I started  on the  large format silo project yesterday evening with a  black and white   shoot of the silos at Talem Bend using the 8x10 Cambo in late afternoon.  However,  the conditions were not ideal  for this kind of photoshoot.  

The sun is now quite intense even before it disappears below the horizon, and the clouds that I wanted  for cloud cover did not eventuate.   There were  clouds  in the sky when we were in Adelaide,  and it looked promising as we drove along the south-eastern freeway to Talem Bend.   But the clouds  hugged the coastline of the Fleurieu Peninsula coast,  rather than moving inland across the Murraylands.   So, to my dismay,  it was clear blue sky at the silo location.  

The next stage of the silo project was  organized today whilst  I was in Adelaide having  a coffee with Peter Barnes and Gilbert Roe at Cafe Troppo in Whitmore Square.   This stage  consists of   a photo trip with Gilbert  in mid-October 2015  along the Malle Highway ---probably the section between Pinaroo in South Australia and Toolebuc in Victoria. We have agreed to  camp at Ouyen and  to make trips  out from that base.  Gilbert will be using his pinhole camera.  

It is not quite accurate to say that I started on the silo project yesterday.  I'd already started as I'd  previously done a photoshoot of the silos at Lamaroo  on the day that  I was returning  to Adelaide  from  Hay on the  Canberra trip.  

Again the conditions were not ideal for this photoshoot. Once again I wanted more cloud cover.  It was raining in Lamaroo and I waited in the car for the showers to pass.   By the time I got the 8x10 gear set up the clouds had more or less gone. Overcast conditions would suit me,  but these kind of conditions  are very  unlikely this time of the year. Winter time is probably the best time for this kind of project.   

At this stage the  plan of the silo project  is  for  the Mallee section  to be  self-contained,  and  for it to  take the form of an artist's book that will be submitted to the book competition at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale 2017. 

Another possible photo trip  that was suggested during  coffee was  one to Wallaroo,  and it  would be the 3 of us around mid-November 2015.   Wallaroo  is on the western side of York Peninsula and there  is a big silo complex there. Peter is an architectural photographer and he  had photographed the silo on a previous trip.  He thought that I would find the silo complex  architecturally  interesting.  I'm not sure how this would fit into the silo project,  as this  project  is currently  centred around travelling on the Mallee highway and the Western highway in the  Wimmera. 

I've been using google to  look  for other Australian photographers work on silos as I'm sure that they have been photographed over the years. There are lots of stock photographs  but nothing on the Large Format Photography Blog  in spite of Max Dupain's  1930's modernist  studies of the Pyrmont wheat silos.   I did, however,  find this body of work on NSW silos by the architect Hal Pratt, who  spent the  seven years photographing more than 350 silo locations in NSW for the State Library of NSW.