This is an image that came about from playing around in the early morning light on Dep's Beach. This beach is between Petrel Cove and Kings Beach. I was on a poodlewalk with Kayla at the time:
It's another macro image building on this beginning.
Unfortunately for me the photo session ended abruptly as Kayla grabbed the seaweed when I wasn't looking, ran off with it and then tore it to pieces.
One of the strands in my style of photography in and around poodlewalks is to shift away from the literal and transparent. My name for this shift is abstraction--ie., finding ways to underscore the photograph as surface, as flat; even though there is an optical space within the photograph. This is often filed by photographic educators under 'ways of seeing' that depend on, and are shaped by habit and convention.
An example of the photograph as surface:
Another post on my experiences with the newly installed standalone Adobe's Lightroom 6 on my Retina 5K 27inch late 2015 iMac.
As we all know, Adobe has been marketing Lightroom as the all-in-one post-processing tool for hobbyists, enthusiasts and professionals, and up to now I have certainly found it to be an "all-in-one” workflow solution for post processing and cataloguing my photographic images. I have been happy with this, given that the current choices for post-processing and file management software are limited.
In the previous post I outlined my unease with Adobe’s latest move to discontinue the standalone version of Lightroom, and to move everyone to the cloud; thereby effectively locking us in for the future for Adobe to grow their profits. I was frustrated because dumping the perpetual license is something Adobe in the past said that it would not do. Adobe Lightroom is now purely subscription based and, unfortunately for me, it is only a matter of time until an OS upgrade from Apple breaks the standalone Lightroom 6 (LR6) completely.
However, my frustration with the standalone Lightroom 6 on the iMac has to do with other issues. It is not only its lack of development compared to the subscription version. It also arises from finding that LR6 has basic stability and performance issues that should not exist in the first place, given that this is professional software.
The changeable weather conditions of late has provided a space for me to explore the coast in the early morning light and to I scoping for suitable subjects for some large format photography. In this instance it basically 5x4 colour using the old Linhof Technika IV or the Cambo 5x7 monorail.
I haven't really found much to work with, but this granite formation looking towards King Head and the wilderness lodge is one of the more promising possibilities that I have across.
I haven't been doing much large format photography along the coast for a while --only hand held medium format lately. Hence the specific scoping. Most of what I see in the morning ---eg., seaweed amongst granite rocks--is ephemeral, as it is usually gone by the next morning. It is either washed away by the sea or blow away by the wind.
Nor can I take the 5x4 or 5x7 out and hope that I come suitable seaweed to construct a still-life. It's only now and again that I find seaweed pods washed up on the shore.
It is best to use subjects like granite formation and just wait for an overcast early morning with little wind and soft morning light. The large format then highlights the tonality and colour in the granite.
More digital black and white photography from stumbling up some foam amongst the coastal granite, just after the wet weather had eased.
This picture is a straight conversion from the digital file, as I am currently unable to access Silver Efex Pro 2 software on my iMac, which is running the High Sierra Operating system. Unfortunately I have never found any software package that can produce black and white conversions that are as good as those created by Silver Efex Pro 2.
At least I am able to use the standalone Adobe Lightroom 6 that I recently purchased from B+H with my recent film order on the iMac. I reckon it is a case of waiting for a black and white conversion as there is good news around the corner: DxO has acquired the NiK collection and it's upgraded version will be released in mid-2018. I doubt that the software will be free.
DxO is a French company that performs extensive scientific testing on camera image sensors and lenses. The information and knowledge that DxO glean from their tests is used to produce a raw processing software packages called – DxO Optics Pro.
Yesterday was my first attempt at aerial photography. Chris Dearden flew me along the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast from the Murray Mouth to Newland Heads then back to Goolwa in his recreational Sonex aircraft --- a Xenos motor glider. It's a great little fixed wing aircraft.
I had to make the photos of the coast through the perspex canopy at a 45 angle in order to avoid the aircraft's wing. I used my old Sony NEX-7 digital camera with a 35mm Leica M lens. I didn't even bother to use the Rolleiflex TLR medium format film camera that I had with me. it sat behind the seat untouched for the whole trip.
A photo of the mouth of the River Murray, which is where we headed first after leaving Goolwa airport.
I am back to playing around with making still life photos in an open air studio situated amongst the coast rocks during our poodlewalks:
I have several locations along a particular walk, but this series depends on finding some good, fresh seaweed whilst on the walk. It doesn't happen often.
This was made whilst we were starting out an afternoon poodle walk. You can see our Subaru Forester parked on Kings Beach Road.
The storm from the south west came in that night and it has battered the coast for the following 4 days.
This picture was made whilst flying across the southern alps in the South Island. I was on an early morning flight heading towards the west coast of New Zealand :
This picture is a few minutes latter than the ones in this post.
I was enroute from Christchurch to Adelaide.
This picture was made on an early morning poodle walk with Ari. The autumn mornings have been very still, gentle and calm.
I have been spending my days sitting at the computer at Encounter Studio trying to sequence the photos in The Bowden Archives book. I take a break by starting to select images for the next book--Tasmanian Elegies.