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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I made a number of 5x4 negatives for the 2015 Magpie Springs Photography competition.  This is one image that failed to make the cut,  and as it didn't work in colour,   I converted this underexposed negative  to a black and white image using Silver Efex Pro 2 software.  

Though it looks better in black and white,  and I've overcoming the over sharpening problem caused by the Epson software,  I still have the  other  problem of  blown highlights  caused by scanning the negative. However,  looking at this image of straight photograhy makes me uneasy and this unease  is over and above these technical flaws. 

I cant help but feel that straight photography, exemplified by this image,  appears as a rather archaic discipline—even in its digital form, let alone the chemical one. There is still the attitude in the art institution that  contemporary visual artist's   love  for the photographic medium is because it is so “simple,” so “non-artsy,” so “direct.” Photography, in this sense,  has always been an important counterpart to modern art, The corollary of this is that straight  photography has gradually acquired a strange status of something not completely artistic and yet highly artistic. 

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I spent a couple of days in Wellington, New Zealand. I hadn't been there since I worked in the CBD as an economist and lived in Hataitai on a ridge above the shoreline of Evans Bay in  the early 1970s.  I was expecting a lot of changes and I was prepared to be  rather disorientated. 

It was a quick photography trip built around renewing my NZ driving licence and I spent the two days that I had available walking around the CBD and  the inner suburbs such as Thorndon; then seeing  photography  exhibitions and checking out the art hubs/centres when the wind turned into a gale and/or it started  raining heavily.   

Wellington is a very walkable city, it is easy to get around, and it offers good photographic opportunities due to  the  CBD being on a narrow coastal plain located between Wellington Harbor and the Wadestown  hill face.   

The art hubs/centre that I came across was the Toi Pōneke Arts Centre that is run by the Wellington City Council. Its gallery featured paintings by Sally Griffin. I wasn't able to see her photographs at the PhotoSpace Gallery  as the exhibition was not hung. I did see a small selection of the 8 x10 black and white Ahu Ahu Ohu  work  of Andrew Ross, a Wellington photographer, made during his  residency at  Tylee Cottage in Whanganui in 2009. 

I also managed to see the Photoforum at 40 exhibition at the City Gallery, which is also run by the Wellington City Council. The Photoforum exhibition traces the development of art photography in New Zealand and  the  growth of photography as an academic subject.  The general acceptance of the practice of serious photography today in New Zealand, are part of PhotoForum's success. Whilst the exhibition  is primarily a visual history of PhotoForum it is also  a chronicle of the development of modernist photography in New Zealand.

I bought the book, PhotoForum at 40: Counterculture, clusters and debate in New Zealand,  which is edited by Nina Seja, and Fiat Lux - 51 photographs by Andrew Ross, which is  based around  his Wellington images that focus on what is disappearing---the  fading past.    

I  came across a  fallen log whilst walking along the Hesyen Trail near Jagger Rd, Victor Harbor  yesterday.  This is part of the Cape Jervis to Kuitpo Forest section of the trail  and it is standing to Encounter Studio.