I was able to spend  5 days in Melbourne last week. The last time I was in Melbourne on a photo trip was  2 years  ago and I was photographing under the South Eastern freeway.  

The time was  divided  between  a scanning tutorial at Photonet on Wednesday and Thursday  for my (5x7 colour  and 8x10 black and white negatives) and  some photoshoots.  One on my own at Footscray on Tuesday,  and the second  one at Merri Creek in the Clifton Hill/Northcote area with Stuart Murdoch  late Thursday afternoon after he'd finished work at the Northern College of Art and Technology in Preston.    

As I was travelling light  on cheap Qantas flights (2 hand held cameras)  the Thursday photoshoot with Stuart was a scoping exercise  for a future 5x4 photoshoot. Stuart had photographed in the area 20 years ago and he was reconnecting with that body of work. 

I was walking around looking for  some suitable locations and times.  After walking around a bit in the drizzle we found something to work with near Rushell Reserve  in North Fitzroy looking towards  an old railway bridge: 

It is an edge land shoot.  What attracted both of us is the incongruity between nature and industry--Merri  Creek was the site of heavy industrial use throughout much of the 20th century, being home to quarries and landfills,  and a drain  for the waste runoff from neighbouring factories.  The best time is in the  late afternoon during  the  winter months.  

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We are slowly adjusting to  the shift to Victor Harbor and sorting through---chipping away at --- the mess of reducing two households into one. Most of the boxes have been emptied and the records,  books, furniture  and clothes given way. 

Setting up Encounter Studio is on hold until the inducted air-conditioning  is put in, hopefully  next week. Until then,  I am working on  the Edgelands book amongst a heap of photographic stuff and books piled up  around me. 

The large format  photography hasn't  happened yet, which frustrates me, because I have been walking a young poodle pup.  But I've started scoping  some coastal landscape work around Victor Harbor  now that we are in autumn:

This  picture in the early morning light was scoped for a 5x4 colour picture last week when I was on a poodlewalk with Ari and  Kayla. The next small step is to load up the sheet film holders so that I am ready for action.

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This 8x10 black and white shoot along the coast west of Petrel Cove, Victor Harbor, was done late last year: 

The negatives were processed at The Analogue Laboratory last year. I haven't scanned the negatives into a digital file yet. I have to find a way to overcome the Newton Rings I'm getting from the Epson flatbed scanner. 

The recent shift to Victor Harbor Life is making it difficult to do large format  photography. It has gound to a halt as we sort out all the stuff from the Sturt  St townhouse in Adelaide. 

I did come across a  suitable  subject  for a 5x4 colour shoot  on a recent poodle walk before Kayla arrived,  but I cannot get to it for the  early morning light at the moment as I am walking Kayla along the Encounter Bay beach at dawn.Nor can I take her  yet  on a photoshoot as she is only 6 weeks old.      

So photography is  on hold. 

The shift from living in the Sturt St apartment  in Adelaide's  CBD to  the house at Victor Harbor  is currently under way.  The townhouse will go on the market in mid-January. 

All the computers, scanners   and camera equipment now reside at Encounter Studio.   This  means that Encounter Studio will  eventually become the centre of my photography,  rather than what I do when I'm here at Encounter Bay for a few days every second weekend.  What will become secondary will be the urban photography,  as that now requires travelling up to the CBD or to Melbourne.

There has been little large format photography done because the shift taking place is teaching up my time and energy.   But  there is this possibility  for an 8x10 shoot that I came across  when I was looking through the 2014 digital archives just before  the Xmas break for what I'd scoped with the digital camera for  large format  photography. 

I went back and had a look over Xmas after walking the dogs at Kings Beach in the afternoon,  but  a quick glance indicated that the tree had been cut down.  I'll have to check the location more thoroughly. If  the  pine tree has  gone, then that is the end of that possibility for an 8x10.   

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I've been mulling over where to next after the Edgelands exhibition  at Manning Clark House in Canberra in November 2014. What project do I pick up and start to work on? Something that is different from the topographical approach of Edgelands. 

I thought that a  modest exhibition of abstractions would  be an easy step as I can select the images from  the archives. They'd be a mixture of colour and black and white and they would include abstractions from the urban and the natural environment. I'm not sure where the exhibition would be at this stage---probably in Adelaide and possibly at the Light Gallery in late 2015. 

Abstractions are a bit passé these days ---retro probably, given the  current emphasis on street photography.  Or  its a niche,  even though abstraction has been intrinsic to photography. On the other hand, there  is the retrospectivity of contemporary art that is nostalgic for, or repurposes,  Modernist art.  We could do without modernism's  main themes: the transcendental, the contemplative and the timeless.  

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Another Sunday morning in Adelaide. Another early morning photoshoot. This time  it was Wakefield House in Wakefield Street just east of  Victoria Square. 

I had intended to go much further into the city--to French St which is off Coromandel Place but I couldn't carry all the 5x7 view camera gear there. We are without a car  for this weekend,  and the first tram doesn't come through the city until about 6.45am on Sunday,  which is a bit late for the early morning light in the CBD.  

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Ari and I went on a poodle walked around Regency Park in Adelaide whilst Suzanne and Maleko were attending the second session of  puppy pre-school.  I  used the time to look for material for October's architectural theme for my 1picady2014 project.   It was around 6pm,  the sun was just going down, and we had an hour or so to fill in. So we just ambled around this industrial/warehouse area.  

We stumbled upon the South Rd Superway that is a part of Adelaide's north-south transport corridor.  We could even walk under the super way 

 This was large format territory. I could easily use the Cambo 5x7 monorail next time that Suzanne and Maleko go to puppy pre-school on a Friday night at Regency Park.  They have several sessions booked in so I could even  do some night photographs.  

Another Sunday morning in the CBD of Adelaide. Another large format urban photoshoot in colour with the Cambo 5x7 monorail.The exposures were  long  just after dawn and,  as there were gusts of wind  swirling around the lane way,  I couldn't risk 5 minute or so  exposures with a monorail.      

 Many walk by or through this lane way without noticing the space.  It's nearly always gloomy. The attraction is not the late modernist architecture as it is utterly banal,  rather than heritage or iconic. The lane way itself is  gloomy and depressing. You walk through this space   as it is not been designed to be a gathering place or piazza.   It is example of how architecture and urban design do not contribute to Adelaide's emerging vibrancy or liveliness. 

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Spring has arrived on the Fleurieu Peninsula and we are at Victor Harbor for a weeks holiday centred around  training a new standard poodle pup. There has been quite a lot of rain. 

I've been starting to look for  new  large format subjects for the  8x10 Cambo monorail + black and white film.  The picture below is one possibility that I came across when I was  scouting the southern Fleurieu Peninsula during  the late  winter. It's a "stormy" image that requires early morning light  in spring and a light breeze. Those kind of conditions  narrows the days  down to a very few for a photoshoot. 

I don't have much else that is easy access at the moment.  

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