Another image in the series of photographing light per se which broadens the terrain beyond photojournalism and documentary:
This is looking east over Encounter Bay from Rosetta Head.
The hardware upgrade has finally happened
The studio hardware upgrade is nearly finished. Thank goodness.
The old Mac Pro (2009) and its cinema monitor are now sitting in the garage looking for a new home. The Mac Studio and Eizo monitor replacement have arrived, been unpacked, and are sitting on my desk in the studio. I've just started working with them. I've also upgraded to the Adobe Photography plan. I didn't want to lease the photo software but I really didn't have that much of a choice.
A picture from 2021 of a building in Pirie St made with my old Rolleiflex TLR through an open window in the Epworth building:
At this stage of the upgrade I cannot get my old Epson V700 flatbed scanner to work, even though I upgraded to the VuScan software. So all the film photos from 2022 plus many of the b+w ones from 2021 have yet to be scanned. I have been forced to order a new Epson V850 Pro scanner.
light #2
This is my second attempt in my little project of photographing light per se:
On this occasion I endeavoured to simplifiy things down to the bare minimum. I'm at the western edge of Encounter Bay on Jetty Rd that runs alongside Rosetta Head in the early morning. I'm precariously balanced on some rocks at the very edge of the sea. It is early in the morning just after sunrise. The advantage of digital is its flexibility as working with a tripod and film would be much more difficult.
light #1
This is my first attempt at photographing light per se that I mention in an earlier post. I took advantage of the layer of cloud softening the early morning light.
This is looking east across Encounter Bay from Rosetta Head in Victor Harbor. I did try this approach with an old film camera -- eg., a Rolleiflex TLR (colour negative) to see what happens but the film is still unprocessed.
light + photography
I live on the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia and, as a result of my early morning poodlewalks along the coast, I I have become very aware of light, and especially the power and violence of light in relation to photography. My usual mode of photography is one of being anxious to minimise or avoid the blinding or excessive light that results in blown highlights. So I would normally photograph in soft or low light situations (using both analog and digital cameras) to manage the excessive and destructive light.
However, as a result of my experiences of the fluidity of light along the coast during this year I have tentatively started to explore light as the subject of photography. It is very tentative though:
The traditional interpretation of light in our western culture contrasts light with darkness, with light standing for vision, reason, knowledge, truth and the real --eg.,as exemplified in the Enlightenment movement. On this interpretation light serves as a transparent medium in which truth and the objective world are revealed. Light unveils, clarifies, illuminates and makes the world around us perceptible and knowable.
seascapes
I have started to explore the possibilities of seascapes this last month or so using large format cameras -- namely, 4x5 and 5x7-- and photographng in colour.
The location from which I work is Rosetta Head (the Bluff) and the subject is Encounter Bay in the early morning around sunrise. I park the Forester in the top car park over looking Petrel Cove then walk around the northern side of the Bluff and then up the eastern face carrying the camera gear. The 5x4 and carbon tripod are no problem as they fit into a pack, but I struggle with the 5x7 Cambo and the Gitzo tripod.
It is a slow process as it is a hit and miss situation. I do not really know what the clouds, light and atmosphere will be like until I get there. All I know is that there are clouds over the sea and the direction of the wind.
the upgrade journey starts
I have finally begun the necessary upgrades to my digital "darkroom" that is centred around independent content creator and work-from-home. The current set-up has served me well for the last 7 years, but it is finally reaching its use-by date. The software of the Epson V700 scanner has a flaw as it won't scan b+w negatives but I cannot upgrade it as the O/S of the Mac Pro is too old.
The upgrade is going to involve buying new computers around June 2022 when Apple release the more professionally oriented MX Macs; plus new processing software for both still photography and video. The hardware plan is that a Mac mini plus an Eizo screen will replace the old Mac Pro (2009) that I have been using for my film photography. Then I will be able to upgrade the Epson software.
The first step in the longish upgrade journey was to upgrade the operating system of the 27 inch iMac (2015 Intel) that I use for my digital still photography and to download new post- processing software. To my surprise I was still able to upgrade the macOS for the iMac from the macOS High Sierra that I had been using to the recently released macOS Monterey. (I thought that the 2015 iMac would be too old to upgrade to the latest macO/S).
My fingers are crossed as I'm hoping that the iMac has the capacity (processing power) to be able to use process the 4K videos from the recently acquired Panasonic SH1.
possibilities, photographically speaking
During the last couple of months as the La Niña event with its cooler, wetter conditions has been weakening I have been regularly exploring the local Waitpinga bushland in the early morning. This is after walking with Kayla along a dusty back country road for 30 minutes or so. The explorations are all 30 minutes in duration are they are designed to get to know the bushland and to find some suitable material ---possibilities-- for a large format photo session.
This picture of some roadside vegetation, just after sunrise, was made on New Years day. After looking art it for a couple of weeks I've decided that it is a possibility worth photographing in the right light. Light is crucial here. Thankfully, it is easy to find, even though it is just as easy to walk past without noticing it --- which I have done on many an occasion, even when I have been looking out for it.
The bushland explorations have taken quite some time to uncover the photographic possibilities. The scoping sessions using a digital camera are of fragments of the bush -- a tree trunk here, a branch there, an old log on the ground there abouts. I then have to remember where these possibilities are so that I am able to find them on the next exploration. Sometimes it takes me a week or more to re-locate some of these possibilities; some because there are times when I can never find them again.
Recovered
In the 1970s and 1980s a Leica M4 rangefinder with a 1970s 35mm Summicron lens was my carry around film camera. It worked extremely well and I was very comfortable wandering the streets using the camera without a light meter. Some say that this was a classic M -- the apex of the minimal analog, hand-crafted design. But it was on the cusp of fading into oblivion in the face of a newer technology of the 35mm SLR from Japan (Nikon F) from the early sixties. The latter was a steady trend which increased even more during the 1970s and 1980s.
I used the M4 extensively for the Bowden Archives and Industrial Modernity project, especially for the black and white photos in the Snapshots and Bowden sections.
I dropped the Leica M4 onto a concrete floor in the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane's South Bank in the 1990s. The rangefinder mechanism broke and it could not be repaired in Australia. The camera body was misplaced and then lost for approximately 25 years. The 35mm Summicron lens, which had sat in a cupboard was eventually used on a digital Sony NEX-7 in 2014. I bought the Sony E mount so that I could use the lens.
Then the Leica M4 body was found around 2018. Unfortunately, the rangefinder mechanism still could not be repaired in Australia as there were no second hand rangefinder mechanisms. Over the next couple of years I saved up some money and I sent the body back to Leica Camera in Wetzlar, Germany in 202 to be repaired. They put in a new rangefinder mechanism and refurbished the body. They did an excellent job --- the 1970s camera is like new.
an old MA revisited
Art photography is often about journeys along winding tracks and trails, some of which lead to no where.
Sometimes these journeys are in the form of working on projects over a long period of time. Eventually an archive of photos builds up and we start to wonder what can we do with these photos over and above showing them in the the odd physical exhibition that is quickly forgotten and only exists on a CV. Often these projects are then put to one side, we forget about them, and we move onto new projects.
The general idea of the MA was to explore Romanticism's critical response to industrial capitalism and then to map this onto Australian modernity. I worked on it for 2 years, then had to put it aside (ie., dumped it) when I upgraded to do a PhD in continental philosophy at Flinders. I forgot about the MA and the photography whilst working on the PhD in the 1990s and when I moved into the paid workforce in Canberra. When I picked up photography again in the first decade of 21st century I would sometimes take photos that were within the boundaries of the industrial MA project, but I never thought about it as a project.
The MA was something best forgotten. I'd failed. I was embarrassed by the failure. I realized that it had became normal for people to do MFA's, complete them, and then teach/lecture/research photography in a university, such as RMIT. My old b+w photos just reminded me of my shame over my failure. I was now happy just making new photos like most other photographers.
One day, when I was bored, I started going through my old black and white archives. I saw a body of work sitting there, asked a few friends to look at it, and then to help me quickly draft up a dummy photobook. I showed the dummy to a few people, then put it into the background. The dummy photobook was a bunch of photos of Bowden. However, that didn't really make sense of the old MA, since the text was missing, and it was the text that I had struggled with so long ago.