Shoot Five - Many many cups of tea...

Here are some more shots from recent expeditions to find some more cafes:

 

Red Cafe is unfortunately closed now, but none the less made for an interesting photo.

 

Mock Tudor Cottage was run by a woman who told me about the Red Cafe being closed. She wouldn't let me take her picture, but was happy to let me photograph the unit.

 

This Burger Van was run by another lone woman, who also declined a photograph, but said I could also take a photograph of the unit. 

 

 

  

This Refreshment Wagon worker was much more happy for me to take photographs, but I wasn't brave enough to ask her to pose for a shot as she seemed busy and had customers to serve. 

As a recce I think the shot was semi successful, and I was tipped off to the locations of some other cafes and vans. However, the images are not up to scratch for a final project.

Shoot Four - Brekker's Cafe

Having found my new direction, and following the assessment, I've made a start on finding some roadside Cafes. On the drive back from Redhill to Leicester I cam across Brekkers, and took a few shots to get the project rolling...

These four are the usable images I got from this Cafe. As a first attempt I think these images are ok, but I need to develop my ideas a little more, and have more confidence when asking the staff for portraits.

Roadfood.com - The culture of Roadside Food in America

Whilst researching photographers who shoot smaller cafes and diners during their travels, I came across this website which is dedicated to the joys of small diners across the US.

From the Roadfood website...

Roadfood means great regional meals along highways, in small towns and in city neighborhoods.

It is non-franchised, sleeves-up food made by cooks, bakers, pitmasters, and sandwich-makers who are America’s culinary folk artists.

Roadfood is almost always informal and inexpensive; and the best Roadfood restaurants are colorful places enjoyed by locals (and savvy travelers) for their character as well as their menu.

It is our intention that Roadfood.com will lead the way to:

• great local color
• the best regional specialties
• unforgettable diners, celestial barbecue, and four-star pig-outs galore!
  

I think this really captures what I am trying to do with my project, but whereas Roadfood is concerned with the food on offer at these sort of establishments, I am interested in the people that work there. The website details hundreds of spectacular food places with character and something a bit unusual about them which is extremely interesting, but unfortunately for me the website is based in the US.

Hopefully, with my travels on the UK roads, I can come up with something similar to this, but with photographs instead of recipes. The sort of places that I am looking for are likely to contain some pretty interesting characters, and are much more likely to embrace a photographer interested in what they do. The problem with the service stations is that the staff have no passion for the food they are serving, whereas smaller independently run places are much more likely!

An Assesment and a (slightly) new direction...

I have decided to try and assess where to go from here with this project. The issues I have been having with trying to capture travelling in the UK and shooting portraits of the characters you meet along the way have been very difficult to overcome, especially within the restraints of the course and the time limits imposed upon the project. However, I feel that if I take a slightly different direction with my project I can produce some more interesting and varied work.

The Idea!

Basically, using big, motorway service stations has proved to be nearly impossible. The problem is that they are too mainstream, and as a result they have polices and rules in place which stop me in my tracks when I am trying to produce portraiture of staff. Aside from this also, the subjects which I have access to are not especially eye catching...it could just be any old McDonalds or coffee shop chain!

To produce more interesting work, I have decided to try getting off the motorways and travelling using A roads in search of diners and roadside food stops which are either independently run or part of a smaller chain where the rules and staff will be much more relaxed and probably more interesting to photograph!

I have noticed in my research that the best photographs taken whilst travelling are often shot in the little unusual places travellers come across and that are not often seen, which is the opposite to motorway services. I have begun to realise that to capture the spirit of road travel I need to avoid the larger, more corporate places.

So that's where I plan to steer my project from now on, in an attempt to avoid all the problems I have been having to date, and to find some more interesting subjects!

David Zaitz - A little more travel photography research...

David Zaitz is an American photographer and I have been looking at his images from his travels across America, with particular focus on portraiture of people working in the various shops, garages and diners he uses.

 

 

 

I really like Zaitz images for their vibrant colour and brightness, they really capture the joy of his journey and the characters of the people he's met on his travels - I think they're great!

Shoot Three Continued...

So I decided to take a different, more canidid approach to shooting portraits in the service stations, and this is what I came up with:

I think that these images are more interesting than the posed portraits from Shoot Two, and I didn't get stopped by any security or managing staff! However, they're not really what I was going for with this project. I wanted a more intimate look at people that work on and use the roads in the UK and these photos are a bit detached and documentative.  

Street Photography Research

One alternative I have thought of is approaching portraiture in a more candid way. To help me with this, I have done a little bit of research on Street Photography with a focus on more candid photographs.

Firstly, Richard Bram:

 

 

 

Next I looked at Alan Wilson:

It seems that to make a candid portrait successful it needs to have an element of humour or juxtaposition that gives it an edge. I like these images because they have something that stands out, whether it be black juxtaposed with white, or the placement of a subject next to a poster adding humour.

I will try and take elements of this work and incorporate it into my next trip to the services!