I recently spent a weekend photographing at Mt Arapiles with a group of large format, film based landscape photographers from Melbourne, who come together under the Friends of Photography Group (FoFG). I hadn't meet any of the group previously, and I didn't know much about who they were prior to this weekend. Since few of them have their own websites I knew very little about their photography, apart from what I'd seen on the insightful and informative View Camera Australia blog.
I don't consider myself a wilderness photographer, and unlike the FOPG photographers, I do not develop my (colour) negatives or make fine prints from my b+w negatives in a wet darkroom. I did, however, want to link up with some other large format photographers in Australia who were both serious about their craft and whose landscape photography was location based. FoFG's excursion to the Mt Arapiles-Tooan State Park was my opportunity, since it was closer to Adelaide than some of FoFG's favourite locations in eastern Victoria.
There were about 14 of the FoFG who made it to the Mt Arapiles weekend. Like myself, several of them camped at the Centenary Park campground, amongst the various groups of the dedicated and serious rock climbers. The group was open, supportive, knowledgeable and generous. I was impressed by a couple of the FoFG using 11 x 14 cameras (both field and pinhole) as I struggle to handle an 8x10.
I guess that some of the photography that I make along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula would fall within the landscape photography category--eg., the photographs of the rocks, trees and coastline that emerge from my various poodlewalks. So I do have a foot in this kind of landscape photography, without considering it to be within the tradition of wilderness photography.