A sub-theme of heat has emerged in the ongoing, low key  Roadside project.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM)  2024 was Adelaide’s driest year since 2006, with the city receiving nearly 200 millimetres below the average rainfall.  Heat refers to   the extreme dryness of the landscape  in southern South Australia,  during  the  heatwave of the late summer/early autumn. This   dryness can be seen in the dusty paddocks and the  dead grass along the side of the road. It is the  dead grass that I've been  noticing  during my  afternoon poodlewalks with Maya on   Waitpinga's backcountry roads in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula.  

There has been no rain for months and none is forecast by   BOM for some time.  Only more  extreme temperatures  with the increased risk for bushfires.  People on water tanks in the Adelaide Hills and Yankalilla have run out of water and they are now relying on water cartage. This  is such a contrast to the  sub-tropical cyclones (eg., Cyclone Alfred) and the floods in north-eastern NSW and south-eastern Queensland, due to the  ocean and atmosphere being demonstrably warmer than even just a few years ago. The climate is changing because it is warming.

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Blurriness -- in the sense of blurred realities --- is in opposition  to the clear,  distinct   pictures of reality that emphasis clarity. 

For instance, Wittgenstein  in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus  appeals to clarity when he  characterises the aim, task and results of philosophy. The task for philosophy is to make thoughts clear; whilst making a thought clear is making clear a picture of reality. 

Analogue photography's representations were traditionally seen capturing  a slice of real life in terms of the conventions of   clarity  and sharpness.  Photographic realism was interpreted as faithfully representing  the reality of the material world--a framed, cut-out of reality.  Representing was understood in terms of   clarity  with clarity  interpreted as depicting  (abbilden in Wittgenstein) which was then interpreted as mirroring  or copying. Photographic theory from Bazin, Benjamin, Barthes, Berger, Sjarkowski, up until the mid-1970s was in general preoccupied with the documentary and the vernacular. 

 In contrast, Claude  Monet's Water Lilies have a blurry, out-of-focus effect that characterises the wide stretches of water. This aspect of Monet’s later work was an actual aesthetic choice, and rather than being a loss of distinctiveness, the indistinct   can be interpreted in terms of the aesthetic category of blurriness. Blurriness as an out of focus aesthetic is associated with the transitory, contingency,  disorder, movement, incompleteness, ambiguity, the indeterminate, the indistinct, the poetic, the formless. 

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Old rocks, old camera,  old film, deep history,  visual thinking.  Stepping outside of,  or exceeding the limit of, the  established  horizon, border and  parergon  of nostalgic pleasures. 

A previous Nostalgic Pleasures #3 post outlined the  background to  my  experiment in a minor key using 35mm expired Fuji Velvia 50 film  and a 1960's Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR camera.The  continuation of  the  experiment involved replacing  both the Fuji Velvia 50  with Fuji Pro 400H colour negative and  the Zeiss 35mm Pro-Tessar lens  with the Pro-Tessar 85mm lens  on the Contaflex.  

The previous post entitled  Nostalgic Pleasures #3 gives the  background to  my  experiment in a minor key  of using 35mm expired Fuji Velvia 50 film  and a 1960's Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR camera.  The  picture  below was made whilst I was wandering  in the area around   Bunjils Cave  in the Black Range Scenic Reserve, adjacent to  the Grampians (Gariwerd) in Victoria  in the  late afternoon in spring.  

The photography that day was chance encounters in a rugged, harsh  and messy  landscape, which  had a history of being burnt from bushfires and with a probable future of becoming warmer and drier:  increasing dryness with more  hotter days  (greater than 35°C) whilst the spells of warmer temperatures will last longer. The climate models indicate that the temperatures will increase by  1.9°C----2.5°C by around mid-century. 

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The picture below is a  second  example of using  expired Fuji Velvia 50 with a Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR  and  a Zeiss  Pro-Tessar 35mm f3.2 lens.  The  film  was processed in E-6 chemistry at an Adelaide lab,  then scanned by me  using an Epson V850 Pro flatbed scanner with Silverfast software. The  digital file was post-processed  in Adobe's  Lightroom   This analogue/digital combination makes it a hybrid. 

(Pitkin Rd, Waitpinga, 2024)

The picture was made in the late afternoon during the winter months whilst on a poodlewalk with Maleko and it is a part of the low key  Roadside project, which  is a work-in-process. Pitkin Rd  is a no through  local road in Waitpinga, in the souther Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia  and it leads to several small hobby (life style) farms.  

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The photo was made just after sunrise  during  the recent,  intense stormy conditions on the weekend in the last week of winter. It was Sunday morning  and I sat on a rock at the top of Rosetta Head looking over Encounter Bay  waiting  for the clouds  to cover the early morning sun. 

The north westerly wind on the weekend was  gale force. It was gusting  around 80-125 kph and   the temperatures were 10-15 degrees above  normal in South Australia.   The wild winds  caused a lot of damage in Victoria and extensive flooding along the Derwent River in Tasmania. The latter had been in drought during the autumn and winter of 2024. It appears that the weather is becoming increasingly volatile and turning  quickly from one extreme to another.

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The photo below is another one  from my little experiment   in  nostalgic pleasures: ie., using expired 35mm Fuji Velvia 50  film  exposed at 20 ASA, handholding  a  reconditioned  1960s  Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR with its inbuilt light meter,  a 35mm f.3.2 Zeiss Pro-Tessar lens,    and  having the  film processed  with  E-6 chemistry  in Adelaide. 

Nostalgic pleasure in this case is pre-digital analogue technology that  was disrupted by digital technology in the early 21st century.  The digital camera industry collapsed between 2010-2012 due to the emergence of the smartphone killing off  the entry-level camera market ( point-and-shoot cameras) which shrunk nearly to nonexistence.

The photo is a cloud study at  Waitpinga  in the late afternoon  during the winter months:

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According to those who're paid to have their  finger on the pulse of the  Zeitgeist there is  a trend emerging in western culture of people returning to using analogue point and shoot cameras and film. The reasons given for this step back from digital  vary: nostalgia for grainy film quality, full of charm and imperfections;  mental health in that film helps them slow down (mindfulness);  and more trust in photographs taken with a film camera more than a digital photo. with its increasing incorporation of AI. 

Eliza Williams, the editor of Creative Review, says that  people ( ie., gen Z ) "are  looking for some release from the pressures of daily life and the addictive qualities of screens, cameras and taking photographs offers a sense of nostalgic pleasure, which feels wholesome and arty while also making you look cool”.

This  is my  recent embrace of  nostalgic pleasure:

The details are:  walking along Halls Creek Rd, Waitpinga on a  late  afternoon in winter, expired Fuji Velvia 50  film exposed at 20 ASA, a hand held  Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR with its inbuilt light meter from the 1960s,  and  film processed in E-6 chemistry by a lab.  The process involves a  detachment of the process of taking a photo and the actual photo itself. 

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These three photos  were  made whilst on a photowalk in the Kaiserstuhl Conservation Park with Adam and Michael  Duttkiewicz and a couple of  their friends at the time.   This would have been a decade or more ago.  It would have been  around the time when I was still living in the city,   re-learning to photograph  in black and white,  and experimenting in seeing in b+w.   

I have not looked at these  files for a decade or more,  as the quality of some of these b+w negatives was poor.  I was embarrassed as they  were underexposed, overdeveloped, and  clumsily  composed.    

 I didn't bother to go through these archival  files  to see what is actually there.  I dismissed them and forgot about these archives.    Until now.  

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I mentioned my  brief  experiment using a roll of expired film --- Fuji Velvia 50 transparency---  here on the Leica poetics blog. Though the results were pretty ordinary, if not largely  disappointing,  I've  decided to continue with the expired film experiment.

I've been gifted  with more  expired Velvia 50 in both 35mm and 120 formats.  I had hoped to use  the Rolleifex 6006 for the 120 film,  but it is not working, despite a newly packed  battery. The electronics are the problem by all accounts, and it needs to go overseas to be repaired as  nobody in Australia  is willing to, or capable of  repairing  it. That's expensive,  so I will  continue  the experiment  in the short term  with the expired 35mm Velvia 50. 

I recently  acquired, courtesy of  Brett Rogers in Moleswoth, Tasmania,   a Zeiss Ikon Contaflex Super  SLR camera with a standard 50mm Tessar lens, leaf shutter and   coupled selenium light meter, along with filters,  lenshood and a  camera bag plus  the loan of 35mm and 85mm lenses  to use with the 35mm Velvia 50.  The Zeiss Ikon Contaflex  SLR, which  was manufactured by Zeiss-Ikon AG in Stuttgart, West Germany between the years 1959 and 1962, is what's known as a vintage camera.    Mike Eckman has a very informative account of the  post war history  of both the Contaflex and the Zeiss-Ikon company.   Zeiss today is a high end lens manufacturer.

This history indicates that I have stepped back into the subculture of collectors and vintage cameras  with  its nostalgia, archives,  museum  and memories --- often to the extent of living off its  remembered inheritance and history. It  is a step back into past times  so as to  use a quality vintage, mechanical camera  in the present with expired film.  This requires  that you have  access to skilled technicians,  like Brett Rogers,  who have the knowledge and expertise to  repair these antique cameras, restore them back to life, then to look after and service them with tender loving care.    

 The  two photos on this post are from the original roll of expired Velvia 50 that were  made with a Leica M4-P rangefinder. Looking at them I can see that the film needs to be rated at 32  instead of 50 ASA so as to increase the shadow detail.  They provide a starting point. The photos in the next post  will be those made with the Contaflex.  

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An experiment using  double exposure to layer the photo  and to make the ordinary seem  a bit strange through  imperfections.  

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 I have an ongoing photographic interest in edgelands. Edgelands are usually understood as  the banal hinterlands that exists between urban and rural environments, and they disrupt and  challenge the common notion of beauty in the landscape.

The picture below  is a  recent (2024) attempt at an interpretation of edgelands in Waitpinga. This   earlier attempt (in 2022)  was centred around  the early morning light and it adopts a pictureesque approach.   The more recent interpretation below is bleaker.

The more recent interpretation builds on earlier work here (in 2020) and here (in 2019). It is the bleak interpretation  that is more fitting   to this particular edgeland, rather  than the earlier  picturesque  approach.  It fits with the aesthetic experience of being in (walking in) a  degraded landscape.They are very modest compared to the work of Naoya Hatekeyama.

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The image below is a continuation of the little experiment that I'd started  a couple of years ago to try and photograph light itself. Light is the subject. 

This  is late afternoon light in the Redwoods near Beech Forest in the Otways in Victoria in March 2024.   I was concerned with the  intensity of the light. 

I  experimented whilst walking amongst the Californian Redwoods that afternoon, but  I wasn't really happy with  the results of light falling on the trunks of the Redwoods.   I needed to de-literalized’ the images much more. 

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I've started experimenting  with digital black and white whilst making some seascapse with the 5x4 Linof Technika IV  and colour sheet film. The weather condition chosen   was the mist and fog hanging around Encounter Bay on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula over the Xmas/New Year period (2023-24).  

I've never had much success with digital black and white conversions from a colour digital file using the Sony A7 R111--- the results have always been disappointing, as  the images have  looked bland and muddy.   The recent seascapes and fog offered me an opportunity  to experiment to see if I could create something better.   The above 'behind the camera' image is an example  of  this experiment.  

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Now that Suzanne's broken fibula is healing and she is able to walk one of standard poodles I am able to start to plan a photo trip to the Murray Mallee in South Australia. I will take Maleko with me. 

I plan to pick up where I left off prior to  the Covid pandemic, which was  in 2019. This was the Claypans  and the nearby  Copeville and Galga area  that were on the old  Waikerie railway line, which was a branch line from Karoonda. The railway  was constructed around 1914  and was closed in the 1990s.  

I will start by returning to this  site and this photo:

It will be a large format photo trip and my initial camp will be in the quarry near Copeville,  as it was on the previous trip.  Things have changed in the meantime.  The Copeville silo was painted  by Jarrod Loxton in 2022 as part of the South Australia silo art trail. 

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The picture below  (from early January 2023) comes from  my decision to explore and  experiment with  a  different approach to the seascape project that I have been engaged in over the last year. I am finding it an intriguing project. 

The exploration involved searching for   different locations from the Rosetta Head one  that I had previously been using. What I was looking for was  a site   that  would enable me to get closer to the sea , as well as  provide protection from  any surging rogue waves. I was wary as I'd been previously caught with expensive consequences for the photography gear. 

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Last Sunday (26th March) was  overcast and raining.  These are  good conditions  for  returning to the  Spring Mount Conservation Park in the southern part of the Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia to make some large format photographs of the bushland.  I did return,  and my objective  was to  photograph the bushland in  black and white. I have learned that monochrome works better representing  this old growth stringy bark  bushland  than colour film.   

The photo making  needed to be after  the rain  had eased and before the cloud cover cleared and the sun came out.  The location chosen was along Strangeways Rd,  which I had identified  the day before whilst I was on an afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko.  There was no low cloud or mist between the trees that morning  but it was gloomy -- suitably so  - and, luckily,  there was little wind.   

I had about  45 minutes to an  hour in the  mid-morning  to use the 5x4 Sinar F1 view camera.   I was able to make 2 exposures before the sun came out and changed the atmosphere. 

Like the Gitzo tripod I was using,  the entry level, Sinar is around 50 years old,  as it was probably made sometime in the 1970s. It is  a lightweight, modular, view camera and very  easy to use in the field;    or  either  the right angle viewer  or the   binocular reflex magnifier on the back  of the camera.  I don't have either of the latter.  I just use a simple dark cloth, which is a hassle to use when the wind is blowing. I didn't have time to put  the Sinar pan tilt/head on the tripod. 

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Continuing the light series/project.  This  is  Light #3 for contrast. 

The photo was made on a  spring morning in October 2022 looking across Encounter Bay from Rosetta Head at Victor Harbor.  

There was heavy seafog that morning. These are infrequent as they only happen a couple of times during the year. 

A couple of days before, and between Xmas and New Year 2022,  have been conducive for seascapes and  photographing light. 

An example of a seascape from Rosetta Head at Victor Habor in the early morning:

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The fourth in the  series of photographing light per se which broadens the terrain beyond photojournalism, documentary and landscape. 

This is looking east over Encounter Bay from the shoreline of a small beach in front of Whalers resort complex. 

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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.   

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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. 

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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. 

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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.  

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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.   

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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.  

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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.