I am a Melbourne-based photographer. I spend a good portion of my time on the Mornington Peninsula. It is a wonderfully scenic place and a favourite summer destination for Melbournians. In recent years, I have concentrated on abstract black and white sea and landscapes.
Recently, I have turned my attention to places and subjects on the Peninsula that have become too familiar to me, too generic, and therefore apparently unworthy of my attention. This image is of a short track I walk along very often. I have never paid it much attention and, until now, never photographed it. It has nevertheless registered somewhere in my mind.
It is an in-between place whose only purpose is to allow access from a busy road to a beautiful, popular beach — orange sand, clear blue sky, azure sea — the subject of a plethora of comforting yet banal images which overdetermine how we react to this place.
Dark and brooding images have always appealed to me, and my treatment is hardly original. Perhaps this grainy, underexposed, low-detail black and white image is itself as much of a visual cliche as the glossy realism of the tourist brochure.
This image is an artifice, not a document — the product of an encounter between a place and a specific consciousness; and, with a little help from processing software, an antidote to poor observational habits. This is the paradox and great allure of abstraction: removing the familiar, the ‘real’ elements of a scene, encourages a fresh perspective.
What the image means is entirely up to you. To me, it invites a meditation on the deeper mysteries of consciousness, of time and place, and the darker episodes and experiences of Australian history so easily wallpapered over by sunlit platitudes.
On the other hand, a track is just a track.
What are the TWO most impactful features that make your image a good photograph? Don’t be shy!
I like the composition – tracks winding away to indeterminate destinations are always irresistible to me. I think the b&w grainy processing works well to create the atmospherics I was looking for.
If you could make this photo again, what would be the ONE thing you would like to do better or differently?
I grabbed this image without a lot of thought while on the way to somewhere else. I will return to give the composition the attention it deserves. Perhaps move a little to the left to provide a longer, more extended view of the path.
Russ Radcliffe shared this photograph with the FRAMES Facebook Group.
Photographer
Russ Radcliffe, Melbourne, Australia
Equipment and settings
Fujifilm XT5 + XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR II
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