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For those of you who want to skip the self-indulgent waffle and pretentious drivel the finished project can be viewed as a Blurb book preview here. (Or try this link.)
As is so often the case I hadn't set out in early January 2013 to start working on a project that would run for three months, I'd actually popped out to take some photos of birch tree trunks (a cliché, for sure, but something to do) at a long abandoned quarry which is now a nature reserve. I know that some people don't recommend roaming about taking snaps, but it generates ideas for me. The key thing to getting ideas for me is looking at stuff and reacting to it. The John Cage quote that I put at the beginning of the book alludes to that - everything seems cluttered and uninteresting, annoying even, until we begin to inspect it closely and contemplate it.
Although I've visited the place before I wandered into an area I'd not seen before and the red stone, different to the grey stone and shale of most of the place reminded me of Cézanne's paintings of the quarry at Bibemus.
From looking for pictures of trees I'd shifted to looking for pictures of stone. Like most of my plans the birch trunk idea hadn't lasted long.
Further wanderings took me off the beaten path found me looking at tangles of bramble and overhanging branches which in the low, bright, winter light cast hard shadow on the stone. These reminded me of the swirly drip paintings of Jackson Pollack, in particular this one. Rather than using perspective to imply space, became interested in using shadows to do it.
I began to work at making pictures which used the shadows as formal elements on a par with the bramble stems and branches. Additionally I was trying to make pictures which the eye would wander over, with no clear focal point. This was my way in to starting this project.
As the weeks went by I returned to the quarry whenever I had free time that coincided with the bright sunshine I needed to make the stark shadows. As I couldn't just go whenever the light was right this did hamper the project and as a result I wasn't able to really make the most of the idea. Another time limitation was that as March arrived so did leaves, blocking out a lot of light and also changing the character of the shadows. That was what drew the whole thing to a close, and why I managed to finish a project for once.
Along the way I also began to take photographs from either different viewpoints or with different focal lengths. I'd become fascinated by the way I was looking at things and could see numbers of possible pictures of the same rocks or trees, how the eye mentally zooms in and the brain ignores that which isn't being focussed on.
I also began to form an idea of how the pictures might work as a book and part way through began doing some layouts in Blurb. This in turn influenced some compositions which I wanted to appear large over two pages, composing to allow for the gutter while still making them pictures which would work on a single sheet in a frame.
In March there was an unseasonable snow fall, which altered the light and the look of things. This lead to another idea of sequencing the pictures. Although not chronologically accurate the snowy ones became the beginning, providing a theme of seasonal change through the book.
This was highlighted by the two similar photographs on the first and last pages – although I didn't take them with that intention, I just happen to repeatedly photograph the same scenes/objects over time as I'm interested in how they alter and how the way I look at them changes.
I was also aware that the quarry had a number of different characters in different areas. There is wood, shale, hewn rock, bare rock and gorse. These became sections to the book which I broke up with pictures of 'things' as full page bleeds – the only pictures that were cropped. This was where my time restraints held me back and I wasn't able to work at making the pictures for the section breaks to my satisfaction, or to balance out all the sections, which is a weakness I acknowledge.
As some of the pictures were about looking at scenes and placing different levels of importance on different elements I chose to use different sizes to try to get that across. I'm not sure if that comes across to others.
I ended up with well over 300 pictures I was reasonably happy with, not all good but all containing something. I like to think of the 'nearly' shots as sketches to help future pictures arise rather than as failures to be deleted. As ever a number of pictures I thought worked on their own didn't make the final edit as they didn't fit the sequencing of the book. Overall, given the limitations I was working under, I'm pleased with the result. There are things I could have done better – not least technically. I'd have liked to make pictures which could be printed very large for one thing. But that might have taken me in a different direction.
Eventually (I think) the book came to be about looking and seeing, about composition, about the changing seasons, light, and overall about how nature takes over when humankind leaves. Maybe it's documentary, maybe evocative of a particular place. I dunno. I'm sure I could ramble on about it all for ages.
As is so often the case I hadn't set out in early January 2013 to start working on a project that would run for three months, I'd actually popped out to take some photos of birch tree trunks (a cliché, for sure, but something to do) at a long abandoned quarry which is now a nature reserve. I know that some people don't recommend roaming about taking snaps, but it generates ideas for me. The key thing to getting ideas for me is looking at stuff and reacting to it. The John Cage quote that I put at the beginning of the book alludes to that - everything seems cluttered and uninteresting, annoying even, until we begin to inspect it closely and contemplate it.
Although I've visited the place before I wandered into an area I'd not seen before and the red stone, different to the grey stone and shale of most of the place reminded me of Cézanne's paintings of the quarry at Bibemus.
From looking for pictures of trees I'd shifted to looking for pictures of stone. Like most of my plans the birch trunk idea hadn't lasted long.
Further wanderings took me off the beaten path found me looking at tangles of bramble and overhanging branches which in the low, bright, winter light cast hard shadow on the stone. These reminded me of the swirly drip paintings of Jackson Pollack, in particular this one. Rather than using perspective to imply space, became interested in using shadows to do it.
I began to work at making pictures which used the shadows as formal elements on a par with the bramble stems and branches. Additionally I was trying to make pictures which the eye would wander over, with no clear focal point. This was my way in to starting this project.
As the weeks went by I returned to the quarry whenever I had free time that coincided with the bright sunshine I needed to make the stark shadows. As I couldn't just go whenever the light was right this did hamper the project and as a result I wasn't able to really make the most of the idea. Another time limitation was that as March arrived so did leaves, blocking out a lot of light and also changing the character of the shadows. That was what drew the whole thing to a close, and why I managed to finish a project for once.
Along the way I also began to take photographs from either different viewpoints or with different focal lengths. I'd become fascinated by the way I was looking at things and could see numbers of possible pictures of the same rocks or trees, how the eye mentally zooms in and the brain ignores that which isn't being focussed on.
I also began to form an idea of how the pictures might work as a book and part way through began doing some layouts in Blurb. This in turn influenced some compositions which I wanted to appear large over two pages, composing to allow for the gutter while still making them pictures which would work on a single sheet in a frame.
In March there was an unseasonable snow fall, which altered the light and the look of things. This lead to another idea of sequencing the pictures. Although not chronologically accurate the snowy ones became the beginning, providing a theme of seasonal change through the book.
This was highlighted by the two similar photographs on the first and last pages – although I didn't take them with that intention, I just happen to repeatedly photograph the same scenes/objects over time as I'm interested in how they alter and how the way I look at them changes.
I was also aware that the quarry had a number of different characters in different areas. There is wood, shale, hewn rock, bare rock and gorse. These became sections to the book which I broke up with pictures of 'things' as full page bleeds – the only pictures that were cropped. This was where my time restraints held me back and I wasn't able to work at making the pictures for the section breaks to my satisfaction, or to balance out all the sections, which is a weakness I acknowledge.
As some of the pictures were about looking at scenes and placing different levels of importance on different elements I chose to use different sizes to try to get that across. I'm not sure if that comes across to others.
I ended up with well over 300 pictures I was reasonably happy with, not all good but all containing something. I like to think of the 'nearly' shots as sketches to help future pictures arise rather than as failures to be deleted. As ever a number of pictures I thought worked on their own didn't make the final edit as they didn't fit the sequencing of the book. Overall, given the limitations I was working under, I'm pleased with the result. There are things I could have done better – not least technically. I'd have liked to make pictures which could be printed very large for one thing. But that might have taken me in a different direction.
Eventually (I think) the book came to be about looking and seeing, about composition, about the changing seasons, light, and overall about how nature takes over when humankind leaves. Maybe it's documentary, maybe evocative of a particular place. I dunno. I'm sure I could ramble on about it all for ages.
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