Whilst I have been on our early morning  poodle walks during the 8 months or that  we have  been living at this seaside town I have been tentatively exploring the coastal erosion around the Victor Harbor's  beaches east of Rosetta Head.   This is tentative to the extent that I am not actually  scoping for large format photography,  nor even  picking up from where I left off  when we used to come down to Victor Harbor on the  weekends.  

I can see that  coastal erosion  is a problem as the sand dunes are  eroding along the Victory Harbor beach and Hayborough. Coastal recession is the process by which “soft” (e.g. sandy or muddy) shorelines tend to be eroded landwards under a rising sea level.

The current solution adopted by the Council is beach replenishment--that is, taking sand from Kent Reserve to the eroded beach along The Esplanade. This  is a short term fix as the  sea  eventually washes the  buffer of new sand away. 

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Yesterday was World Sight Day and Sight For All, the  charity organisation restoring sight for people in third world countries around the word,  held it's first one day  photogpraphy challenge in association with Atkins Photo Lab in Adelaide.   

The creative brief was  a photo around the theme of  yellow with the picture  having  to be taken edited and uploaded  on October 11. I entered the competition and Suzanne and I drove up to  the Adelaide Central Market car park  for a shoot inside the car park.   

After the shoot Suzanne did some shopping whilst I took the opportunity to briefly do some work of mine with the Linhof Technika 5x4 field camera. It was a picture for the  Alt-Adelaide series that I've been  slowly working on.   

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I've been going through the archives  looking for material for the website's various galleries  and I came across some studio based work:

I had ignored this body of work because I couldn't develop it. I didn't know how to.   Technically it  wasn't very good and that discouraged me, especially when I saw the quality studio work on the internet done with  high end DSLR  cameras.

 But I  do like the way film can flip things--makes them odder or wilder. 

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.  

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I haven't been doing much large format photography lately. The weather hasn't really  been suitable  for the large format photography  photoshoots that I had planned. 

However, I did scope  this trunk study on the Heysen Trail  though:

The tree  was where I'd parked the car to walk along  the Heysen Trail of the evening poodle walk.  I noticed it in the subdued light as I was driving away at the end of  the poodle walk and took a couple of snaps.  

On my last visit to Adelaide after the Ballarat trip I decided  to walked to my opticians appointment in the CBD  from Atkins Photo Lab in Kent Town. I had lost my glasses on that trip, and as I had  an hour or so to fill in  before the appointment, I wandered through  the Botanic Gardens. 

I was hoping to start by viewing a SALA exhibition of Kangaroo Island artists  at the Wine Centre but it had finished. So I meandered through the Australian native plants  section of the  Botanic Gardens.

I ended up among the strands of bamboo along a bit of a waterway near North Terrace.   I had briefly photographed these for an Atkins Film Challenge a year or so earlier. I was intrigued by them but felt that I didn't do them justice then. So I decided to take another look.  

I was in Ballarat for a few days to see the Ballarat International Foto  Biennale 2015. I had some photos in the Time exhibition  by the Atkins  Photo Artists,  which was  in the basement of the Lost Ones Gallery. The exhibition was part of BIFB15's  Fringe Festival.    

Whilst I was  in Ballarat I took the opportunity to  wander the streets taking  some photos of the architecture 

These snaps were mostly made whilst I was walking around the town looking  at the various exhibitions in the core and fringe programmes.  It was continuing on with what I  had done a couple of years ago when I was there for BIFN 13. 

This is the kind of  picture of silos in a landscape  that I plan to do with respect to that section of the silo project  which is based around the Mallee Highway.  I also referred to the project here. 

This plan is to make the pictures  in black and white  primarily using a Cambo 8x10 monorail. A few will made in colour using the Cambo 5x7 monorail.   The use of colour will be the focus of picturing the silos in the Wimmera. 

This picture was made on the Hume Highway on the way from Adelaide to Canberra.

I'd  been  driving  from Hay, I was tired , so  and I took a break before driving on the Barton Highway into Canberra.    

On a recent trip to Canberra  to visit my family,  I briefly explored the Cotter River with Judith Crispin. She knew the area well from exploring it photographically whilst working at Manning Clark House, and she kindly  showed me some of her favourite places along the river valley. 

It was an all too  brief visit,  but I  find  the location and the region----- the Namadgi National Park ----very interesting,  and I will certainly revisit it the next time I am in Canberra. The next trip will be primarily a photo trip. 

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