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.