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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Another behind the camera photo of an early morning still life photoshoot near Petrel Cove: 

This open studio set up had been previously scoped with my digital camera. I scoped a number of different locations  to see which worked the best. I plan to do a 5x4  photoshoot with the baby Sinar F2 late this afternoon if the conditions remain overcast.  

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Whilst Suzanne is in Cuba and Mexico  for 4 weeks I have been minding the standard  poodles at Encounter Bay and trying to make a few photos whilst I am on the daily poodle walks.

The photos are for the Fleurieuscapes book  that I am slowly working on.  Slowly because I am not  sure where I am going with this body of work about the Fleurieu Peninsula, or what I am trying to do with it. It is about the specifics of the place whilst avoiding the sublime, the picturesque and the beautiful as much as possible. 

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This behind the camera picture  was taken whilst  I was on  an early morning photoshoot along the Heysen Trail,  with my Linhof Technika 5x4 during the Australia Day weekend. The Heysen Trail photoshoot  was combined with a poodle walk.

I have avoided the beaches this weekend due to  the families  having summer fun on, and taking over,   the beaches The summer fun  also includes  playing on the rocks around Petrel Cove or climbing  Rosetta Head in thongs.  As expected there were more casualties  at Petrel Cove. It is obvious that people do not read the warning signs by the steps  to the beach or on the rocks; or if they do read them, then they ignore them.    

On the morning of the photoshoot the light was dull and flat.   I would have preferred  the soft, early morning light, which was there  when I had previously  scoped the  site,  but it was not to be.  I waited for a while to see what was happening with the cloud cover,   but I realised that  there was little point in hanging around waiting for better light to eventuate. The  cloud cover was  far too heavy.   

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