This photo  in the ongoing series of the aesthetics of mono no aware (the pathos of things) was made whilst on an autumn  poodle walk with Akira, our new silver standard puppy,  in the local Waitpinga bushland: 

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Another study in the mono no aware (the pathos of things) series:

Dead leaves just before the strong coastal winds cause them to  fall to the ground.  

During the late  autumn early winter  months of 2025 winter  I spent my   time walking along various back country  roads. The littoral zone along  the Encounter Coast was  pretty much off limits in this period,    due to the effects of the  toxic micro algae bloom (karenia mikimotoi) caused by marine heating in  March.  Modelling  indicates that though  the algae bloom  may get better over winter  it will get worse next summer. It will  affect  both gulfs – Gulf St Vincent and Spencer Gulf – and Investigator Strait. 

I started photographing  the side of the unsealed back country  roads that I was walking along on the early morning and late afternoon poodlewalks. Prior to the late autumn rains these country roads were extremely dusty,  and some of the roadside vegetation was just hanging on.

Occasionally,  I photographed  the insignificant objects  lying on the ground that caught my eye:  eg., a bunch of dead leaves as  their colour  stood out from  the layers of dust. 

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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 a poodlewalk --this time an early morning  with Kalani.      

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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 

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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. 

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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.      

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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.

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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.  

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. 

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This is another interpretation of  the hanging bark  along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga. 

 In contrast  to the early morning version that was uploaded  in this earlier post the above  version was made in the late afternoon. 

This picture is a  follow up  to this post on walking along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga in May 2022. 

The above  picture was made on an early morning walk in late May 2022.  It is a close-up  interpretation  of this picture,  and it  was made with a 10 year old  digital camera. There  is a  b+w  interpretation made with a 60 year old film camera. 

The hanging bark along Depledge Rd no longer exists. The gale force winter winds tore it to shreds.  

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A photo of some roadside vegetation along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga in early May 2022. The photo was made in the early morning  on a poodlewalk,  just as the sun's rays  illuminated  the vegetation:

During May Kayla and I usually walked along this road prior to sunrise, then we go into the bushland  5 minutes or so after sunrise. We timed the walk so awe were by the tree when it was illuminated by the early morning light. 

I noticed this hanging bark whilst I was walking along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga on an early morning poodlewalk with Kayla. We have a routine  on this walk. We walk  along the road before sunrise,  then we return to the Forester  via  the bushland. We walk through the bushland is slow as I am  taking photos.  

The bark is on the roadside, hanging from a branch.  It is kind of  sculptural; a mobile if you like,  as it gentle  moves when there is an easterly wind blowing. I've  made a video of the movement. 

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Lying beside one of the paths  through  the local Waitpinga bushland  is a pile of bark. It has been there a while. The pink gums (Eucalyptus fasciculosa)  are shredding their  bark and the pile keeps changing due to the  strong coastal winds.    Occasionally, when I am walking  by whilst on a poodlewalk,  I casually toss another piece of bark onto the pile, to see what happens. 

This  picture of roadside vegetation was made in late January whilst I was on an early morning  poodlewalk along Depledge Road in Waitpinga  with Kayla:

I've  started thinking about the possibilities of making a video showing the  early morning light starting to move across the trunk of the  trees whilst  I have been making these kind of photos of roadside vegetation.  Photographing  along Depledge Rd and in the adjacent bushland  has made me very aware that light is constantly moving.     

 In so  thinking  I have assumed  that  video is an extension of still photography. Video represents movement -- eg., light and wind -- that is beyond the capabilities of still photography.  So video is supplementary to  still photography,  rather than being quite different in its approach to the photography that I've been  doing on poodlewalks. 

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This was made in the early morning in the local Waitpinga bushland. Or to be more precise it was 7.15 am on the 29th December 2021. It was one of the last photos I made in 2021. It was one of the few sunny mornings  of this cool and windy summer. 

Afterwards,  Kayla  and I  walked around the bushland for another 30 minutes taking the odd photo.   There was little traffic on Depledge Rd, or even on the central Waitpinga Rd to the beach and surf.  Depledge Rd and the roadside vegetation was dry and dusty -- it hadn't rained for a while. The main sound that morning was the buzzing of the bees.

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From an early morning poodlewalk with Kayla in the  local Waitpinga bushland in November 2021

We only explore  the  bushland in the early morning just after  sunrise,   due to  the prevalence of the eastern brown snakes. Even though it is cool that early in the morning we tread very carefully whilst keeping a sharp lookout. It is the Littoral Zone  for the afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko.  

There is an earlier picture of bark hanging from a branch here   

On some of the recent  early morning poodlewalks with Kayla  I have been wandering in the local bushland in Waitpinga.  I was scouting and scoping for some possibilities for a  large format photo session. I am looking for something simple and basic that can  done in the early morning  during the summer months. Early in this context means no later than half an hour after sunrise.  

This is one possibility that I came across:

 However, I'm not sure that I could find this particular trunk and branch again. I will need to spend time looking for it and if I find it, then laying a trail to guide me back to it.

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I took  a break from sitting in front of the  computer working on The Bowden Archives and Industrial Modernity book by wandering around the local bushland on a poodlewalk with Kayla. Sitting in front of the computer was getting to me. 

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 From a early morning  poodlewalk in local bushland in Waitpinga with Kayla during the middle of winter 2021.  

It has been 3-4months  since I've walked through the local bushland. I went back yesterday morning to avoid the gale force  south westerly winds. I noticed that the native orchids   were in flower.  During this time I have been reading Photography and Place:  Australian landscape Photography 1970 untill now , which is a pdf of an exhibition curated by Judy Annear, Art Gallery NSW in 2011. 

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Kayla and I made a  brief return the local  patch of bush in Waitpinga last week.   We had not walked around  there since late spring. We had stayed away  over the summer months because of the brown snakes. In early autumn I  decided that it would be safe early in the morning around sunrise as the early morning temperatures was cool.  

So Kayla and I had a  quick poodlewalk one morning when it wasn't heavily overcast to check things out. It is quite dark in this patch of bush early in the morning,  and the heavily overcast skies make it difficult to  take photos handheld. It was safe. We haven't been back since because of the heavy cloud cover in the morning. 

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I have just come across  this current  exhibition of trees at the Monash University Museum of Art entitled Tree Story. I do not know much about the exhibition, or the narrative that is implied in the word 'story'.  The information on the MUMA website is very minimal. It says that the  exhibition's:

"creative practices "create a ‘forest’ of ideas relating to critical environmental and sustainability issues. At its foundation—or roots—are Indigenous ways of knowing and a recognition of trees as our ancestors and family...Tree Story takes inspiration from the underground networks, information sharing and mutual support understood to exist within tree communities, and poses the question: what can we learn from trees and the importance of Country?" 

There are no links to the Tree Story podcast, or to The Tree School publication on the website.  So we don't  have  access to the fleshing  out of the above ideas by the curators. This minimal online approach to an exhibition is standard art gallery practice .The art galleries  continue to assume that exhibitions are about people  physically visiting the gallery, even after a year of living with  the Covid-19 pandemic and its restrictions on people movement. 

Does the  use of 'school' suggest that trees  have the capacity to learn?  Or does tree school  refer to  a place where people can gather for communal learning and the production of knowledge grounded in lived experience and connection to communities? I have no idea. 

From a recent poodlewalk in January 2021:

This branch of a pink gum ( Eucalyptus fasciculosa) is in the local bushland in Waitpinga  adjacent to Depledge Rd on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. 

The picture  was made in the early morning in  mid-Spring (ie., October)  about 15 minutes  after sunrise. I often walk down Depledge Rd on a poodlewalk to avoid the strong,  south-westerly winds off the southern ocean. The bush on the west side of the road provides us with protection from the wind. 

It has been a cold,  wet, windy,   spring so far. We have had so much rain along the southern coast fo the Fleurieu Peninsula.   However, there were  a few days of fine weather between the days of steady rain in early October,  and so we were able to wander  around the local bushland in Waitpinga. 

This  picture was made  in the early morning inbetween  the rains sweeping across the coast:    

It  is a  grounded  branch of a pink gum in local bushland in Waitpinga.  The tree  is growing along the ground. 

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