This picture or representation of quartz was made whilst I was on a coastal poodlewalk in Waitpinga on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia with Maleko, our standard poodle,  in the late afternoon. It was made around the same time as this image which is on the same 35mm roll of colour negative film.

 If it was overcast in the afternoon we would often wander  amongst these rocks on the  poodlewalks,  as the afternoon light is behind us and the soft light brings out the muted and subtle colours of  the rocks and quartz. 

This representational image of quartz is deemed to be a document created using a  transparent medium to produce an image that is readily intelligible. Hence it is a cliche that needed to be subverted by opening up the photographic process to explore the  possibilities of the photographic mediation of the world. That rejection of photographic transparency is the perspective of art history's account of the history of photography and it highlights how the logic of  20th century modernism is a culture of negation.   

Read more

The two  bark abstracts below  were my initial attempt at abstract poetics with  black and white film (IlFord HP5 Plus 400 ASA). I was reading Lyle Rexer's The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography at the time. Most of the recent photographic abstractions are digital and  in colour eg., the various artists in the Helsinki School.   I had little interest in the cameraless photogram or directly changing the surface of unexposed photographic papers by burning, soaking, inscribing them etc as did Marco Breuer. 

Could abstraction work now by returning to back and white film?  So after Leica  replaced the damaged range finder of  the M4 I   decided to experiment by using 35mm black and white film.  I was more or less picking up from where I'd left off prior to the photographic culture's  shift to digital technology in the first decade of 21st century.   

I had stopped photographing in  35mm black and white in the 1990s when the range finder of the M4  was damaged and it could not be repaired in Australia.   Since my return to photography  around 2006 I have only photographed with  35mm in colour using  an M4-P rangefinder.  

Read more

The pictures below and over the page were made in 2021 whilst Maleko and I were on an afternoon  poodlewalk in  the littoral zone in Waitpinga in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula of  South Australia. We often walk along this section of the coast in the late afternoon. Photographically speaking, this littoral zone  works best in low or flat sunlight. It is no good in the bright afternoon sunlight of summer.

The pictures were made  with  my Leica M4-P with a  rigid Summicron 50mm pre-asph lens. As mentioned in an earlier post the rangefinder  recently became salt damaged from a rogue wave surging over me whilst I was photographing.  Leica  in Germany have since informed me that the lens is kaput (ie.,  unrepairable), but that they can repair the camera body.   I have given the go ahead  to repair the camera and  I am hoping that the insurance will cover most of the cost of buying a second hand Summicron 50mm pre-asph lens. 

That decision means that I remain committed to what some call vintage photography that many understand in terms of being wrapped up in nostalgia. Though not born into a digital world, but subsequently embracing it, I accept that I am  a nostalgic photographer whose optimistic  belief in the digital future is becoming outmoded.  What then is analogue nostalgia? 

Read more

This  photo of an old log in the bushland in Waitpinga on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia was made in 2021 when I was on an early morning walking with  Kayla.  We spent a lot of time in the bushland, mostly in the early morning, throughout 2021 and  the winter of 2022. Sadly we had to put Kayla down this week, as she had cancer of the lymph nodes.   

This is a memory of our times together in the local bushland; a memory of  nature as  transience: 

During our times together in the local bushland I recovered a conception of nature as transience--conceptualizing the bushland in terms of change, passing away, perishing-- and not just as shapes and colours as in a modernist aesthetics. 

Read more

The  photo below  is of a branch of a tree on the  side of a  backcountry road in Waitpinga on the Fleurieu Peninsula.  I often walk down this road or both the early morning and the afternoon poodlewalks. The road  runs alongside  some bushland,  which is where we wander around after walking along the length of the road. We usually wander through the bushland back to our starting point. 

The photo was  made in low light on an early morning poodlewalk.  

Read more

 My Leica M film rangefinder is locked in the past. I bought the analogue rangefinder  on the basis of craftsmanship in the 1970s when it was already  being marginalised  by the innovative, Japanese SLR cameras. In 2022 the film M is technologically  obsolete but it works.  

 I am no True Believer in Leica, its  myths or seductive mystique.  What I currently have  is a well made, vintage  film camera with a minimalist industrial design that requires a considered approach to photographing the world around me.   

 This picture was made in 2021 when I was starting to photographically  explore   the Spring Mount Conservation Park in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia.

Spring Mount  is a local stringybark conservation park in the ranges that run alongside the Inman Valley. It  lies  between, and separates,  the Hindmarsh Tiers and  the  Inman Valley.  

Read more

The two  pictures below was made whilst I was on a poodlewalk in my local coastal area along  the southern Fleurieu Peninsula. They were  both made  with a 1970s handheld Leica rangefinder with Kodak Portra 400  ASA film. Its  bare bones  photography. The film  was then processed in a commercial lab and the negatives were  scanned to create a digital file (jpeg).  

This classical and hybrid approach to the photographic  is in marked contrast to the AI and computation that has entered the aesthetic realm in the second decade of the 20th century.  Aesthetic machines such as Midjourney's Discord server  can generate images that appear to be human made.  This  AI imaging is a machine-learning system, and it's  software enables you to create images that look like photographs, oil paintings, cartoons, etc. You can leave your expensive  camera in the cupboard. 

Read more

I purchased  my silver Leica M4 rangefinder in Melbourne in the late 1970s. It quickly became my walk around camera and I became very comfortable  with a rangefinder as opposed to the then popular and more versatile single lens reflex film  cameras.  Unfortunately, the Leica's  rangefinder was damaged when it fell to the ground in Brisbane around 2011. The camera strap broke and the camera hit the concrete floor with a thud.  I then  lost  it  for around 10 years or so.  

It was found in 2021 and in early 2022 I sent it to Leica in Germany  to have the rangefinder repaired and the camera serviced.  I then bought a second hand, modern Summicron-M 35mm f/2 lens. 

Despite being made in the 1960s this 60 year camera  now looks and works as if it were new. I could see why  it's classically  minimal, industrial design or aesthetic would appeal to collectors;  and why it has a much higher monetary value today  than a contemporary  digital camera. (The Leica's value keeps on increasing). 

I started photographing with the unmetered Leica M4 using  black and white  film in a very modest way this year --the M6 was the first metered M rangefinder (manufactured between 1984 to 2003).  I  made  photos using Ilford HP 5 Plus film whilst I was on  the various  poodlewalks  in the local bushland. This  one of bark along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga  is one of the early photos that I made:

I was trying to see the world around me in black and white after years of photographing in colour.  A colour version is here.

The picture below is an abstraction of a section of the trunk of an eucalyptus tree in the Veale Gardens section of the Adelaide parklands in South Australia. It was  made using  an old Leica rangefinder camera from the 1980s ---- a M4-P with a 50mm Summicron prime lens.   This  very basic and simple film camera (manual focus, no light meter)  is the complete opposite to  the modern technology of contemporary digital cameras (Sony, Canon, Nikon).  

I  had some time on my hands that afternoon, so I  wandered around looking at the tracks of the various eucalypts.  I was looking for the possibilities for abstraction.  The colours of this  particular  trunk caught my eye. 

Read more

The picture below is a snap of some  tree roots in a dry  creek bed on the eastern side of  the Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges  in South Australia in 2021.  We had traveled on the gravel Arkaroola-Junta Rd along the eastern edge of the ranges,  then turned into the North Flinders Rd  passed Wertaloona Station, then  crossed the Wearing Hills  through the Wearing Gorge.  

I cannot remember which creek it was. More than likely it was Wearing  Creek as we drove through the creek bed whilst the gorge. 

We were returning to  Hawker via Blinman after  we had been 7 days walking in the Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges. Our  camp, which was  organised by Retire Active SA, was  at  the shearer's quarters  in the old Balcanoona Station --- a one time sheep/pastoral  station. The station homestead is  now  the National Park Head Quarters. 

Read more