A brief update on how this project is progressing.

Firstly, I have decided to abandon my plan B as it is increasingly clear that there is insufficient prospect of enough change over a prolonged period of time to make the scrapyard a viable subject. Similarly I think that the microcosmic approach of plan C is similarly too limited. I am though going to persevere with the views of the local ford.

I will deal separately with my tutor’s feedback on Assignment 1 but will mention now a couple of points that he has raised in connection with this project.

One is that I should consider shooting in different weather conditions rather than just relying on seasonal changes. In fact I am already doing this. The very first shots that I took were made during a rain storm and I had to shelter the camera under an umbrella, as it is not weathertight. The fact that it was raining quite hard is though not readily apparent from the pictures that I have already posted as the exposure times were quite long because the light was so poor so the rain is hard to see. The same happened with my last foray, this past weekend:

The exposure here was about 1.7s (hence the blurred figures, to whom I shall return below) which has smoothed out the water again.

I reduced the aperture here to f/8 to increase shutter speed though it did not make a significant difference and it is still hard to see that it was raining.

The weather has been pretty monolithically and monotonously bad of late so there has simply been little variation in conditions. Nevertheless there have been a couple of times when there has been a bit of sun:

This view of the ford looks west so by early afternoon the sun is already quite low and it is almost a case of shooting contre jour, creating some interesting lens flare for variety.

The other question is whether I intend to include any people or vehicles. This is not really a matter of active choice and simply depends on if anyone is around when I am there shooting. This is not a busy stretch of road at the best of times, even less so during the current wet weather. By chance when I took the first two pictures above a family, who are actually near neighbours and whom I see fairly regularly when out with my dog, were braving the weather with their black lab and just happened to fall within shot. As indicated above, because of the slow shutter speeds they have appeared blurred. I do though think this introduces a new sense of dynamism in the scene.

Cars are another matter. This road does not attract a lot of traffic. I have to be careful of what little does come through because at this point the road is little more than one car wide and to avoid becoming a hazard I need to step aside with the camera on its tripod. The poor weather has also limited the number of vehicles coming through. Although it does not look too bad, the depth of water on the upstream side of the ford this last weekend was two feet. The flow rate was also very fast. That is more than enough to cause a problem for, and consequently deter, the average car. Indeed, while setting up for the first shot a car was coming from the west but beat a hasty retreat when the driver saw how much water there was. I am just going to have to play this by ear and see what happens whenever I am there.

As an aside, these recent conditions have been by no means particularly bad for this ford. During winter it is not uncommon for the depth to exceed three feet, as for example it did last March after a heavy snowfall melted, enough to put my vantage point at risk. There have been occasions when it has been even deeper!

I will for now simply continue to turn up regularly once a week and see what ever there is to be seen.

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