Brief: Produce approximately 12 photographs to document a journey by road.
As per the exercise on mapping, I initially undertook my journey completely on Google maps and produced, what I consider to be, images based on different areas and incorporate the changing landscape alongside the changing road types. It was then important to attempt to produce a similar view to these images and crop and frame accordingly as though I was actually driving along the journey, to see exactly what the images would look like when I produced them for real while undertaking the actual journey. Here is the final collection of those images.
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| Google Mapping - Amanda Kingston-Lynch (2013) |
The main subject of my assignment will be the journey itself. I will attempt to include the viewer along my journey by photographing the different types of road, as well as attempting to document the realistic motions of long car journeys, and the hidden notion of a journey using service stations and petrol stations. The different types of road are also an important factor as it will be the main factor along my journey and in the same respect, it is important for me to include some of the car interior as it shows me undertaking the journey and documenting from the perspective of the driver.
I looked at Lee Friedlander's 'America by car' (2010) (1) in an attempt to gain some inspiration and perspective in shooting in this way. I love how Friedlander makes use of the windows to frame his shots and we really do get the impression, as a viewer, that we are along for the ride on Friedlanders road trip. Friedlander photographs more of the sights he sees along his journey whereas I would like to document the changing roads and scenery for my final collection, making the 'journey' the images instead of using specific parts of scenery.
I would like to present my final images in the style of typographic images, as I feel that looking at my mapped images, the road being the main focus will be the same in all the images making them all common in that sense. Using the mapping images, even though a collection in itself, is very helpful to me to now see how my final collection will look and also that I have a base to work on while collecting photographs on my journey, to attempt to recreate the mapped shots above.
Taking the shots for this assignment was a bit carefree. Thanks to my mapping exercise, I had the shots in mind to create but actually getting ready at the right to to capture that shot was a bit more difficult. I tried to stick to images straight out of the front windscreen with the camera directly above the steering wheel. This kept the framing the same for the images, however, if there was something of interest passing by, I did turn the camera slightly to the side windows in an attempt to capture them. I also had to do this when my camera hadn't focussed quickly enough to capture the scene through the front window or if I needed to change to positioning to get the whole scene in. All images were taken on my Nikon Coolpix S9100. I wanted the images to look like snapshots, as you would on a holiday or trip, instead of well planned and thought out and perfectly framed. Also the settings and size of my Canon 20D would've made for more difficult shooting. I kept to a wide angle, similar to the windscreen, although I did find myself attempting to zoom in on occasions. I wanted to take the photographs as the car was moving, exactly as you would see the scenes on a journey so editing has been minimal, keeping in motion blur and windscreen smudges. The motion blurring also emphasizes the fact the journey is underway and also connects the final images to those in the google maps images, which were also taken on a moving vehicle.
Final images
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| A Journey - Amanda Kingston-Lynch (2013) |
It was difficult to try to recreate the image exactly as it is on google street maps and given that the vehicle was moving, it only really gave me the one chance to get the shot. A few times my image was taken slightly past the spot that I was going for. Timing was key to get a match for the scene in the mapped image and, as I said previously, my camera sometimes couldn't quite focus quick enough so my images came out slightly different. But looking back at my final set, I do feel that the journey comes through strongly in my photographs and that the viewer will get a sense of undertaking the journey with me.
all images can be viewed in my Dropbox folder here
Reference:
(1) http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2011/sep/02/lee-friedlander-america-by-car-in-pictures#/?picture=378522299&index=0
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