A couple of days before, and between Xmas and New Year 2022, have been conducive for seascapes and photographing light.
An example of a seascape from Rosetta Head at Victor Habor in the early morning:
Posts for Tag: Petrel Cove
GPS coordinates/innovation/future thinking
I have just realized that by using Latitude and Longitude through Google Earth I am able to give a far more accurate way of identifying the location of my photos, than just saying 'the rocky coastline just west of Petrel Cove' in South Australia.
An example of a recent photo:--Lat:-35.5932 Lon:138.5978
GPS coordinates have also helped me to find a section of granite rocks along the coast of Deep Creek Conservation Park that I've wanted to walk and explore. I knew about them in a casual way, but I could not find their location until I came across a latitude reference to their location near Deep Creek Beach. I was interested because I wanted to continue to explore the relationship between photographic abstractions and nature whilst avoiding the genre of the landscape.
It will be a workout walking to and from the coast carrying 5x4 equipment. As the walk is around 6 hours so it will become part of the training for the forthcoming camel trek from Blinman to Lake Frome in South Australia in May.
experiments #2
The fuzzy experiments continue. This time it is Petrel Cove on a stormy afternoon:
I was sitting in the car in the Petrel Cove car park waiting for the squall to pass before I went for an afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko. I was wondering if I could achieve layers and textures in the photo with everything out of focus.
macro
The advantage of using the Sony a7 R111 with a 35mm Leica M lens and a Novoflex adaptor on the poodlewalks is that I can photograph handheld in low light situations. The high ISO capability is something that I needed not all the tech features as I use the camera in manual mode, as if it were a film camera. It was still photography not video that I was interested in, since video requires expensive editing software and it is a whole other world.
The disadvantage of the Sony with a Lecia M lens is that I cannot do closeups of the objects that I see when walking along the beach or amongst the granite rocks. I find this frustrating as a lot of what I find interesting along the littoral zone these walks is in the detail. Photographing the detail requires using a macro lens, which I do not have. Up to now I use an old compact digital camera (the Olympus XZ-1), but I find the small sensor (10 megapixels) too limiting in terms of dynamic range, tonality and for post processing.
So I have decided to use my old Sony NEX 7 camera that is sitting in a cupboard with a Voigtlander VM/E Close Focus Adapter, which allows me to use my Leica M lenses on both full frame & APS-C Sony E Mount Cameras. I have just ordered the adaptor from Mainline Photographics in Sydney. It's a basic digital camera but this combination provides me with the capability to do some handheld macro photography in soft light using a Leica M lens.
Petrel Cove: am
This was made on an early morning poodlewalk as Kayla and I set out for an open air photoshoot, then a walk along the rocks along the coast. It was made in the warm weather just before before the cold, windy wet conditions set in.
People were out and about in the sub tropical weather: surfing, fishing, sun baking, playing. I had some photos of saltt ponds amongst the granite rocks lined up, then the weather changed and everyone disappeared.
Petrel Cove: open air studio
Another behind the camera photo of an early morning still life photoshoot near Petrel Cove:
This open studio set up had been previously scoped with my digital camera. I scoped a number of different locations to see which worked the best. I plan to do a 5x4 photoshoot with the baby Sinar F2 late this afternoon if the conditions remain overcast.
on location: Petrel Cove
It took me three attempts over three days to photograph this rock pool at Petrel Cove:
My historical baby Linhof camera--an old Linhof Technika 70 --- had a mechanical problem on the first morning as the locking mechanism wouldn't lock the downturned folding camera bed so I could not focus; the second morning it was raining; the third morning things finally came together.
digital b+w photography
It is rare for me to convert my digital photos into black and white. I nearly always use medium format film for my black and white photography of the details along both the coast and the landscape of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. I avoid the grandiose or the panorama.
However, as I have no b+w film at the moment, and the spare film back for the Rolleiflex SL66 that I used to use for my b+w broke when I was in Queenstown earlier this year and cannot be repaired, I have done a quick conversion of a digital colour image into black and white using Adobe's Lightroom.
I dislike the way that Lightroom converts colour digital files into black and white files. The tonal richness disappears and the image becomes rather drab and flat. There is no punch to them.
So, like many others, I've been using the Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 plugin software to process my digital black and white images in Lightroom. I was happy with what I was using, and I didn't bother looking for alternative software because I rarely converted my digital photos into black and white. Digital black and white photography didn't really appeal.
This is just a small step into the world of digital black and white photography. Though I will eventually buy more black and white film to use with the Linhof Technika 70, the new iMac (currently running the High Sierra O/S) is forcing me to think in terms of upgrading my Sony NEX-7 digital camera to a full frame mirrorless one, and updating my Adobe post processing software.
salt ponds
One coastal subject matter that I had started to explore was the dried salt ponds among the rocks along the coast west of Petrel Cove. I had started to scope them with a digital camera. Then I saw the photograph of salt ponds by Christopher Houghton made with a 5x4 camera and decided to photography the ones I'd seen in black and white.
I quickly found them to be very ephemeral--there in the morning, gone in the afternoon. So I spent several days on the various poodle walks looking for permanent saltponds in different locations along the coast. I found a couple and I was ready to go back with a medium format camera.
Then the rains cam after Xmas. It rained for several days and the permanent salt ponds that I had discovered were washed away. A week has passed, and though I have been back every day, the salt ponds have yet to return.
at Petrel Cove
Early this morning on a poodle walk at Petrel Cove:
I hadn't wandered around Petrel Cove for a quite a while and I decided to explore the rocks photographically, given the soft, early morning light.