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.

Experimentation

I did manage to take some images yesterday on the way home, however, I didn't get as many as I would have liked due to the weather, and journey disruption as a lorry hit me and trashed my car, resulting in me being in an office on the M1 for three hours. My Polaroid camera only arrived today, so last night I just took a few on my digital SLR to capture the beginnings and experiment/source out how I'll take them when I go back and take the ones with my polaroid.

The one below was inspired by Todd Hino as my windscreen was covered in leaves and rain and I felt slightly inspired. The others were taken at several service stations along the M1 until I lost my car. So to continue my photographs I should be able to take some on Sunday since I'll now be a passenger when returning to Leicester.

I didn't get much chance to experiment with reflections last night, but I did get this one above where you get the ghostly looking reflection. Below are several colour shots; primarily I want to do the project in black and white though I feel colour suits these certain images.