Finally some photographic action:
There was some sunshine early on Sunday morning. So I took advantage of it to make a 5x4 black and white picture. I rushed the photoshoot though because the light had changed from the time I'd scoped it. It hit the tree about 10 minutes earlier than last time.
I've done little film photography since the start of winter, though I have been scoping with the digital camera.
It's been too cold, wet and windy along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula to use the film cameras. Today was the first time, in fact, that I used a film camera on a tripod since the photoshoot along the Mallee Highway.
I re-photographed this image late this afternoon whilst on a poodle walk ( with Ari and Maleko) using my medium format cameras--( the Rolleiflex SL66 and the Linhof Technika 70). This is the digital image from my earlier scoping with the late afternoon light:
That re-photographing felt like I was picking up the threads again re film photography after going through a fallow period---it's been about a month since the Mallee Highway photoshoot.
Now that summer has passed into autumn I've started using my old 8x10 Cambo monorail. This morning was the first time I 'd used the camera since late spring. I was a bit rusty and things didn't go very smoothly. I made a number of mistakes on the shoot.
It was a local photoshoot that I'd previously scoped, and I'd been waiting for the right conditions for the photoshoot:
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.
I was able to spend 5 days in Melbourne last week. The last time I was in Melbourne on a photo trip was 2 years ago and I was photographing under the South Eastern freeway.
The time was divided between a scanning tutorial at Photonet on Wednesday and Thursday for my (5x7 colour and 8x10 black and white negatives) and some photoshoots. One on my own at Footscray on Tuesday, and the second one at Merri Creek in the Clifton Hill/Northcote area with Stuart Murdoch late Thursday afternoon after he'd finished work at the Northern College of Art and Technology in Preston.
As I was travelling light on cheap Qantas flights (2 hand held cameras) the Thursday photoshoot with Stuart was a scoping exercise for a future 5x4 photoshoot. Stuart had photographed in the area 20 years ago and he was reconnecting with that body of work.
I was walking around looking for some suitable locations and times. After walking around a bit in the drizzle we found something to work with near Rushell Reserve in North Fitzroy looking towards an old railway bridge:
It is an edge land shoot. What attracted both of us is the incongruity between nature and industry--Merri Creek was the site of heavy industrial use throughout much of the 20th century, being home to quarries and landfills, and a drain for the waste runoff from neighbouring factories. The best time is in the late afternoon during the winter months.