I've slowly returned to working in black and white and, in doing so, moving away from rock abstractions  to the scrub.  

It is easy to do when I'm using the  Rolleiflex SL66.  I can shoot in colour the scene in then switch to black and white  by  just changing the film back. It's slow black and white film--Ilford   PanF Plus 50 ---- that I use, as this camera is always used on a tripod.

The exposures are around generally 1-5 seconds as I take pictures in the early morning or just before  dusk  in the summer months. I was lucky this day as it stayed overcast for a couple of hours. So I raced back to the studio  and returned with the 8x10 Cambo monorail.  

I've always struggled with taking pictures of the Australian woodland, scrub or the bush. It is so messy and chaotic.  Then I saw Lee Friedlander's  pictures  of trees   from his flowers and trees series and saw how it could be done.

Here is an early attempt done just before  Xmas when I was down at Victor Harbor with Lariane  Foneseca,   a friend of Suzanne's who is a wonderful photographer. The melaleucas were on Rosetta Head, or The Bluff as the locals call it.

I   exposed a couple of  8x10 picture of these trees but I've yet to send the negatives to Blanco Negro  in Sydney to be processed. I'm inclined to return and do some pictures that are  closer up. 

I've started reading Jane Hylton's The Painted Coast: Views of the Fleurieu Peninsula in order to gain a sense of the visual history of this part of South Australia from the 1840s to the present.  The original native vegetation, which can be seen in the early water colours of G.F. Angas and H.P. Gill,  has long gone.

The region is now mostly farmland. The remnants  of the  native vegetation outside of the conservation parks can be found along the road side. This is now pretty thin.

I find the lack  of native vegetation and biodiversity rather depressing.

The heat wave continues in Adelaide. 

 I'm doing more work in the studio--at the moment it is black and white shots of a clove of Russsian garlic. I'm decided to use up the expired Ilford FP4 125 ASA  film, which  came with the Rolleiflex 6006  system that  I acquired a year ago.

This is a rose from the garden at Solway Cresent. It was taken in 2011 with  Fujichrome Provia 100F using a Cambo studio stand.

I spent yesteday scanning 5x7 colour negatives on the flatbed Epson V700 scanner without much success.  The negatives were scanned without a film holder, as no film 5x7 film holders came with the scanner.   I used the film area guide  and they have a strong blue cast. I couldn't  restore the colour with the Epson software. It did not work at all.

Unfortunately for me there are  no 5x7 film holders  made for  the scanner. They only go  up to 5x4. I am converting some of the scanned negatives to black and white but I will have to invest in a flexible  5x7 film holder from betterscanning.

I can see why people make the shift to digital.

During the high summer in South Australia it is difficult to take photographs.It is very hot and without the the cloud cover there is a very limited time at dawn and dusk to take photographs.

I don't fancy walking across rocks in the dark carrying large format equipment to have it all set up before dawn. Usually I have a location in mind and I  wait for some cloud cover to soften the very bright sunlight.

In the meantime  I make use of the studio. It's a simple set up: tabletop,  window light, closeup rings on a Rolleiflex 6006 , exposures of around 2-4 seconds, a 120 roll of  Fujichrome  Provia 100F and some fruit and  vegetables, such as this avocado.

It has been a couple of  months since I posted on the Encounter Studio's blog. Even though I'd been working on the Victor  Harbor book over the Xmas break I'd more or less forgotten about this blog. I only remembered it when I was  setting up the book's  gallery this morning.  

This is an picture  taken last year and it depicts erosion along the side of the Ring Road. I made a number of studies of this subject as I was attracted by both the shapes and the  colours.  

This is pretty much how I see the rockface in the coastal landscape just west of  Victor Harbor and around Kings Head.

It is  the constantly changing play of light on the rock forms along the coastline that caught my eye and intrigued me. I tend to see the rockface in terms of abstractions---organic abstractions, as it were. Abstract modernism in this  form makes sense to me as a photogrpaher. 

More here

This the photographer on location  in the early morning. The rock being photographed is this one.

I'd come across the rock form  when I started exploring the cliffs east of Kings Beach on an evening walk with the  poodles. I took some snaps and  they looked okay on the computer screen.   So I returned with my film cameras.

It was a struggle to get the gear down the cliff face early in the morning.   The  Linhof Tripod is heavy and bulky and difficult to carry. But  it  comes into its own in situations like this, as it is very  flexible and sturdy.

My interest in the rocks was form and light. Modernist abstraction in photography made sense-----it is abstracting from the  forms in nature. This abstraction of the forms of the landscape  has nothing to do with romantic subjectivity or transcendentalism.  

I don't see many Australian photographers  or painters doing this sort of work.

Welcome to the blog of Encounter Studios, which is situated in Victor Harbor  South Australia. This weblog  willl be updated occassionally as I live in Adelaide  and weekend in Victor Harbor. I will only post when I'm in Victor Harbor.

I've started the blog to basically talk about, and share,  my attempts to set up a film based digital studio whose primary focus is to photograph my local neighbourhood--specifically Victor Harbor and, more generally,  the Fleurieu Peninsula.  

Since the early years of colonial settlement the south coast of Adelaide--the Fleurieu Peninsula-- has been frequented by artist--primarily painters. It is a beautiful part of South Australia and still underrated. Landscape painting still dominates the visual representation of this region.

I use a variety of cameras--mostly film cameras  because of historical reasons---and I'm working on a book of the region. I've also started a gallery  of pictures.