Category: Experiments 6

Assignment 6 – Soundtrack

Since my last post on this assignment I have been in contact with the Russian composer whose music I intend to use as a soundtrack to the slideshows. He has come back with his agreement, which is good news. I suspect he is simply pleased that I want use his work. I will still though keep this password protected so that it will not be generally accessible other than to my tutor, and for assessment in due course if I decide to make this part of my submission (which at the moment I am not at all sure about).

Next weekend I will take what I think are going to be the final images and I will then finalise the project and submit it to my tutor.

Assignment 6 – Struggles with Lightroom

Not for the first time I find myself struggling with Lightroom. I find it particularly un-user friendly and the “help” function not very helpful at all. I recognise that in part it no doubt comes down to a lack of familiarity with the way it works but I am having so much trouble with it that I am disinclined to use it and so will not gain that familiarity.

The problem that I am having with it at the moment is that it will not let me rearrange the order of the images in the slideshow that I am working in. I have followed the instructions provided by Adobe on how to do this (which is reasonably straightforward) only to be informed by the program that I cannot do it. I am therefore stuck at the moment with the current running order, starting in Autumn. The solution, as I see it at the moment, is to change the order of the accompanying music. Having relistened to both the original and updated versions of my chosen music I have decided to stay with the earlier one (the later version goes into five movements, adding a repeat of the opening Spring movement which serves to complicate things still further) so the music opens with Summer. What I have discovered though, which has proved to be remarkably easy, is to change the order of the music tracks, moving Summer from the start to the end. The “seasons” are not entirely in sync with the images but by starting with Autumn there is a reasonable match. Fortunately changing the order of the music does not greatly compromise the work as a whole.

Unless and until I can get better to grips with Lightroom this will have to do for now. At least it does work!

Assignment 6 – First Experiments

I started shooting for Assignment 6 back in October last year, with a view to recording seasonal and other changes, “transitions”, for a full year. That twelve months is now nearly up so I have started experimenting with possible presentations of the project. I have already discussed and agreed with my tutor that the slideshow approach is probably the best to adopt and so for now I am concentrating on that. I have also been thinking more about, and experimenting with, suitable soundtracks. A few things have become clear immediately.

In so far as one of my primary themes throughout this course has been the effect of humankind on the landscape, and in turn the effect of the landscape on people, what the final sequence needs to show is not just seasonal changes in the landscape but the passage of people through it over time, both on foot (with and without dogs), and in vehicles. I have written elsewhere before now a little of the history of the ford I have chosen for this project. The road follows the route of an ancient pack-horse trail that goes back at least until Medieval times, and quite probably still further back. Given the heavy Roman presence in the area, the proximity to the river Tyne, the transport of lead ore down from the local hills, active farming by the local Roman-British population, this is a route that could well have been in use for at least the last two millennia. Over time the track developed into a road, no doubt a rough one at first, at least partly paved later (there is an off-shoot bridleway nearby that goes back at least to the 17^th century that still has remnants of early cobbles and stone setts), before in more recent times becoming metalled. The ford itself developed from a simple track through the water to the present-day concrete footbridge. Including pictures with people and cars in them serves to highlight the latest iteration of this continuing human impact on the landscape.

Something else that is clear is that the slideshow needs to be quite long to have the right impact – at the moment I anticipate sequences of something in the region of 175 images that will run for about 15 – 20 minutes (there are going to be two, one looking west, the other looking east). Anything shorter does not seem to work well.

This last point has implications for the soundtrack. What is obvious is that my idea of using an old Bobby Gentry song is not going to work as it is only about two and a half minutes long. I still do not want to use Vivaldi, but the Four Seasons concerto is in any event too long. Similarly, staying with the seasonal theme, Haydn’s “The Seasons” (which I was a bit surprised to discover when I checked my music collection I do not have) is even longer still, running to about two hours. By chance though, something I do have in my collection is a work by a contemporary Russian composer, Sergey Akhunov, which follows a similar structure to that used by Vivaldi, with one short movement for each season, that runs to about 20 minutes, which is just right. So far the sequence of images starts in Autumn while Akhunov’s sequence starts with Summer (in an early version, Spring in a later one) so I am going to have to adjust the running order of the photographs. Nevertheless, a quick run through yesterday suggests that the pairing should work: it is striking how, wholly coincidentally, some of the passages in the music seem to fit naturally with the images. I am not going to try otherwise to manipulate the order of the pictures to try to match the progression of the music, something well beyond my capabilities!

Using such a piece of contemporary music raises the possibility of being able to get permission to make the project public. Although I do not know Akhunov personally I have been supporting some of his work over the last few years (along with a fairly small band of others) which might give me enough on an intro. Certainly, contacting him would not be difficult. Possibly worth a try. The worst he can say is “no”, in which case the project will simply remain private and accessible only to my tutor.

https://www.sergeyakhunov.com

Assignment 6: Snow!?

Another brief update as we have just had our first snow of the winter. We did in fact have some snow a week or so ago, but only down to about 100 metres above sea-level (my house is at about 70m and the fords at 50m). Today though it snowed right down into the floor of the valley. So, despite the horrid conditions – it was more wet than anything else – I went down to the fords again this morning to try to catch the changing conditions. There is not a great deal of snow to be seen, but at least there is something to indicate this is winter! Also the light was so poor the exposures were quite long (up to 1s) so that it is not possible to see individual flakes falling. There is though general blurriness that indicates the weather was not good!

Assignment 6: An update

Though I continue to take shots for this project every week I have not posted an update for a while. I have decided to do so this weekend to reflect the way this scene can change significantly at very short notice.

Yesterday was calm and sunny so I decided to make some pictures before Storm Ciara struck, in case the weather became too bad to get out. Paradoxically, despite the almost hysterical warnings about this storm, today has not been so bad at all; wet and windy certainly but I have seen far worse!

Note there are only a couple of inches of water in the ford. Compared with today, less than 24 hours later, almost two feet deep on the upstream side:

Exercise 1.5: More people and a car

Following my last brief post on this project, and my tutor’s comments about the possibility of including people and cars, as luck would have it the ford today turned out to be quite busy. While I was there a couple came through with their dog, whom I caught with less blur this time as the light was better (it was not raining today) so my shutter speed was a bit faster. There were three cars that came through quite close to each other. One came through while I was setting up, another while I was moving from one side of the ford to the other, but one dropped, as it were, right into my lap.

So here is a little more variety:

Exercise 1.5: Visualising Assignment Six Transitions – Update

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.

Exercise 1.5: Plan C

I have been struggling to come up with a microcosm view as another possibility for this exercise but have for now settled on a small area in my garden that I know will change over the coming year. Let us see how this progresses.

14 October 2019

Here is the latest instalment. I have to confess I am not quite sure where this is going and I very much doubt that this will turn out to be the final choice of subject. I am not helped by this particular shot being a bit clumsy in that one of the tripod legs makes an unwelcome appearance in the bottom right corner! I will persevere for a while longer though but only update this post if and when there is a change worthy of report.

Exercise 1.5: Plan B

Here is a first go at a potential plan B, the local scrap yard. Normally I see this place on a Saturday morning when there is no-one about but as this was taken on a weekday the old fellow who evidently runs the place, rummaging there on the left was there. As a precaution, and matter of courtesy I asked if he minded if I took some pictures. Clearly from the somewhat bemused look on his face – I did not explain my intention as he did not show any inclination to engage in conversation – he must have wondered why on earth I wanted to do so, but nevertheless acquiesced.

I tried a couple of different angles but this was the only one that really worked and kept me close enough to the scene without having to stand in the middle of the road – there is enough traffic to present a hazard.

I suspect that further shots will be taken at weekends so the gate will be closed and no-one there. That might make the process a bit more comfortable. Anyway I will try it over the next few weeks and see how it starts to shape up.

I still have to settle on a possible “microcosm” site so will return to that later.

Continuing:

An overcast day after a couple of days of fairly heavy rain so the light was quite poor. To maintain a reasonable shutter speed of 1/60s and an aperture of f/11 to try to keep some depth of field, I found I needed to raise the ISO to 800. I am also finding hard to shoot from exactly the same vantage point each time because there are some cars that park on this little patch of ground opposite the gates and I keep having to shift position from week to week to work round them.

Last one for now. For the future I think what I will do is simply collect each weekly photo in a separate file and then sort and edit them once the time to finalise the assignment arrives, unless something noteworthy happens in the meantime. I feel it is a bit much at the moment to be updating this post every week. Rather I think I will do a sweep up post later, bringing the project up to date, even if only to confirm that this is not the subject that is going into the final submission.

Since my last post on this I have at last decided that this is not a project that I am going to pursue further. Over the last few weeks I have continued to photograph the same scene and it is barely changing at all. Variations in the weather (not that it has changed much recently having been fairly monolithically overcast and wet) are I feel not enough to sustain interest.

I think part of the problem is that I can really only shoot here on a Saturday but that is when no-one is working in the yard and nothing is happening. As a result all that there is to be seen from one week to the next is a puddle and a parked car! I cannot realistically expect that there is going to be sufficient seasonal variation to make much difference. I will therefore from now on be concentrating just on Plan A.

Exercise 1.5: Visualising Assignment Six Transitions – 2

I have at last made a start shooting for this exercise. For now I have shot only the ford and will follow up with the fall back plans (on which I have had some more thought) later. I made a start now, despite the fact that the weather was quite bad today, to take advantage of the significant flow of water through the ford as a result of very heavy rain overnight. Despite the volume of rain over the last couple of weeks the water level had fallen back to just a couple of inches by yesterday. Today, on the upstream side, the water was almost two feet deep.

Having tried a few different angles I have settled on two, one looking upstream, one down. I will choose between them for the final set (assuming one of the backup plans does not take precedence) once a more substantial body of work has accumulated.

At the time these were taken it was raining (I had to shelter the camera under an umbrella as it is not weathertight!) so the light was quite poor. Exposures were as a result quite long (1.5s for the first, at f/16, ISO 400) which has made the water quite glassy and smooth. Obviously I used a tripod, which I set fairly low to keep some of the road in view in the foreground.

Fortunately, because of the depth of water I did not have to worry about cars coming through. One did approach from the downstream side but wisely turned around and went back!

Just how often I repeat these shots I have yet to decide but I expect it will probably be weekly. I can though be flexible and judge when it is worth revisiting on a daily basis as I walk the dog this way most days and so can see if there have been any noticeable changes before deciding when to come back with a camera.

14 October 2019

Interesting that these last two pairs of photos suggest that the default depth of water in the ford with regular but not too concentratedly heavy rain is about three inches, not something that I have noticed before.

The latest instalment. As with Plan B I think now is the time to stop the regular updating of this post and simply continue to gather shots that can be properly edited later. I will though add more if, for example, we have another flood or other dramatic changes to the scene over the coming months, which is quite likely given the amount of rain we are getting at the moment.