Another study of dead leaves in the Waitpinga bushland in the Fleurieu Peninsula. This was in the spring of 2024. Like the others in the series the photo was made whilst on an early morning poodlewalk with Maya.
bark #5 (roadside)
I've realised that I have been making roadside pictures without being consciously aware of my doing so. My concentration was on the pieces of bark themselves, not their location. This is a good example. This is another one in black and white. Then I realised that the location was often the roadside.
The roadside pictures usually happen whilst I'm walking down back country soars (eg., Depledge Rd) in Waitpinga on the early morning poodlewalks with Maya. A case in point -- in the late summer of 2024
I am often looking at the roadside whilst I'm walking and the photos that I make are modest. They are of ephemeral objects that are insignificant in themselves. Just like this one -- a particular moment as the light shifted away within a minute or so.
decay
During the winter storms the trees fall down and branches break off in the Waitpinga bushland. The bark then peels off the fallen trunks and branches during the summer months, and the wood slowly decays over the years.
The picture was made whilst on a poodlewalk with Maya in the early morning -- around sunrise -- to avoid the snakes.
leaves + light
The picture below is another one of my attempts at converting a colour digital file to b+w. A previous attempt on an earlier post is here. These pictures of the details of the landscape were made whilst I was on a poodlewalk in the local Waitpinga bushland in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia.
These b+w conversions haven't been successful using an old digital camera and I've never been able to even approach the rich tonality that Sebastian Salgado achieved with his impressive b+w Kuwait photos. One response has been to return to using b+w film.
In both cases my intimate bushland pictures were made with a very old Sony NEX-7 digital camera (2011), a modern Voigtlander closeup adaptor, and a vintage Leica M 35mm Summicron f.2.0 lens (1960s). This combination is trying to keep my old photographic equipment going rather than discarding it.
fallen leaves
Another interpretation of dead leaves in the local Waitpinga bushlandmade whilst on an autumn afternoon poodlewalk. This time it is the leaves that have fallen to the ground:
The leaves become part of the ground cover that we walk on, and often than not they are not noticed. As the leaves slowly decay during the winter months they lose their colour. It was the colour that initially attracted me.
dead leaves + photographic self-questioning
I have spent quite some time walking in the local Waitpinga bushland this autumn. I walked with Maya on the morning walk and with Maleko on the afternoon walk. Whilst being preoccupied with dipping my toes into making walking art I noticed the dead leaves hanging from the branches of the eucalypts as well as the bark.
I'd ignored them up to now as I had been primarily focused on the bark with a 35mm film camera. The leaves were concealed -- merged into the background. In the last couple of weeks of walking I started to look at the dead leaves as I walked past them. Their speckled brownness stood out from the background world of green. I started to photograph them closeup.
What emerged was the simple awareness of something present-at-hand in its sheer presence-at-hand. The seeing involved in the encounter with the present-at-hand gives precedence to the entity and it does so precisely because it detaches itself from the background context. The emergence of the dead leaves into presence can be understood as an event of the un-concealment of the dead leaves out of concealment. The photography discloses this coming into presence.
landscape photography and narration
Like the Littoral Zone and poodlewalks this Rhizomes blog has been on the back burner since September, even though I have been walking in the local bushland with Maya (in the morning) and Maleko (in the afternoon) and continuing to make photos whilst on the poodlewalks.
There was even the occasional photo session, such as this one, which was an early morning photo session on Boxing Day, 2023.
It was an early morning photo session on Halls Creek Rd, which is a minor link road that is part of the Heysen Trail in Waitpinga. It has little traffic and so it is safe to both walk along with Maya and to stop to make photos.
hanging bark #2/meditative seeing
The local bushland is becoming off limits in the afternoon due to the snakes coming out of their winter hibernation with the warm spring weather. It is still okay to walk in the bushland in the early morning before sunrise when it is cold or wet from the heavy dew.
I notice that this Rhizomes blog was neglected during the autumn/winter period this year -- there is a gap between March and August. There is even greater neglect with The Littoral Zone blog. I'm sure this neglect was the result of me struggling to put the walking and the photography together as a process-based photographic project.
The photo below was made in early September 2023 whilst I was on a poodlewalk in the late afternoon with Maleko:
Going back through the archives Rhizomes and seeing what I had photographed in the local bush during that March-August period I can see that an immersive style of walking was emerging: one that was reactive to what was occurring around me, rather than going into the bushland to photograph a particular object in certain lighting conditions that had been pre-visualised.
bark #4 (hanging b+w )
This macro photo was made whilst I was on a hobbled walk in the local bushland.
It was late in the afternoon. I have looked for this bark since, but I have never been able to find it. The winter winds would have prised it loose from the branch of the pink gum.
an old pile of bark
This is what happens to old piles of bark in the bushland that have been lying on the ground for a year of more:
The colours fade, the bark slowly breaks up, then it starts to crumble.
I came across the above pile when I returned to walking in the bushland with Maya after a long break over the summer. I was introducing Maya to the bushland. I recognised the pile from a year ago.