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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
