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.