The Mallee Routes project is on hold during  the public health lockdown to stop the spread of  the Covid-19 virus amongst the Australia population. The  public health social restrictions  during lockdown  require  that we can only travel within our postcode for exercise.  There may be some lifting of restrictions in a week or so by the federal and state governments,  as the former is anxious to get the economy moving.  

So I have started to explore photographing the period of lockdown, self-isolation and social distancing;  as distinct from continuing to make various types of locally based  photos during the lockdown; or making film photos  for an online exhibition of film photos made during the lockdown  being organized by  the Friends of Photography Group (FOPG). Photographing the period of lockdown is  about our  experiences of lockdown.  This is a unique time  and photography can, and should be,  a part of pausing  and reflecting  upon our relationship with our surroundings.

The exploration is experimental in that there has been a  shift away from a conventional documentary approach. This  means that  I am    stepping outside my comfort zone. I have been thinking about photographing  in a more controlled way by working wth people in a set up situation in specific locations.  As I do not have a treasure trove or storehouse of props to use  in these situations,  my  approach  will need  to be very  simple.    

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When I was recently in NZ on a photo trip and a holiday I spent a day walking along the Kepler Track whilst Suzanne went on a day trip to Doubtful Sound. We were staying at an Air BnB at Lake Manapouri overlooking the Waiau River. I wanted to spend a day ambling along  the Kepler Track just taking photos,  in contrast to my usual urban drifting; or taking the odd  quick snap whilst walking quickly and purposefully to reach  a specific destination by a certain time. 

On my previous visits to New Zealand I didn't have the camera equipment to make photographs when I was walking in the forest without using a tripod. I travel overseas without a tripod,  and so  all the photography on these photo trips had to be hand held.  Though the film in  my film cameras  was good enough to photograph hand held  in urban areas,  the dynamic range of film was too limited to allow me  to photograph  hand held in the deep shadows of a beech forest. 

The  Sony digital camera  --a Sony a7 R111---that I had  for  this  trip did have the capacity to enable me to photograph hand held in low light. I was working from experience here and here. So the technological  problem had been solved. 

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By accident I  discovered  the limits of the dynamic range on my Sony A7 R111 digital camera  whilst I was on a recent  landscape photo session in Waitpinga in South Australia  late this summer (mid-February).   

Even though I was photographing in the early morning light,  the camera could not cope with the dynamic range between the deep  shadows at the base of the cliffs and the highlights of the sun in the clouds. Using Lightroom 6  I was able to recover the detail at the base of the cliffs in post processing, but not in the highlights. 

An example: 

The pictures  that I made when I was at the foot of the cliffs that morning were similar, only the highlights were even more burnt out. I did not realize this had happened  until I uploaded the digital files onto the computer's hard disc  and looked at the images on the computer screen. I eventually deleted these. I  had to admit  to being  somewhat surprised. Taken back actually. 

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This picture of a summer holiday fun fair was made whilst I was on an early morning poodlewalk with Kayla on Australia Day. The Australia day weekend  marks the end of the summer school holidays. 

 The Girder Family Amusements  are a  regular feature of the summer holidays at Victor Harbor. We usually pass  their site when we are walking along Esplanade Beach and past the Granite Island causeway. Girder  Amusements are squeezed in  on a small reserve near the causeway.

In this post, the Canberra based  art historian  Sasha Grishin outlines the changes  in the art world. Restricting himself to the primary art market Grishin  says that  this market  was a traditional part of the traditional infrastructure for selling art, but now it is  failing to do this. 

Grishin  says that: 

"The traditional structure for selling art in Australia is through a commercial art gallery that picks up fresh talent, and then through the auspices of a newspaper art critic who promotes it to an art buying audience...[However]... In the 21st century, this 19th-century system of marketing and promoting contemporary art is seriously breaking down and the number of commercial art galleries in Australia has roughly halved over the past couple of decades."

He adds that patron visitation rates are poor and, outside exhibition openings many galleries report minimal visitors a day. People complain that they are time-poor and are more likely to visit a gallery online, than participate in the dying ritual of the weekly art gallery crawl. Online sales have not been seriously explored. 

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I spent 5 days in a ward 4GS at  the Flinders Medical Centre (FMC) last week, due to the skin graft on my  leg becoming infected,  whilst  I was preparing for the Mallee Routes exhibition at the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery.  I ended up at the emergency department of the Victor Harbor Hospital on the  Sunday of the exhibition open, then went to FMC early on the Monday morning. I left FMC late on Friday afternoon. 

Though I was on an intravenous antibiotic drip  for the infection every six hours for the 5 days I was ward 4GS  I was allowed to make short walks  outside the ward in-between the 6 hours.  

The  short walks meant that I  mostly  explored the area  around the coffee shop such as  Theo's or the cafe in the Centre for Innovation in Cancer.   I would usually wander around this area  after  treating  myself  to a cup of coffee;  or after dinner at 5pm. 

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As mentioned in this  post on the Mallee Routes blog my stay at  the 5 day camp at Tanunda with the Lavender Trail walking friends allowed me to travel across, and photograph in,   the eastern Mt Lofty Ranges, the Murraylands and the Murray Mallee. 

The  image below was made on the Randall Rd (B35)  in the Mt Lofty Ranges  near Palmer in the eastern Mt Lofty Ranges.   I was making  my way down the Ranges  to the Murraylands  to  photograph around  the small towns of Cambrai and Sedan,  which  were connected by a railway line in the early 20th century.   

The  drive through the eastern Mt Lofty Ranges  was reconnecting with my past. I had been here before in the 1980s. I do recall jumping the  fences  then.  Even though I had a bit of a wander around I couldn't find the  specific areas that I'd photographed in.  Too much has changed in the 30-35 or so years.  

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 I spent a couple of days swagging  in  the  Overland Corner Reserve  during my  repeat   Mallee Routes photo trip to Copeville and Galga. I stayed  there after the Copeville and Lake Bonney (Nookamka Lake) photo sessions  to try and track  the  Overland Stock Route  (from New South Wales) after it left the township of  Barmera and made  its way around the northern part of Lake Bonney to Morgan.  

The picture below was made for the absent history section of  the forthcoming Mallee Routes exhibition at the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery.  Its location is near the Overland cemetery on the hill that overlooks the floodplain of the Overland Corner Reserve. This floodplain   would have formed part of the Overland Stock Route in the 1840s, prior to it going around the Nor-West Bend of the River Murray at Morgan, then down  to Adelaide.   

The floodplain of the Overland Corner Reserve  is in poor ecological health ---it is  even in a  worse condition than  the Loch Luna Game Reserve, which  lies between Lake Bonney and the Overland Corner Reserve. I presume that this region  in the 19th century was ephemeral --wet and dry depending on the River Murray flooding. With the  construction of the Weir and Lock 3 in  the mid 1920s,  to create storage  for irrigated agriculture,   Lake Bonney became permanently inundated. That meant  both the Game Reserve and Overland Corner floodplain received  very little, if any  flood water.  

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