In this post on his Tumblr blog Stuart Murdoch  gives an indication of how I've been working  for my 4 photo submission to the Fleurieu Four Seasons Prize for Landscape Photography. Just as he  drives around  the region between the western rim of Melbourne and Ballarat I've been driving around the western  Fleurieu Peninsula.

Yesterday we wandered along some back country roads on our way to Cape Jervis  to see if a winter shoot was possible.   

 Unlike Stu Art   I mostly scope with a digital camera, check the images on the computer,  then return to specific locations with my film camera. 

I've been exploring the Hindmarsh River estuary at Victor Harbor, South Australia. I'd initially scoped  the malaleucas with a digital camera--the Sony NEX-7, handheld:

It's  a low light camera on a tripod situation. 

I returned  for a more considered photo with a medium format camera--Rolleiflex SL66--- using black and white film  and a wide angle lens.  

Now I'm trying to make a 8x10 photo   using the Cambo monorail and black and white film.  I've been waiting for the mouth of the river to open in winter, then for the winter rains to ease so that the swamp-land dries out. It's been  been very wet this winter. I was wanting an overcast day with little wind. 

That was today. I started  the photoshoot with the Cambo around lunchtime,  but the rains returned before I'd really got started.  So I have to wait for the rains to ease, the ground to dry out, and an overcast day.  

I've been working on an 8x10 black and white interpretation of this picture that I took the other morning whilst walking with Ari:

I missed the light at my first attempt this morning. The Cambo and Linhof  tripod were playing up and  the early morning sunlight was momentary because of the cloud cover. 

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I've been waiting some time to remake this roadside vegetation picture: 

I'd casually snapped in one morning last year on a poodle walk along Baum Rd. I was attracted by the light. 

 I'd been back to reshoot it with a large format camera since but the light and the grass wasn't right. It was all too green. I had to wait for the grass alongside the road to die. I'd gone back earlier in the week. The  winter grass was dead  but it was overcast and there was  no early morning sunlight. The scene looked drab and dull.  

I went back this morning with Ari  as there was some  light early morning  cloud and the promise of lots of sunlight. We did a poodlewalk along Baum road,  then came back to the trees to watch  how  the sunlight lit up the scene. 7.30 am was around the right time. 

If there is sunlight tomorrow morning I will be back with the 8x10 Cambo. 

I have been playing around with this image.

I initially saw it on an early morning  poodle walk with Ari and I snapped it with the  iPhone. It looked  as if it were taken during the moonlight. As this was a part of our regular walk I  then took some snaps with the digital Sony. They looked okay  so I returned  this morning and made a couple of pictures with the Rollei SL66 before walking Ari. 

I  made some  pictures in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens  using tranny film (Fuji Velvia)  earlier in the year.  It  was part of the Atkins Technicolour's  2014  Summer School Film Challenge.  I was only able to attend the film challenge workshop due to other commitments.  

It was a 40-45 degree day  in high summer and we were  to make our  photos between 9.30am --12.30 pm.  The roll was processed  by Atkins and we then selected one picture from the shoot.  This was then  scanned by Atkins, lightly post-processed by the photographer, then printed by Atkins for an upcoming exhibition.  

My pictures  of bamboo strands in the Botanic Gardens was hit and miss,  and  some of the pictures were badly underexposed. I've just scanned  the two rolls  that I exposed  back then.  I've  quickly converted one of the badly underexposed  pictures  to black and white using Silver Efex Pro 2 to see  if it is possible to  save them:

This  picture  of leaf litter was next to  a strand of bamboo  under some trees that  provided some deep,  open shade and this allowed me   to avoid the summer glare.  I gathered bits and pieces of leaf litter and  some colourful flowers to form a "still life".   

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Summer has gone.  I did very little large format photography during the summer when I was  at Victor Harbor.  

I did explore a number of possibilities of representing 'summer on the coast' using  my digital camera whilst I was on the early morning poodle walks with Ari, but I never followed through.

I'm not sure why. The pictures  looked  conceptually promising, but they  just seem to be too cliched even when I pushed towards the abstract. 

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I've been invited to have a solo exhibition at Manning Clark House in Canberra in November 2014. I've decided to structure it around edge lands as this conception of wasteland is a strand that runs through the  history of my photography.   Edgelands would include photos from Port Adelaide, Andamooka, Chowilla in the SA Riverland, Adelaide, Queenstown Tasmania, Melbourne, etc. Some would large and some medium; some black and white and some in colour.  

I've started  scoping for work for the  Fleurieu Four Seasons Prize for landscape photography. It's a competition and I don't  have much success in them. 

The Prize  is for a suite of four photos that are taken in the western part of the Fleurieu Peninsula over the four seasons.  I don't know this area very well  photographically so I've started exploring it on my away to and from Victor Harbour.  

On the way down this trip I  was looking for a late afternoon coastal location that would be suitable  for  5x4 film work, and which  had fairly easy access. This location looked a possibility. The picture was made at midday and so the light is terrible.  I will scope  it out in the late  afternoon  on my way back to Adelaide to see what  the light looks like then. 

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My lack of success with using the  8x10 Cambo has continued. 

 I mucked up some of the 8x10 photos of the marshland at American River. My heart sank  when I saw the negatives and I was distraught when I saw the scans. I had over exposed them.  The light had changed whilst I was waiting  for the right kind off light--a ray of early morning sunshine lightening up the marshland. The light changed during the 20 minutes I waited. Everything had became brighter--it didn't look it to the eye--- and I neglected to take another  light reading before taking the picture  

The colour has been washed out,  and the pictures have a bleached look.  I've  end up with  mushy, uninspiring images. They look ugly. 

All I have is a couple of  digital scoping images: