Another mirror shoot

After a frustrating couple of weeks where for various reasons I couldn't take any images, I was desperate to get this project on the ground again.

Although I'd prefer to be continuing with the themes of abandoned and ruined cars, I did get the oppurtunity to take some more continuing with my mirrors theme, which caught my eye due to the snow and the change in the weather.

Below is a contact sheet of all the images and several of my favourites from them.

I like these images, I feel they are different to the mirror ones I've shot previously and believe the weather is a big factor in this, which is a nice change. I find the snow and ice very inspiring and since it changes the entire dynamic of travelling it's interesting to document this.

I think for now, I'm going to wrap up the idea of mirrors, in terms of taking photos. I feel I have taken plenty, however, I might look at sequencing these images together in terms of a video. Because the whole collection I have were taken over a number of journeys, on a number of roads and in different weather conditions, I think making a video that mixes them up could be interesting and tell its own story.

I was thinking of what I could do for the audio and was thinking the video could be appropriate for a narrative. Someone's voice over the top reading a poem, or a letter, or even mixing that idea with clips of radio for the different journeys. I'm very interesting at mixing in audio with this particular idea, and perhaps even text recalling 'memories' or things that stood out from each journey.

Research- A couple more

On my research quest, I also found a couple more photographers who have covered or at least included work that I'm interested in making.

Will Steacy's image below is taken from his series, "Down These Mean Streets" and unlike the work I looked at in my previous entry, this is more the place you expect to see this kind of thing. Perhaps that's stereotypical, but as he states in his statement, it's a place you'd drive through, not to. A place you'd avoid. The car always seems to act like an omen for that; a message or a warning to stay out.

That's an aspect of photographing the ruined cars I hadn't previously thought about, and perhaps one to think about considering.


The images below are by Richard Mosse. I really like these images, they're a slightly different approach to the images I've been looking at previously because a lot of them is about their lighting. The ethereal, if not hazy, yet slightly sinister feel to them.

Also the ambiguity of where exactly these cars are also fascinates me. It looks like the desert but the title of the project, "Nomads", doesn't help you reach a conclusion and the lack of text leaves it open to interpretation. What I found out from investigating further was that these were taken in war zones.

As soon as I knew that, I began seeing the images differently. The hazy light stopped looking mysterious, and seemed to become a mask. A way of hiding the terror that lies behind these images and how exactly those vehicles ended up looking like this.

Research- Ali Richards

I'm still interested in pressing on with the idea of ruined and abandoned cars. While researching for another module, I came across these images by Ali Richards, a British photographer. They are from her series 'Playgrounds', the purpose being to explore the way teenagers interact with their environment. Largely, how they steal and burn out cars.

Something I like is the fact that often the cars look very out of place with the natural, preserved landscape around them. It reminded me of the car that I chanced across in the Holiday Inn carpark. The fact that it didn't look it belonged there.

I found that looking at these images inspired me to look for more burnt out and abandoned cars, particularly in places where on one hand you do expect to find them (because teenagers/car thieves are fairly obvious in their dumping grounds) but on the other hand it's where you know you shouldn't see cars.

From having a conversation with Jan before he directed me to Watermead park as this seems to be a favourite place to dump cars in Leicester and I also know of several places back home in Grimsby. And with the return of my car at some point over the next week, I should be able to get this project thoroughly back on the ground!

Video Experiment

When I first started thinking about how I wanted to present the video, my initial thought was looking at the names, the logos cars have on them as some form of personality for each individual engine and body shell. A way of personalising them and when I thought about it, it's how people refer to cars, rarely do they just say, 'I have an Audi', they'll simply say they have an 'A5' for example.

The shoot went fairly well, however some of the images required straightening or could be framed better but as I probably looked like I was car numberplate stealing or breaking in I tried to take them fairly quickly. The only other problem I encountered was getting my own reflection in the shot, that I couldn't avoid on the modern cars but since I plan to only quickly flash up the images, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Here are some of the stills I took for it in a contact sheet and several of them larger..


The idea was to show the car as being more than just a car and somehow incorporate images of the ruined cars and the scrap yard cars I came across. But as I started making the video (having taken the photos the previous day) it started to change slightly.

I began thinking of pace, how flashing up the car names and logos really quickly could disorientate the viewer, make them less visible and change the way you saw them (as well as reflecting the pace of fast travel and a journey). I started mixing in the photos of ruined cars in black and white for contrast and to dramatise the change, only one image and more quickly at first. But as the video progresses the icons and names become less of the feature and the scrap yard/wrecked cars get more frequent and stay on screen longer.

What I wanted to achieve with this piece originally gradually changed during the editing, and now I hope that when someone views it, they get across the pace of a journey and that a car is ultimately just a part of our journey, only theirs tend to an end sooner. But I'd further like to explore this idea as currently the video has no sound, and I feel it could use some.

Perhaps next I can get more names and colours for variety and then build on the concept, adding in sound and playing with the tempo perhaps. However, as an experimental piece this came out better than I originally planned, so I'm happy with it. (View it below)

Plans baffled again

As seems to be a running theme with this project I hit more problems while trying to do my scrap yard shoot at the weekend, the first being weather (could it have rained any harder?!) and the second being the one day it wasn't raining was the day they weren't open! Argh!

So for now, the scrap yard idea is on hold and I'm turning my attention to video as I haven't experimented in that yet. I was trying to think of the type of thing I'd like to do, based on the photos I've taken so far. One of my ideas is to merge the photographs I've taken thus far into a video, based around some kind of narrative that would probably begin with some of the in-car shots, then the petrol stations and finally the scrap yard and ruined car images.

However, while I'd like to make that video, right now as I've already shot those images, I'd like to do something a little different. So as I was already looking at the themes of identity, how people treat cars and how people almost personalise them, treat them as people or as something more than just a means of transport, I'd like to do a video perhaps about that.

My initial idea is to photograph car make and name badges that you find on the back of the car. The idea came to me over the weekend, but when I came across photographs by Jesse Chehak, this helped inspire me and cement it.

The following photos below are all from Chehak's set entitled "Autos"


Where as Chahak's photos are meant to be fine art and to show the classic American cars, mine will be going into a video, though I would like to get the same effect where there's nothing but the badge and car in frame.

My initial ideas are to have very fast edits where the images just flash up and the colours and contrast should make for interesting cuts and somewhere during the video I want to bring in flashes of trashed and ruined cars which will mean using the ones I took at the previous scrap yard and the ones I took when I came across that wreck. I haven't thought about the sound much yet, for now I want to concentrate on getting the visuals how I'd like them.

I have already begun shooting the images, the only problem I've encountered so far is that on the modern cars (which is mostly all I have access to) you often get reflections in the paintwork but if they're just flashing up quickly, I don't think that will be a huge issue.

Inspiration

The shoot I was hoping to do at the scrap yard didn't go to plan due to health and safety restrictions, so I will be trying again at another scrap yard on Saturday. Until then I've been looking around for inspiration and for others who have documented ruined cars or scrap yards.

Lynn Radeka

James Maher

Tema Stauffer

I haven't given up on shooting more photos at the scrap yard, and aim to turn them into a video. However, I do have a back-up idea in case I can't do those and a potential future idea. I was thinking about the different names cars have and how people often refer to them by their names, like Clio or whatever. I might photograph close-ups of these, as many as I can find and then put them together with really quick edits and then mix in photos of the scrap yard and wrecked cars to contrast this fresh, undamaged approach.

A lucky find

While out for reasons unrelated to photography, I came across a burnt out car at the Holiday Inn next to the football stadium. The car had obviously either caught fire or been set alight, either way it had blown up and not only gutted itself but also ruined the British Gas van next to it, melting the wingmirror and destroying the window.


I took the oppurtunity to grab some quick photographs but then it began raining. I think they're a good prelude to the images I'll hopefully be taking at the scrap yard on Tuesday.

For now, these images fit well with the idea of looking at what happens to a car after journeys are over and it's not wanted anymore or it becomes unusable. Also, I'm hoping to get to the same scrap yard that the images in my previous post were taken at when I'm home on Saturday.

Car Scrap Yard Experiments

These are the images I made when I went to a scrap yard home. Some are better than others, but show the kind of thing I'm hoping to create when I go to the local scrap yard. When I took these images, it was before the crash and before I thought I wanted to look at this aspect of journeys.

I had considered the journey the car, or the modes of transport, undergo as I think I mentioned in a previous blog, but it wasn't something I really felt inspired to do until after Friday, so these images don't explore the way the car was once tret. They deal with documenting what I saw at the scrapyard.







When I shoot my set of images at the local scrapyard, I want to go in with a slightly different objective. I'd like to try and document the individuality of the car, try and find signs that the car was once more than just a piece of metal to someone. I'm hoping to do the shoot before this time next week.

More Research

I got inspiration from what happened on Friday and from looking at the pictures of my trashed car. Since I lost the subject of my project (since i was supposed to be filming from my car and using the mirrors), I was thinking of what I could do to do to reflect the development and to give me work to do until the next time I can get use of a car (which will be the weekend beginning the 27th).

Since my own car might be written off and scrapped, I'm inspired and want to look into cars after their journeys are over, so I'll visit a scrapyard or two and make some images, which I then want to make a video of.

For inspiration, I remembered an artist I came across who's made apocalyptic style pieces of art, however many of them feature battered and bruised cars that look like they've been ruined. His name is Scott Wolfson and I really like the pieces that show the demise of an object. It's the thought that someone once cherished the cars, used them, possibly even named them.

Below are some of Scott's pieces of art. I like the broken, disused, unloved feel that radiates from the cars in the images.





I also searched for more inspirational image, finding quite a few images.

Ber Murphy's image from the series "Remnants:- California Wildfires 2007"
Troy Paiva photographs "Lost America" and specialises in light painting. While I'm not sure that's a route I want to go down, I do like the content of his images from junk and scrap yards, the angles and the approaches to the abandoned transport etc. I have included more of them below...

I already have some images that I made at a scrapyard in Grimsby which I'm going to retrieve and look at how they can influence me for when I go and photograph one.

More Experiments

Since I wasn't the one doing the driving on the way home on Sunday, I had time to take photographs. I'm not particularly pleased with them, but I feel like I'm at least heading in the direction of stuff that I eventually want to achieve.

These were all taken between Grimsby and Leicester, mostly along the A46. Originally the idea was to document the abandoned and run down places, but I was running out of time a little and so instead documented the journey, mostly with use of the wing mirror, so Friedlander style and also bringing in myself into it as my camera or arm is visible in several of the imags.


I'm happy with some of these images, but I still feel I can improve. However, for now, there are other things I want to try. My next blog will be looking at one of them and researching for it.