The recent shift to Victor Harbor Life is making it difficult to do large format  photography. It has gound to a halt as we sort out all the stuff from the Sturt  St townhouse in Adelaide. 

I did come across a  suitable  subject  for a 5x4 colour shoot  on a recent poodle walk before Kayla arrived,  but I cannot get to it for the  early morning light at the moment as I am walking Kayla along the Encounter Bay beach at dawn.Nor can I take her  yet  on a photoshoot as she is only 6 weeks old.      

So photography is  on hold. 

The shift from living in the Sturt St apartment  in Adelaide's  CBD to  the house at Victor Harbor  is currently under way.  The townhouse will go on the market in mid-January. 

All the computers, scanners   and camera equipment now reside at Encounter Studio.   This  means that Encounter Studio will  eventually become the centre of my photography,  rather than what I do when I'm here at Encounter Bay for a few days every second weekend.  What will become secondary will be the urban photography,  as that now requires travelling up to the CBD or to Melbourne.

There has been little large format photography done because the shift taking place is teaching up my time and energy.   But  there is this possibility  for an 8x10 shoot that I came across  when I was looking through the 2014 digital archives just before  the Xmas break for what I'd scoped with the digital camera for  large format  photography. 

I went back and had a look over Xmas after walking the dogs at Kings Beach in the afternoon,  but  a quick glance indicated that the tree had been cut down.  I'll have to check the location more thoroughly. If  the  pine tree has  gone, then that is the end of that possibility for an 8x10.   

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I've started  scoping for work for the  Fleurieu Four Seasons Prize for landscape photography. It's a competition and I don't  have much success in them. 

The Prize  is for a suite of four photos that are taken in the western part of the Fleurieu Peninsula over the four seasons.  I don't know this area very well  photographically so I've started exploring it on my away to and from Victor Harbour.  

On the way down this trip I  was looking for a late afternoon coastal location that would be suitable  for  5x4 film work, and which  had fairly easy access. This location looked a possibility. The picture was made at midday and so the light is terrible.  I will scope  it out in the late  afternoon  on my way back to Adelaide to see what  the light looks like then. 

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I'm planning to spend a week at American River on Kangaroo Island in mid-November,  and I've started looking at the  work  that I did when we were there during the summer  of this year. 

I'm looking at the scoping work with the digital camera  to see what would be suitable for large format  photography.  All the 5x4 negatives that I'd exposed  on the last  trip were accidentally cross processed as E-6---that  is,  processed as slide film. We weren't able to save them. 

The above picture of Red Cliffs on Backstairs Passage  is one image that I would like to reshoot in large format.  

I did a lot of scoping of the base of the  cliffs  on the foreshore,  but  the cliff top views work better.

Suzanne returned  from her holiday in Queenstown--at Carnarvon Gorge and Mission Beach---yesterday evening, and this gave me the space to do some large format photography early on Sunday morning.  

I'd seen this Morton Bay Fig in the Wirrranendi section of the Adelaide Parklands on the poodlewalks when Suzanne was away,   and I had scoped it for an early morning shoot. 

I have found another possibility image for the proposed Victor Harbor exhibition. 

This is the scoping study made with a handheld digital camera --Sony NEX-7---earlier in the week whilst I was on a poodlewalk:

It is a section of a rock face at Kings Head, near Victor Harbor.

 I'll make a  medium format black and white photo this afternoon and then a colour one in 5x4 tomorrow.  There is no way that I can easily get the 8x10 Cambo monorail down to that location. 

Whilst we have been down at Victor Harbor  for a couple of days I've been exploring  a new location for large format photography--the estuary of the Hindmarsh River.  The specific spot I've been scoping  is  the area of the Swamp Paperbark Trees (Melaleuca halmaturorum) with its  minimal  understorey of herbs.

The site is  easy to access with  the 8x10 Cambo monorail,  and the Swamp Paperbark would be a suitable  subject for black and white. I have photographed  these before  but never in terms of black and white.  

I've started back working on my sea abstracts and pink gum and Xanthorrhoea  projects  which  have been constructed in terms of DIY books in progress.  It has been several months since I worked on them. I've  been waiting  for Posthaven to get their publishing platform up and running after migrating the work from Posterous.  

I've  also been scoping for subjects for an 8x10 colour shoot. The  new Toyo double  sided film holders are loaded with film--Kodak Ecktar 100ASA.  I've returned to a number of locations that I had in mind, but winter has changed things dramatically.  The winter grasses have returned and its a green world now as opposed to the dry landscape of a few months ago. 

 It's been frustrating as possible location after location has been rejected. I'm going to have to start with a couple of abstracts of the redgum trunks in the reserve across the road from the studio.  

I have decided to shoot some 8x10 colour  film that I bought from B+H about nine months ago. It has been sitting in the fridge at Encounter Studio until I acquired a couple of  new Toyo double darkslides . They arrived last week. 

I used a poodlewalk yesterday to go  scouting for likely locations for large format photography.  Here is one possibility: 

The  location has to be roadside or pretty close to it,  as the   Cambo SC monorail and  the Linhof tripod are too heavy  to  carry  very far from the car. This location looks to be a goer--it needs good cloud formation through. 

The digital suite  of Encounter Studio is now up and running and I'm starting to pick up the photography from where I left off before spending the  week at American River in Kangaroo Island.

Although I had this area in mind I've started simple:--abstracts of the river gums in the reserve cross from the studio. We have an 8 week old  silver standard poodle pup that requires constant attention when he is not asleep.