is the nostalgia arising from a pervasive and intractable sense of loss from the relentless change of industrial capitalism; a relentless change with its desire to overreach history, overthrow all traditions, habits and conventions, in oder to reinvent the future as the line of progress.

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July 18, 2012

Adelaide: Central Market precinct

I’m back in Adelaide after the brief trip to Melbourne. The smallness of the city of Adelaide was a bit of a culture shock after Melbourne. Adelaide really is a regional town.

I decided to spend the early afternoon exploring the area around the Central Market precinct by walking around the edges of the carpark above the market even though the lighting was too harsh. I recalled that the edge of the car park had grills but not wire netting so I would be able to stick the lens of my camera through the grill if the view of the city was any good.

I wanted to see what views the car park offered of the mixture of old and the new architecture, the historical architectural layering of the CBD, and people moving along the street space contained by the build environment.

I was just looking for possibilities to explore with a medium format camera, hand held, as it is possible to get a lens through the carpark grill, or maybe with a bit of luck even finding an open space with no grill so that I could use the 5×4.

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June 27, 2012

urbanscapes

I reckon I have found one location from my scoping for a large format urbanscape shoot with the 5×7 Cambo monorail. It is a carpark roof in Hindley St looking south along Bank St up to Currie Street.

Today Ari and I set out about 4pm to walk from our Sturt St townhouse to the Hindley St carpark to check out the late afternoon urban winter light in this location. It’s a soft light in winter in Adelaide–such a contrast from summer— and I wanted to get there just before the last rays of the winter sun disappeared. I wanted to see what this urbanscape actually looked like. The location looks a goer:

I have chosen this time because I wanted people in the picture as opposed to photographing at night with no people. I was interested in people walking home to the railway after leaving work –looking small and overpowered by the mish mash architecture.

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April 24, 2012

a walk but no photography

Ari and I went on a photowalk early this morning along the Heysen Trail past Kings Head to an outcrop of rock just west of the Kings Beach Retreat. I’d photographed there around there earlier this year. With Agtet gone Ari is depressed and lacking in energy and motivation.

But he did pick up yesterday afternoon when we visited Kings Beach. Hence the decision to do a longer walk this morning; one that would take us closer to the eastern boundary of the Newland Head Conservation Park.

Kings Head: rock detail — rock detail, Kings Head.

As it was overcast, I carried the medium format camera gear and tripod. My new digital camera–a Sony Nex-7— has yet to arrive in Adelaide. The conditions were hopeless for photography: strong south westerly winds, pounding seas, floating waves of sea spray drifting across the ricks and sea foam swirling through the air. The seals didn’t seem to mind the turbulent conditions though.

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April 16, 2012

on the Nepean Highway

The last poodlewalk in Melbourne was done by car. On my previous visits to Melbourne I’d seen some architecture on the Nepean Highway that caught my eye, whilst I travelling on the Frankston train to the CBD. So we–Suzanne, Ari and myself— cruised the Nepean Highway from Frankston to Mordiallic looking for “Custom Framing” and a big bold blue building.

It was the day that we had Agtet, our grey standard poodle, put down. We were to drive back to Adelaide early the next morning, and we had heavy hearts and time on our hands. A phototrip in the car was my way of filling in the afternoon. Suzanne drove the car whilst I looked out for the building.

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April 12, 2012

at Evandale, Tasmania

The last poodlewalk I did with both Agtet and Ari was at Evandale in the northern Midlands. The walk was along the banks of the South Esk River the night before we left Tasmania.

We were to drive to Devonport early the following morning to catch the ferry across Bass Strait to Melbourne, stay overnight in Geelong, then drive to Adelaide the next day.

It was a lovely walk in the late afternoon sun. It was very peaceful and gentle. The river flowed gently, people were fishing, others, like me, were walking their dogs. A farmer was cutting down the willows along the river bank and the occasional plane flew overhead bound for Melbourne.

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March 21, 2012

at the Mt Lyell mine

Yesterday was overcast and windy, and as the weather was going to be consistent rain squalls for the next few days, I decided go to the old Mt Lyell open cut copper mine in Queenstown. The only way to do it was to take the morning trip with John Halton’s Enviro mine tour. It was the right decision as it rained all of today.

Mt Lyell open cut mine — Tasmania, Queenstown, Mt_Lyell, open_cut_mine, digital, Olympus, phototrip

Little did I know that John Watt Beattie, Stephen Spurling 111, Frank Hurley and Martin Walch had all extensively photographed the region, town and the mine.

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March 19, 2012

at Zeehan

On Saturday it was overcast with passing rain squalls so we went for a drive to Zeehan in the afternoon. I wanted to to photograph the ruins of the old smelter using the 5×4 Linhof. I’d scoped this on my last visit to Queenstown a year ago.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — coal slag heap, Zeehan

I stuck closely to what I’d scoped last year as time was short—the squalls returned just as I was finishing the planned pictures of ‘ruins as history’. After looking at the digital images I took whilst on location this time, I can see that I need to return to the site to take more. There was more here than I’d realized.

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