Finally some photographic action:
There was some sunshine early on Sunday morning. So I took advantage of it to make a 5x4 black and white picture. I rushed the photoshoot though because the light had changed from the time I'd scoped it. It hit the tree about 10 minutes earlier than last time.
On Thursday the wild, stormy winter weather eased and we had a day of overcast skies, little rain and no wind. So I loaded the large format cameras into the Subaru Outback and took off for a day trip the Mallee along the Mallee Highway.
I needed to continue to photograph the silos with the 8x10 Cambo for the forthcoming Weltraum exhibition in the Shimmer Photographic Biennnale. I photographed at Peake and Lameroo. The silo at Geranium was difficult and I left it for another occasion. I didn't make it to the Victorian Mallee as 220 kilometres one way was far enough for a day trip.
Maleko accompanied me on the day trip. It was his first time on a photo trip.
After I finished the silo photoshoot in Lameroo I briefly photographed around the town. I struck up a conversation with a wool buyer who had seen me photographing the silos about the history of the Murray Mallee. He informed me that the last train on the Mallee Highway railway line had been around October 2015, and that the silos along the Mallee Highway now stand empty. The wheat is now picked at the farm gate up by trucks and then taken by road to either Pinnaroo or Tailem Bend.
That is is the end of an era that began with the vegetation clearance, agricultural development, small farms and the railway infrastructure in the early 20th century.
It's been cold, windy and wet on the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula these last couple of weeks. There has been little to no opportunities to do any large format photography, nor to go camping at Murrayville on the Mallee Highway to continue the work on the silo project.
I've spent my time writing the texts for the Weltraum exhibition at Magpie Springs in early September, the Abstraction x 5 exhibition at the Light Gallery in late September, the Mallee exhibition at Atkins Photo Lab in mid-October , and the talk to the Flinders University Philosophy Club on 'Philosophy, Photography and the Environment' in late October.
I decided to take a break from the writing by scanning some vegetables that I'd purchased at the Victor Harbor Farmers Market on Saturday morning. I used the Epson V700 flatbed scanner:
The wet, cold stormy weather has passed. It is still cold in the morning (I wore gloves on the 7am poodle walk this morning), but the wind has dropped, the sun has returned and the sky is blue. I've picked up my cameras again, and I've started thinking about photography. -
I picked up the Sinar F2 5x4 yesterday, got my pack out, and loaded the battery into the light meter only to put it down again as I didn't have anything in mind to photograph. However, I used the digital on yesterday's evening poodle walk. The picture below is a scoping study that I made on this morning's poodle walk along Baum Rd in Waitpinga using my Sony (APS-C) digital camera:
I have photographed this tree before--probably a couple of years ago. It was 5x4 film and I choose an overcast day with light rain to obtain the dull, gloomy look. I wasn't all that happy with what I did in colour.
The Mallee group of photographers meet for lunch today at the Ramsgate Hotel in Henley Beach, Adelaide to discuss the exhibition schedules of their lens-based photography work about the Mallee. The Mallee photography group is small --it consists of Eric Algra, Gilbert Roe and myself--- and it recently came together through our mutual interest in exploring the Mallee photographically.
None of us live in the Mallee, but each of us has developed a broad photographic interest in exploring the South Australian and the Victorian Mallee. For some of us, especially Eric, this interest goes back several years. What is interesting is that we approach the Mallee from diverse perspectives.
What we decided over a convivial pub lunch on a windy winter's day was to come together to put on a series of group exhibitions over a period of years as we gradually built up a body of work about this region of southern Australia. We decided to exhibit on a small scale in Adelaide in late 2016, then produce more work for the Ballarat International Foto Biennale in 2017, then doing extra work to exhibit in some regional towns in the Mallee--eg., in Mildura or Murray Bridge. This photography gallery in Mildura was mentioned, for instance, as was this one in Murray Bridge and this one in Horsham.
There has been very little photography done this last week whilst Suzanne has been away in the Pilbara. There has been the odd snap on when I've been on the poodle walks when the sun was shining between the squalls:
I've had little interest in photography as it as been just too wet.
I've done little film photography since the start of winter, though I have been scoping with the digital camera.
It's been too cold, wet and windy along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula to use the film cameras. Today was the first time, in fact, that I used a film camera on a tripod since the photoshoot along the Mallee Highway.
I re-photographed this image late this afternoon whilst on a poodle walk ( with Ari and Maleko) using my medium format cameras--( the Rolleiflex SL66 and the Linhof Technika 70). This is the digital image from my earlier scoping with the late afternoon light:
That re-photographing felt like I was picking up the threads again re film photography after going through a fallow period---it's been about a month since the Mallee Highway photoshoot.
This picture of the Tobin House, one of Adelaide's Art Deco buildings, made whilst I was wandering along North Terrace in Adelaide's CBD around 5pm. I was enjoying watching the winter light playing across the facades of the buildings along North Terrace.
I was on my way to the opening of Frédéric Mouchet's interesting exhibition at the State Library of South Australia. The exhibition centred around the South Australia of the French explorers in the 18th and 19th centuries in that Mouchet has retraced their journey around the unexplored coast of Nouvelle Hollande, including Kangaroo Island, Encounter Bay (Victor Harbor), Spencer Gulf and the Great Australian Bight.
The general consensus is that film-based, large format photography will endure in the digital age due to its simplicity i.e., relying on minimal technology to render a high-quality image. It is true that there is very little that can go wrong with a view camera from the standpoint of technology failure.
The picture below is the result of my first steps in the 8x10 Mallee Highway silo project. This is a silo at Lamaroo that I photographed whilst returning from Canberra in 2015. I had scoped the silos on my way to Canberra a week earlier, and I thought that they would be a suitable place for me to start. There was easy access to the silos, no security and the silos suited the afternoon light.
As it was raining when I arrived in Lameroo, I waited in the Subaru for the squall to pass, then I carried the Cambo monorail out to the location to make a couple of photos. It started raining just as I finished the shoot, and it rained all the way on the drive back to Victor Harbor.
The 19th century photographic look of the sculptural form of the silo imposed on the landscape is what I am after. Though there is an emerging climate of photographic nostalgia for traditional photography and the craft of handmade images, traditional photography for me is just large format + film; rather than alternative photographic processes, such as the wet plate process, tintypes or ambrotypes.
Unfortunately, my old 240mm Schneider Symmar f5.6 lens could not cover the movements of the Cambo's raised front standard; the trees in the shade on the right of the silo have no detail; the negative has streak marks from the tank development of Ilford FP4 Plus at the Analogue Lab in Adelaide; and scanning the negative with the Epson V700 flatbed scanner has caused Newton Rings to appear on the digital file.
All in all this is a disappointing, and somewhat disheartening result. Sure the project and equipment are a low budget, but I had been hoping for better results than this.
On the last couple of coastal poodle walks I've started scoping subject matter for the 5x4 Sinar F2 and black and white film. I haven't been using this monorail much since I decided to use it for black and white photography.
I took the Sinar with me on the recent photo trip to the Mallee Highway, and I did find some suitable subject matter. However, the weather was too bright and sunny on the last day for the planned photoshoot at Torrita.
This is one possibility along the coast that I did come across:
This location is fairly easy to access with a monorail--it's a short walk along the coastal path to the rocks. I just need an overcast day for the photoshoot with no rain.