Shoot Three...that never happened!

I decided that maybe I had just had a bad experience with Shoot Two and I thought that I should try again...and this failed miserably. I travelled a little way down the M1 from Leicester at about 7pm and stopped at three service stations, and asked about 4 members of staff at each, and every single one, without fail, declined my request to take a portrait of them, due to fears of breaking the company policies and troubles with managers.

This further enforces what I said in my previous post, and I think I am going to have to take a different approach.

Shoot Two

Having decided on a developed idea for a shoot I followed through with my plan to visit service stations on my way down from Leicester to Devon, late at night.

I feel that, although these images technically achieve what I wanted to do, they are not very interesting at all. I didn't feel I could be creative and felt very uneasy being there. Out of the dozen or so people I asked, these two subjects are the only ones that actually said yes when I asked them whether I could take their photograph, and even when they accepted they didn't seem very keen and were extremely wary of managers and permissions. This really put me in a difficult position and it made it all the more unnerving to ask anyone else for a picture. So it seems despite the lateness of my travelling you can't escape the 'red tape' of modern corporations when it comes to the media!

Solutions?

Although I offered every one of my participants a letter explaining my project and what I intended to use the photographs for on headed paper from the university, many people seemed reluctant to have their picture taken. I noticed that mostly, the reason for this was not because they didn't want to, but felt that they would not be allowed to appear in any work of mine due to pressure from the managers and company policies.

One solution could be to phone or write ahead, to obtain permissions to do portraits of staff working for certian roadside companies. However, in practice, for the purposes of my university project work this would not really be feasible, as the relevant managers and directors may take a long time to respond, and even if they do they may decline, which would not be ideal especially considering the deadlines imposed by my course. Although I think this would probably be the only approach that would work if I were to carry out a project similar in the future.

I will not give up though!!

Transitional Spaces Film

This is the film that was produced using my groups footage from the transitional spaces project right at the beginning of the course.

Having done my research, it seems I have come back a full circle to the idea of road travel and visiting service stations as a transitional space.



Filmed: Sam, Heather & Sonam
Edited: Robin, Tim & Annie

SHOOT TWO!! Planning and Ideas...

Having done a fair amount of research since my last shoot I feel that I have developed and built on my ideas enough to think about a second. In this post I will outline my themes and shot ideas, to go out and shoot...

THEMES:


- Travel

- On the road

- TRANSITIONAL SPACES!! 

- Discovery

- Travellers

SHOT IDEAS:

- Exterior/interior shots of motorway services/petrol stations and other key transitional spaces within the theme of road travel

- Evening/night/early morning light - Crewdson style!


- Vehicles, moving and stationary

- PEOPLE! Staff/drivers/passengers - people that either travel for a living and use the UK road network
   
How will I achieve this? What's the plan...?
This weekend I plan on driving home, from Leicester to South Devon, travelling late at night on the motorways. From past experience I know I will be passing many service stations and fuel stops, and these will be perfect for my shoot ideas. Travelling late at night means there will be fewer people around, but enough to provide me with subjects to shoot for portraits, and there will be less interruptions when I am shooting my exterior shots.

Hopefully I will be able to gather a few images to help with my development, and have the beginnings of an interesting project!

Liam Eyers

I have been looking further into the people that are part of the experience of travelling, and started looking at work created a little nearer to home. I came across this series named "Little Chef" made by Liam Eyers. The project looks into documenting the various Little Chef chain restaurants he visited during his time travelling through England.

I like this series for it's portrayal and representation of the faces behind something so many of us see so regularly. These faces that are an important part of every motorway journey, but are so easily forgotten, are immortalised in Eyers' photographs, which I find extremely interesting.

 

This body of work has been very influential on me, and I am beginning to plan my next shoot, taking into account my research and ideas to date.

Andrew Bush

I really like this series of work by Andrew Bush, named "Vector Portraits." The work examines the relationship between American's and their cars, and how they represent many of the ideals in culture; freedom, mobility and independence. By attaching a camera to the passenger side of his car, Bush almost intrudes of the occupant's space, and presents a very real view of a culture of travel.

A lot of travel photography deals with the places visited and the things seen whilst on the road, but Bush's is different in the way that it deals with people and the portraits give an interesting element to something which is sometimes overlooked - the people doing the travelling!

Stephen Shore

"Until I was twenty-three, I lived mostly in a few square miles in Manhattan. In 1972, I set out with a friend for Amarillo, Texas. I didn't drive, so my first view of America was framed by the passenger window. It was a shock."

This is the work of Stephen Shore, and his quotation at the start of the post had a big effect on me. I have always loved travel and driving, and I have always found long journeys fascinating. Whilst researching work with a travel theme, I was struck by Shore's simplistic but very well thought out image of his America. I think the images have captured the essence of his journey, and give an insight into what he experienced in this new and exciting world of life on the road.

He documented his trip and shoots as he travelled, which I find really interesting. I think it would be really interesting to document a trip or travel as a theme, but look out for Crewdson style lighting and colour along the way.

Birgitta Lund - "In Transit"

 

I really find this series of travel photography by Birgitta Lund very interesting. Named "In Transit", Lund's work represent's her journey from Copenhagen to America, specifically New York where she studied. I was drawn to the series when I saw it in an online photography magazine article, by the first image I have added to this post. I loved the neon colours and the yellow of the taxis under it, and it reminded me of Crewdson's work, although her images come from a very different place, away from his heavily controlled movie style sets.

I am beginning to be very drawn to the idea of travel and movement, especially on the road. This fits very nicely into the transitional spaces theme, and is something I would definitely like to explore...

The Renowned Gregory Crewdson - Colours & Light

So following my shoot, I continued on my quest for inspiration and research. When browsing through my blog I tried to start looking at why I liked the images, other than for the reasons I have already outlined to do with the surreal aspect. Most commonly, I found, the images had be shot during the twilight hours, or at night. I really love the vibrancy of the colours at this time, and I found they really reminded me of Gregory Crewdson's work.I thought he was especially relevant as a lot of his work deals with surreal themes, in a seemly normal environment.

I specifically looked at work including vehicles and street scenes, to conform to the transitional spaces theme I started with. I absolutely love the colours that characterise Crewson's work, the rich blues and purples really bring the image to life, and the oranges and reds artificial neon lights and street lamps create a wonderful mix. I'd really like to start working in this sort if light, waiting for it to be right before I shoot my subject, I find it extremely inspirational!

FIRST SHOOT!!

So it's been a long time coming, but I have got one shoot under my belt. Basically, having taken inspiration from everything I have researched and the idea of transitional spaces I decided to attempt to 'paint with light' using my car as a subject. I wanted to try and create a visually exciting image that uses the light trails to give the image a surreal feel.

These first three images are the experiments I started with. Using a white LED Torch and three battery powered candle effect lamps I created the effect. I tried as best I could to outline the car and paint in some of the details. I don't feel these images came out particularly well but they are a start! Another issue is that you can see where I have been standing still for too long whilst the shutter has been open.

I tried an angle from behind the car so I could try and get a light trail from the lights of passing cars. However, this did not go quite to plan as the road was not very busy, and the shoot was taken fairly late at night, but in theory it could add another interesting element to the image. Again, I tried to outline parts of the car, but I am not very happy with the results, as it just seems messy. I could improve on this by using brighter lights, or trying to shoot details of the car.

I moved back around to the front of the car, and used a wide angle lens to distort the car and give it an odd effect. I began to get a bit bored with simply outlining the car, and halfway through I dropped the bike light I was using. Thinking the picture was ruined but still with 20 or so seconds left on the exposure I ran around the car, waving the light to try and get as whacky an effect as I could. Surprisingly, these are the results I am most happy with, as they give a the car a weird halo of light, which looks more like graffiti, which I quite like, and reminds me of some of the LICHTFAKTOR work in my earlier posts.

Overall I am fairly happy with the shoot, and feel that with a little more time and experimentation could produce some interesting images. However, this avenue may be limiting, so I will continue with my research and development to see where I could go from here.