This picture was made early in the morning whilst walking along Baum Rd in Waitpinga on a poodlewalk with Kayla.
It is a freeze-frame of a transient moment in early spring that was with a handheld Leica M4-P rangefinder and Kodak Portra 400 ASA film. The picture is an exploration of visual poetics.
I've been going through the archives looking for suitable images (product) to sell in the forthcoming online corner store on the Thoughtfactory website . I plan to to sell my photobooks and maybe some prints. I came across the pictures below, which were made whilst I was on a Mallee Routes photo-camp at Hopetoun in Victoria in 2017. Hopetoun is in the northern part of Victoria's Wimmera Mallee.
The Mallee Routes project is currently on hold.
The first 3 years of the collaborative section has come to an end and the participants have gone their separate ways. The next stage is a solo one to make a future photo-book. The Covid-19 pandemic then happened with its lockdown on travel outside one's postcode. My energies shifted to establishing the online Encounters Gallery and kicking it off with making photos for The Covid-19 exhibition. Travel restrictions within South Australia have now been lifted for travel within the state, but the SA border remains closed to Victoria.
This picture was made whilst I was on a phototrip for the Mallee Routes project. I stayed at Tanunda with the people walking the Lavender Trail and travelled into the Murray Mallee each day. This road trip was a little break from working on the aesthetic essay for the Adelaide Art Photographers 1970-2000 book for Moon Arrow Press.
I spent a lot of time driving across to the Murray mallee on the eastern side of theRiver Murray, as well as between Cambria and Sedan. I was trying to trace the old railway line from Sedan to Cambria. This is the railway siding at Sedan:
I read somewhere on my iPhone on the trip that camera sales keep on shrinking or that the industry is in transition, even though people are increasingly relying on imaging for stories in their daily life. The smartphone with its touch screen has disrupted and transformed the entire photographic industry. The iPhone vs Google Pixel vs Samsung is a marketing battle, much of which centres on the camera, in-camera processing and computational photography. One consequence of this disruption is that entry-level APS-C style cameras (point and shoot) are on their way out. That shifts the emphasis to the higher end or top shelf full frame market.
I visited Whakaari/White Island in the Bay of Plenty, prior to attending Photobook/NZ in Wellington in 2018.
Suzanne and I were on a weeks holiday in the North Island, which included exploring the GeoThermal Highway. White Island was where we started the exploration. After the holiday Suzanne then went on to walk the Grand Traverse in the South Island, whilst I stayed in an Air BnB in the Te Aro Valley in Wellington. I spend the week walking and photographing around the city for the Reconnections project.
This was made whilst I was on a Mallee Routes phototrip in the Lower Darling region of NSW in 2019. The text on the Wentworth road sign says, "How many times have you been cooked out this month"?
The picture references the traditional Leica aesthetic: quick glimpses of lived life taken with a small, discrete camera. That 35mm aesthetic of the non-metered all mechanical M is about simplicity and ease of use with its emphasis on functionality, ergonomics and the feel in the hand. This aesthetic was at a time --the early 1970s--when rangefinder technology was seen by both professional and amateur as an antiquated throw-back with numerous disadvantages. Photographers had started to shift to the Nikon SLR F system with its excellent but affordable optics.
I was driving back to the camp at Wentworth after I'd been photographing the dry river bed of the Great Darling Anabranch. There was no water in the river. There is a long term drought in this region, and most of the water in the river had been extracted by the upstream cotton irrigators. There is little water for the towns and properties along the Anabranch and the Lower Darling rivers.
This picture was made whilst I was wandering around an old Council rubbish dump in the late afternoon:
I was on a poodlewalk in Waitpinga, which is in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. The dump is empty now.--its an edgeland.
A picture of tree rings in an old rubbish dump from late 2018 that I have just got around to scanning.
This abstract was made in the late afternoon in Waitpinga whilst I was on a poodlewalk with Maleko.
This picture was made whilst I was on a brief visit to Sunshine, Melbourne:
I was there for an industrial photo session with Stuart Murdoch in North Melbourne. We had a break from photographing drosscapes with Stuart taking me for a walk along the Kororoit Creek trail in Sunshine.
I was waiting for a train to take me to Southern Cross Station:
I was on my back to Safety Beach on the Mornington Peninsula, where I was staying. I had been photographing around the Nth Melbourne precinct.
I saw this old, rusty can lying amongst rocks in the walls of the Terrapinna Gorge in the Northern Flinders Ranges:
