Whilst on the recent early morning poodle walks I started work on the second part of the Fleurieuscapes project.  

The history  of the region after the dispossession of the  Ramindjeri people (who lived at Encounter Bay and around Cape Jervis)  is one of clearing the land  for cattle and sheep farming.  This clearing  of the bush represented development and progress for the white settlers. 

I  wanted to show  this history  of the landscape photographically.  After a lot of scooping with the digital camera (Sony NEX-7) I decided to photograph a stark tree in front of a cleared field along Baum Rd in Waitpinga.  This is the photoshoot with the 5x4 Linhof (Technika IV) from early this morning before the hot, dry north-westerly wind started in force and the temperature became unpleasantly hot. 

I did two interpretations.  The first  one took advantage of the  flat light whilst  it was still overcast,  and the second one was  made when the light cloud cover had started  txobreak up and there was some early morning sunlight on the subject.  I couldn't make up my mind which interpretation would work  best. I won't know until the sheet film has been  developed, scanned, and uploaded into Lightroom. 

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Yet another picture from Halls Creek Rd, Waitinga, which is located in  the southern Fleurieu Peninsula,  South Australia:

This one was even more planned than the other pictures that I made on Halls Creek Rd:---the time was down to the minute in order to ensure that the early late autumn morning light fell across  the twin trunks of the eucalypt.  Without that early morning light the picture would have been dull and flat. I would have walked past the scene. 

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Halls Creek Rd is a part of the Heysen Trail. It runs not south and and it is where I often walk in the evening with the standard poodles. It  offers protection from the strong,  southern coastal winds and it has lovely afternoon light.   

This picture was made in the  late winter. There are fields where sheep and cattle graze  on the western and eastern sides of the road. This, in effect, is a strip of roadside vegetation between farmland.  A lot of the spaces on the Fleurieu Peninsula are like this. Most of the land has acquired capital value and has become a commodity. There is no Arcadian  natural simplicity that stands in opposition to, and a compensation for,  urban life in the postmodern city here. It is the landscape of white settlement. 

It all looks quite different in late spring as the green grass has dried  and it has become a golden brown. It would be a different photo in summer. Late spring, however,  is not a good time to walk along  back country roads,  such as this one  with the standard  poodles.  The dried grass seeds along the side of the road become caught up in the poodle's woolly coats and they are very difficult to get out. Miss one and they spiral their way  into the body within 24 hours. 

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This picture was made one afternoon along Halls Creek Rd in Waitpinga on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. Halls Creek Rd is part of the Heysen Trail,  and  I often walk along there on a  late afternoon poodlewalk in the winter time. It's fenced on both sides of the road, it is protected from the southwesterly winds , and the western sunshine gently lights up the vegetation.

It's a pleasant walk in the late afternoon and  I've made a number of photos/studies  of the roadside  vegetation along this section of the Heysen Trail.  This was one of the first: 

On this occasion I exposed  some old Portra NC 160 ASA film that had been sitting in  the 6x7  film back of the Linhof Tehnika 70 for 5 years or more.  I thought that I'd better finish the roll  of film and  have it developed as I had nothing to lose.  Though the negatives were a bit flat and the colours  were washed out  the  digital  files were okay when  I scanned the film. Some  of the pictures looked a  bit odd,  but I didn't mind. 

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I haven't been doing much large format photography lately. The weather hasn't really  been suitable  for the large format photography  photoshoots that I had planned. 

However, I did scope  this trunk study on the Heysen Trail  though:

The tree  was where I'd parked the car to walk along  the Heysen Trail of the evening poodle walk.  I noticed it in the subdued light as I was driving away at the end of  the poodle walk and took a couple of snaps.