Thoughtfactory: pictures experiments journeys

brief working notes on various photographic projects

Posts for Tag: Eyre Peninsula

photographing at Venus Bay, Eyre Peninsula

This picture of  porous limestone rocks was made at Venus Bay on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia in 2013. It is just south of Streaky Bay.  We were on a weeks holiday there with Heather Petty. Whilst there I  avoided  photographjng the panoramic  landscape views of the  cliffs and the Great Australian Bight and focused on the details which fascinated me.   

It had been many years since we had last been there,  and I'd never forgotten this part of the Eyre Peninsula.   Yanerbie, with its massive white  sand dunes that extend up to 4.5 km inland from the coast, was firmly planted in my memory, and  it is a favourite  photographic location of mine for photographing  landscapes in South Australia.  Landscape, currently has an inferior status in the  contemporary visual arts. It's not a fashionable subject in the art  institution. 

The picture was made on the headland of Venus Bay in the late afternoon along the western part of the South Head Walking Trail which offers views of the eastern end of the  Great  Australian Bight. The small settlement of  mostly fisherman  style shacks that hug the coastline of the bay,  borders the headline,  and  the trail  around it offered an interesting early morning walk for the poodles.  

The Nik Collection

The Nik Collection suite of software,  which has been  owned by Google since 2012, was downloaded  to Encounter Studio this afternoon. I know very little about the different software  products in the collection----Color Efex Pro 4, Nik Sharpener Pro,  Viveza 2, Dfine 2,  HDR Efex Pro 2 and Analog Efex Pro 2 apart from Silver Efex Pro--and I'm  not interested in some of them--eg., HDR Efex Pro  or Nik Sharpener Pro as I detest that  digital aesthetic. Nor do I know if they add much to what you can do using Adobe's Lightroom or Photoshop. 
   
The reason  for downloading the collection  is Silver Efex Pro 2.  I find that Lightroom is not that good  for post-processing my scanned black and white  files --- they come out  a bit flat and they lack a rich tonality. I've been without Silver Efex Pro 2  since I upgraded the Mac's  operating system to Yosemite,  and  I've missed using it  for post-processing my black and white medium format negatives. Silver Efex Pro  works well, but it is now part of a package,  rather than a standalone software. Hence the download. 
I have started exploring Analog Efex Pro---a film emulation program---to see what it offers.  When people nowadays think of the film look, and when they go ga-ga over the film look, they aren't really going ga-ga over the look of film. They're fetishising a simulation of an idea. An implanted memory of something that didn't really exist. That's Analog Efex Pro.

 I'm not interested in its  gimmicks (eg., adding dirt and scratches to the image),  but  I am willing to explore  how the  various types of retro or aged looks would work with black and white medium format. Will  the software  add anything? Or should I just stick to  using Silver Efex Pro?