During the late  autumn early winter  months of 2025 winter  I spent some  time walking along 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 since March.  

  I started photographing  the side of the  roads that I was walking along in 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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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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