Tag: Victor Harbor

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walking on a country road

When we were down at Victor Harbor last weekend Ari and I walked along the back country roads on one of our afternoon walks. It was quiet and peaceful with very little traffic–a healing walk through nature. It had been raining and the roadside vegetation looked green and refreshed. As we walked along I started taking a few photos whilst I waited for the sun to go behind a cloud for a large format shoot I had in mind.

There were no conversations on the country path but there was a poetic receptivity to place.

roadside eucalept, Victor Harbor

I find the Australian bush very hard to photograph and so I tried to simplify things as much as possible. ‘Walk down a country road on the Fleurieu Peninsula and take ten modernist photographs of pink gum and a Xanthorrhoea’ was the rule I set up. Ari was more interested in taking on the bulls.

In performing this instruction I thought that most writing on Australian photography was in the art history mode that assumed artistic autonomy, authorial agency, medium specificity and its conventions. The photographic art historians –eg., Helen Ennis and Gael Newton— make little or no reference to conceptual art and its core idea that the locus of the work was deemed to be the idea or statement with the work being a performance of that statement.

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a “Kodak moment”

I just couldn’t resist. I was seduced by the light.

Sunday had been overcast, still and cold at Victor Harbor and on the evening walk around Petrel Cove the sun came out briefly. It illuminated the rocks at the base of Rosetta Head just before it sunk behind the hills. So I took a quick snap:

Rosetta Head, Victor Harbor

It is one of those “Kodak moments”–those most intensely personal moments of our lives that needed to be recorded for memory? Those times when you reached for a camera to stop life for a second, to grab a memory. Remember those when film was king and Kodak was dominant?

Analogue photography then became a piece of nostalgia with digital.Nostalgia turned into something old-fashioned. Old-fashioned became unfashionable. The unfashionable has become hip.

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Hindmarsh River mouth

I’ve come down to Victor Harbor this weekend to scan some old large format negatives that I came across in a box in the storage room. I’d forgotten all about them. The 8×10 negatives are in okay condition. So are the 5×7 negatives. But the 5×4 negatives have deteriorated badly. I’m not sure why that would happen to the 5×4 negatives and not to the larger sized others. Thicker film?

Yesterday’s poodlewalk was around the mouth of the Hindmarsh River. This is a favourite spot for people to walk their dogs, and that meant that Ari could hang out with the dogs and I could take some photos of the beach:

Hindmarsh River mouth, Victor Harbor

It is one part of the coastline that is still in sunshine in the very late afternoon. In winter the light is soft and gentle.

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stormy weather

I scanned the remaining 5×4 negatives from the Queenstown, Tasmania trip last night. They look good, given the wet conditions I was working under.

The weather at Victor Harbor this weekend has been stormy with lots of rain and wind from the south west. Ari and I got drenched on both the walks yesterday afternoon and early this morning due to heavy rain squalls.

early morning, near Kings Head

There has been little photography even though I carried the Sony NEX-7 with me. The weather was too wild to return to my favourite location at the base of the Newland Clifs on the Heysen Trail to explore the photographic possibilities with the 5×4 Linhof.

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at Victor Harbor

I’ve come down to Encounter Studio at Victor Harbor this weekend to scan the 5×4 negatives from the Tasmanian shoot. Suzanne is staying in Adelaide this weekend.

Rain squalls were sweeping across Adelaide as we left, but the weather at Victor Harbor was sunny and a cool wind was blowing. Ari and I went on a poodlewalk along the cliff tops and the rocky foreshore. The tide was very high, there was more erosion of the dunes on the beach and the seals were hunting along the coast. There was the odd jogger but no southern right whales to be seen. The afternoon walk was very enjoyable after several weeks in the city suffering from the flu and hanging out in car parks.

looking towards King Beach

I got drenched from a rogue wave whilst I was taking photos of the rocks on the shore. I was so busy trying to figure out why the bloody Sony NEX-7 switches to video so easily that I didn’t see it coming.

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at Newland Heads: digital photography

We spent the long weekend just passed (Queens birthday?) down at Victor Harbor. I used the time on the afternoon poodlewalks to refine the focusing on the Sony NEX-7 and to explore its image quality. What I wanted to know was whether could I get most of the pictures I was taking in focus and, secondly, whether the larger sensor could handle landscape detail as good as 35mm film.

rock pool, Newland Cliffs

I mostly succeeded with the focusing issue–all were in focus. And I was pretty happy with the image quality of this picture. The 24.3 Megapixel sensor produces images that are an improvement on those produced by the 10 Megapixel sensor of the old Sony DSC R1 that I used to use.

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beyond Kings Head

We are down at Victor Harbor for a couple of days–the last few days of Suzanne’s holidays. We return to Adelaide on Sunday.The days down here are being spent painting the living room of the weekender and gardening.

The autumn weather is still, overcast and temperate–it’s good coastal landscape photography weather. So yesterday afternoon and early this morning I walked along the Heysen Trail past Kings Head on to the rocky outcrop foot of the Newland cliffs. This is where I’d been photographing before the Queenstown trip.

Victor Harbor, near Kings Head, digital, Olympus, Newland cliffs

Though my Sony NEX-7 has finally arrived, I cannot get it to work with a Leica 35mm lens. I’m finding the user interface to be very complicated indeed. So I took the 5×4 Linhof this morning plus Suzanne’s Olympus XZ-1 digital camera for further scoping.

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at the foot of the cliffs of Newland Heads

Whilst Suzanne is in Barcelona revelling in the delights of a delightful international city Ari and I are at Victor Harbor this weekend.

I’ve come down to scan some of the medium format negatives from the Queenstown Tasmania shoot. There has been lots of rain at Victor since we were here last, and though the weather today was cool and overcast, it was very still. So went for a poodlewalk beyond Kings Head around to the inlet at the edge of the cliffs that form Newlands Head. There were lots of people around— cray fishermen and Heysen Trail walkers. There were no seals cruising the shoreline this time.

We returned to the area when we were down at Victor Harbor last My memories are of shots that I had taken back in late summer on one of those rare muggy overcast days in Victor Harbor. I’d shot in both colour and black and white then, and in looking at the scanned images now, I noted that the highlights were blown out and the shadows had no detail.

rockface, Kings Head

Today was the same approach–I exposed both colour and black and white whilst Ari stood guard. The cray fishermen had friends in camera clubs and talked about thenm doing a study of textures. Was I doing the same?

Unfortunately, this time, in returning to my base, I slipped on the seaweed and, though I managed to save the Rolleiflex SL66, light meter and film back from crashing into the rocks, I landed on my knees, scrapped my skin on the rocks, and twisted my left knee.

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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.

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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beyond Kings Head

Late this afternoon the poodles and I went to explore a location we had discovered around Xmas time. It is around from Kings Head and it is as far as you can go along the seashore before the cliffs plunge into the southern ocean.

It’s a bit of a hike to get there, especially with large format equipment in the summer heat. I’d taken some pictures with the Rolleiflex SL66 around New Year and I was looking at it today to see whether it would be worthwhile to lug the 5×4 gear around.

near Kings Head

The mood or atmosphere of the location is that of the romantic (German) sublime—it is all twisted, contorted rocks and wild crashing seas. Awesome wild nature. I need dark clouds not bright blue sky plus a low tide and a couple of hours with soft light. It was overcast tonight with a bit of rain so we will see what tomorrow morning brings.

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