Having watched the weather change quite substantially over the last couple of weeks, I'd always found myself to be preoccupied with other arrangements on the days when I thought it was suitable to my needs, so with time running out I settled on early Saturday evening with a mixture of overcast skies and the odd burst of sunshine to try and achieve my goal. Now I'd previously observed a number of potential locations whilst on my day to day travels but on driving into Trafford Park there was another building that had previously gone unnoticed and so with a couple of drive-bys thanks to the restrictive nature of dual carriageways, I managed to spot a parking bay and proceeded to set up my previously arranged camera, tripod and filter arrangement. When I say previously arranged, I'd decided prior to leaving home that it would be a good idea to fire off some test shots in the garden as I was considering long exposures to get some added pop courtesy of the motion blur that could be attained from the clouds, so I already had the camera set on the tripod with a ND10 filter sat on the front so it was simply a case standing the camera up, sliding up the filter to gain a frame, and then resetting the filter to get some shots based loosely around the times I'd used in the garden, and the remote shutter release to avoid any camera shake.
It was shortly after firing this first test shot that I caught a glimpse of a guy marching rather briskly towards me with a radio in one hand, mid conversation and the other arm being swung to maximise the efficiency of his pace without him giving the impression that he could break into a slight canter at any minute. For the moment, there was no one else around, so it was obvious I was the focus of his attention and his radio communications hadn't been in vain as he then joined on the other side of the fence by three other chaps all demanding to know what I was up to. Now being the friendly sort of chap that I am, I directed my reply in a civilised manner towards the one that looked to be in charge and simply explained that it was for a college based project and that I wasn't in the slightest bit interested what they did at the site, before reassuring him with the presentation of my college ID badge which I'd had the foresight to include in my bag just in case any situations such as these were to arise. This was about as exciting as it got, although one of the guys on the other side of the fence proceeded to tell me that it was a sensitive site regards some of the work carried out there and that was why they didn't want me taking any pictures, which I found quite amusing really because if I had been on any kind of recognisance mission, then he was already telling me things I didn't know, God bless him. Finally, the chap on my side of the fence asked me if I had been down Lyons Road doing the same thing 2 weeks previous as I had been spotted but they failed to get my registration plate as they apparently have to report any suspicious activity directly to the police because of the nature of the site, again, more than I needed to know, but I did confess and tell him it was indeed me as I didn't want them thinking they had somebody else to worry about. And that was it, well except for me agreeing not to take any pictures ( it was only a roof top) so it was completely by accident that my remote shutter went off a couple of times as pretended to rummage for something that wasn't there in the car boot.
So what of the pictures I here you ask, well to be honest all they did was make me realise that the sky wasn't what I wanted for long exposures as they were just presenting the rooftop as a silhouette thanks to the lack of light on the front of the building and the rather dull cloud formations, but I thought I'd give it another go on the next stop before making a decision whether to continue down this avenue of attack. Below you can see a couple of images of the test shots from earlier in the day when I was just trying to get some idea of exposure times.
A slightly longer exposure this time with an increase to 30 secs and as the sun is going to be lower in the sky the later in the day, then any further increases in time using this filter would have to be achieved using the bulb setting and remote shutter release.
Next up is the first of the test shots on location a little later in the day where the sky had gone from a good contrast of blue sky and white clouds to just a virtual blanket of grey with showers threatening. This was also the point when I was in conversation with my new found friends so they'd put me off a bit and any further attempts to juggle around with exposure times would have just caused more aggravation for all concerned.
This was shot at f29 and again for 30 secs @ ISO 100, now despite the intervention, if I was looking to continue to shoot like this I would have to probably bracket a few shots so that I wouldn't be in danger of losing the sky completely if I was to increase the exposure time. Now if it wasn't such a complicated outline, say a straight horizon, I could also compensate for this by using a graduated filter to reduce the rate at which the sky is exposed in conjunction with the lower half of the frame, but it was around this time that I'd sort of made the decision to shoot without the tripod and and filters and just concentrate on my subject matter and worry about the final image in my pp work.
Now that I'd made a decision it was time to concentrate and gathering a selection of images that would work well as a set so I chose to shoot a selection of subjects, firstly square on, but then also as part of a greater landscape and occasionally more of an abstract viewpoint just to keep things interesting. I wasn't really looking to produce vast industrial landscapes as even Donovan's works were not only about the Outposts, but also about the environment that surrounded them but seeing as though my work wasn't looking to directly replicate his, I decided to finally concentrate on producing a selection of individual structures that stood out against the sky and that were interesting enough to draw the viewer in to examine the finer details.
The Last Bastions Of British Industry
Evaluation
Considering I was having some reservations about my chosen specialist location, I'm rather pleased that I stuck to my plan as I feel I have achieved my aims whilst learning a few valuable points on the way.
- Consider your viewpoint carefully because when shooting architecture with a digital dslr there is always going to be the chance that converging lines than cause slight optical illusions when it comes to thinks looking vertical or not especially when it's quite a complicated structure that you can see through as there'll be more lines to consider such as in the last one .
- With the weather somewhat changeable this last weekend the strong winds meant that the cloud base was changing at a fairly rapid rate, especially on the Sunday when it went from clear sky one minute to overcast again the next, so this is something that needs to be considered carefully if you are looking to exhibit work as part of a set with a common denominator, the background.
- Decide beforehand if you are going to be presenting your final images in black and white as that way you'll have a better idea of whether or not what you are shooting is going to be affected by quick changes in the weather.
- Always check on the position of the sun and the time of day you are looking to shoot if you already have some idea of what your subject matter is, I found this important as I wanted to use the natural light to maximum effect when trying to make the stainless steel and bright white subjects really stand out.
- My original idea to include some motion blur via long exposures didn't really matter in the end because I feel that my subject matters stand alone enough as interesting subject matter without the added distortion in the cloud but in saying that it is something I will reshoot at sometime and compare the results then.
- If you feel your presence may well attract the attention of others either from a security point or view or just simple curiosity, make sure you answer any questions in a civilised, adult fashion and don't immediately be the cause of any confrontation by spouting out your rights, and by-laws etc etc ....a little common sense and a polite disposition can get you a lot further in life, some people have a job to do, some people are just curious, learn to live with it.
- Going back to what I said about long exposures I would certainly want to get a lot more practice in should I choose to shoot something in a similar vein within limted time constraints as turning up on location without a thorough idea of how you can tackle subjects could make the difference between you spending a couple of hours and a couple of days out there doing it.
- One thing I had forgotten about whilst shooting was what image size I was looking to present them in as I had every intention of printing them full frame and it was only afterwards I realised I'd ordered A4 mounts so I just kept the proportions the same for the larger A3 prints which of course meant I had to crop them ever so slightly and so they loose a bit of their landscape quality.
Summary
I have decided to print 2 sets of images off with DS Colour in Didsbury, the first set in simple A3 format because I'm curious to see what amount of detail will be reproduced at this size, and then a 2nd set in A4 format because I didn't want to just present them a images in a folder as we have done in the past, but instead wanted to see how they would look in mounts and presentation bags so as to go somewhere towards seeing what they would look like framed. Unfortunately at this moment in time I can't afford the frames but what I have done is noticed how good some of these images look printed on acetate so I shall be including some of these as part of my final submission with a view to perhaps exhibiting them this way once I've figured out a suitable format for presentation .
The Next Step
Well I was never going to be happy with just leaving things as they were so the more I've looked at my images the more I've considered what else could be done with them so the first idea I've had was to create a panoramic landscape but not by using photostitching but instead just blending them all onto a canvas. As you can see, this is only in it.s early stages as I've left an area where you can see it's been masked and as this isn't part of my final submission I've just left it like that so you can see where I might be going next.
And it doesn't end there, as the one idea invariably leads to another so next up was this little beauty which I definitely will be exploring a little more as the images below were just a quick scan as I put them together.
No comments:
Post a Comment