Thoughtfactory: large format

a minor blog about the trials, tribulations and explorations of large format, analogue photography in Australia

Posts for Tag: urban

Globe apartments, Adelaide

This is another of the early large format  urban  photos that I did  whilst we were living in the CBD of Adelaide. It  was made around the same time ( 2013-14) as this one,  and it was from the same Rundle St car Park in Adelaide's east end  as this photo.  I spent a lot of time looking at the city's  urban textures  from the top floors of various car parks.  

 The photo  was made using colour negative film  (Portra 160 ASA),  but I converted it to black and white in Lightroom.  I wasn't photographing in black and white  then. 

At the time I  was interested in the new architecture emerging out of the old. A  provincial city in transition was the idea that informed the urban large format and I had a sense that I could photograph  urban history in the architecture. 

urban large format

Prior to moving to  Victor Harbor and the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in 2015 we lived in a townhouse in Adelaide's CBD  for a decade or more.  It was easy for me to  wander the streets of the CBD with a digital and medium format camera on various poodlewalks.   Slowly, ever so slowly as I got to know the city  I began to  start using a large format camera  (an old  Cambo 5x7 SC3 monorail) to photograph the streets. 

The locations chosen  were within  easy carrying distance from the townhouse as I was carrying the gear. An example is this picture of  Mill St, Adelaide, 2012, which  was just a block away from where I lived in Sturt St. 

The initial results were not good. I was embarrassed, then discouraged.  It was just so different from walking the streets with a hand held medium format camera. I kept asking myself what was I trying to do with using large format,  apart from making an individual photo? I had no idea. The camera had been used for the Bowden Archives project  in the 1980s and it was sitting in a cupboard.  So I decided to use it.