This behind the camera image of   me photographjng a silo at Peake  for the 15 Silos on the Mallee Highway project was made on a day trip along the Mallee Highway with Maleko.  I needed some  black and white mages  of the silos on the Highway for the Weltraum  exhibition at Magpie Springs  in the 2016 Shimmer Photographic Biennale as the  ones  from an  earlier photoshoot hadn't work out that well.  

The Biennale opens on Friday,  September 2nd. The  8 x 10 image black and white  image of the silo at Peake was not included. It is an outtake due to the the lens vignetting because raising the front standard  to its limit was too extreme for the lens to cover.  I need to stand further back from the silo when I return. 

Read more

Avril Thomas is hosting  A Small World--A postcard exhibition  at  the Magpie Springs  gallery. It is the exhibition  after  the Weltraum  exhibition  in the 2016 Shimmer Photographic Biennale finishes.  The postcards consist of works on paper, they  are 6x4 inches and its international  in scope. 

The 100 or so works will be auctioned through an online auction site  with the proceeds going to help raise money for a cancer charity.

This is one of the pictures  that I am thinking of  entering into the exhibition:

The picture of clouds on the cliffs near  Kings Beach on the Fleurieu Peninsula,  is made with a rangefinder  35mm Leica  film camera,  so the aspect ratio of the negative is 3:2, which  if  uncropped,   will enlarge to print 4x6 inches. 

Read more

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.  

Read more

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.

Read more

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.   

Read more

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.

Read more

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  18^th and 19^th 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.

Read more