Thoughtfactory: The Littoral Zone

The close-up photo below is from a recent early morning poodlewalk with Maya amongst the coastal rocks between Petrel Cove and Kings Beach lookout in Waitpinga on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula: 

We  usually walk along the coastal path from Kings Beach Lookout towards Petrel Cove 40 minutes or so before sunrise.   Then we make our way back along the rocks after sunrise with the sun behind us.   There is only the odd dog walker on the coastal path  or a solitary fisherman on the rocks at that time of the morning. So it is easy to be in the moment whilst amongst the rocks.  

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The Littoral Zone  project has been on hold in  2023.  The previous  Ephemeral post was in May 2023 after a 5 months hiatus. Then there is nothing until September -- a 4 month gap. So that is  one post in 9 months. What's more there were large gaps between posts before that. 

The two pictures in this post, which  were made in May 2023, pick up where I left off through reconnecting with the Japanese aesthetic concept of mono no aware. It's a return to familiar ground. 

The basic reason for the hiatus in 2023 is that I lost my way - or ran out of puff. The initial motivation was  a blog of photos and text linked to poodlewalks as a supplement.  Over time  it slowly evolved from a blog to a project that  connected the photos of the littoral zone that I made whilst on my daily poodlewalks to Japanese aesthetics.  The blog  became  a way or means for  me to work out  how to do this. 

What appealed about Japanese aesthetics was that it was based on the world of flux that presents itself to our senses being the only reality: there is no conception of some stable Platonic realm above or behind it.This  appealed because the littoral zone was a world of flux and it connected with  the process metaphysics in western philosophy  -- eg., Nietzsche's rejection of Platonism's two worlds  and his idea of the will to power  that sees the world as comprised of dynamic active and reactive forces in tension. 

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I've been going the archives of what I call  my macro photographs. 

The picture below was made  about the same time (circa 2019) as the images on this post on Thoughtfactory's photo blog and with the same macro camera equipment. It was the colours of the quartz that initially caught my eye. Then I saw the seaweed strand lying across the quartz vein. 

 I thought that this moment wouldn't last very long, as the coastal wind would quickly move the shape and the  line of the seaweed strand, then eventually  blow it off the quartz.  So I quickly made a photo. 

I was on a poodlewalk at the time,  and I was looking for some dried salt ponds among the granite rocks to photograph.  We would have   been walking in the  late afternoon.

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At Deps Beach: 

Deps Beach  is roughly halfway between Kings Beach and Petrel Cove. I was on an early morning  poodlewalk with Kayla.  

This macro study of quartz was made on an afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko during the Xmas break:

It was slightly overcast that afternoon in mid-January and the usual high contrast light around 6pm  was softened.