Elysian Thoughts: Unit 31: Specialist Location

I always had this idea of photographing life in the caravan parks. Not really sure why but I've been fascinated by this ever growing great British tradition and wanted to get a glimpse of this intriguing life style. The caravan industry was growing at a rapid speed with around 1,000,000 members, contributing around £6 billion pa to the UK economy. Caravanning is big business in the UK, being one of the most popular holiday choices with British people. My main aim was to capture a different type of lifestyle, one that I've never had the opportunity to experience myself and show the quirkiness that's associated with such life style choice. I also wanted to explore the reasons behind such a popular pastime and the lengths people go to to make their caravans a home from home.

After a class discussion, the idea of UK Aistreamers came up. This is an American company that was founded by a man called Wally Byam, 80 years ago. These caravans were well designed and innovative and not something you would fail to notice. As it happened there was a rally taking place in Leyburn, Yorkshire that weekend. I decided to email one of the organisers involved with the rally to see if I could pop along to take some photographs. I didn't hear from them by that Sunday so I decided to take my chances and drive up. After a two hours journey I finally made it to Leyburn but I didn't have a specific location of where the rally was taking place, as it wasn't made public. Shortly after I arrived I received a response saying I wouldn't be allowed in as it was members only. Thinking I didn't want to have a wasted trip I decided to try and seek out some local caravan parks, that I looked up prior to leaving for Leyburn.

I plucked up the courage to speak to a few of the holiday makers, starting off with an elderly couple who have been caravanning for many years. They were so happy to tell me all about how much they enjoy going off to places all over the country whenever they wish to do so. Overall my interaction with the different groups people was not as intimidating as I thought it would be and I was quite pleasantly surprised by how friendly and welcoming most people were, considering how worried I was about invading their personal space.

However, my final results from that visit didn't quite live up to my expectations and I was not impressed with what I had produced - in fact I felt quite disappointed with myself for producing work of such low standard.
Photographing people in a documentary style was a new-ish experience for me and I felt like I really didn't rise to the challenge. In my head I was thinking of capturing people in a relaxed and natural state as they went about their everyday life in the caravans, something in the style some of the work produced by photographers like Martin Parr, but I ended up with images which looked a little bit uncomfortable and rigid. Perhaps it was a reflection of what I may have been feeling at the time. I wasn't completely at ease with what I was doing and maybe that showed in my images.

Trying not to feel dejected I decided to move onto my favourite subject - landscape photography. I have always been interested in landscape photography, it's one of my main passions and it's one of the things that drives me to push myself further in the world of photography. I also love abstract images and have always been fascinated by images which take on a life and meaning of their own - something created by the photographer from the depth of their imagination. I've done a lot of landscape images ever since I started photography a couple of years ago, but this time I wanted to do something a little bit different and combine my love for landscape and abstract.

To achieve the best results possible I will be travelling to different places around Cheshire or Yorkshire, hoping for the best lighting condition possible, where I can capture the beautiful British landscape in all it's glory. I will be using my ND filters 4, 6 and 8 to allow me to have long exposure, varying between 1-15 seconds, which will work best when I make some intentional camera movements to add different shapes and tones to the images. As this will be my first attempt at abstract landscape, I will be experimenting with the settings until I'm happy with what I get. I will be taking spare batteries and memory cards as well as my tripod and remote shutter release, but not sure yet whether I will be using them, as most of my work can be done by hand holding the camera. The good thing about this is I won't have to rely on people and I could control most of the variables, apart from the weather. I would have to consider trespassing laws and make sure I don't go on to private land.

In the past I have explored the work of contemporary photographers like Chris Friel, who has been one of my biggest influences for this unit. I have discussed Chris Friels work in my previous blog posting for Unit 23, so I won't go into too much detail about his work on this post, but rather speak about some of the other photographers who have had an influence on the type of work I am planning to produce.

Chris has pushed the boundaries when it comes to long exposure photography and is probably one of the most well known abstract landscape photographers. His work involves intentional camera movement, with long exposures and ND filters. During an interview late last year, Chris said his work was 'interpretive rather than representational' this is exactly what I aim to do. As much as I love landscape photography and there's no shortage of beautiful and varied images out there, in most cases they are mainly representational. At one time I would have been happy with just being able to capture a picturesque landscape, but now I feel I want to develop my photography much further and see what else I can achieve - see what my capabilities and my limitations are, the only thing limiting me would probably be my imagination, oh and, perhaps lack of equipment!.

The first photographer I researched was Frances Seward, a UK born photographer who has travelled the globe before settling in New Mexico. Frances specialises in fine art photography and according to her biography she uses various materials such as metal glass and water, whilst working with colour, light and space to express different emotions. Like a lot of abstract photography, they have an ethereal feel to them. They bring a sense of tranquillity to your inner being. This is one my favourite image from Frances. Like most abstracts it has a lovely painterly feel. From what I can make out, it looks as if the sun is floating gently on the waves, bringing a feeling of calmness to your senses. For me it's a visual delight and I can never get bored of looking at images like this.

Whilst researching landscape photographers I came across Steven Friedman. His work probably best represents what I am hoping to achieve with mine. Canadian born Steven, who according to his website 'classes himself as a purist' using a large format camera to capture hidden beauties from around the world, sometimes hiking for up to 20km to discover inaccessible locations. Steven is in a long line of landscape photographers who dedicate a tremendous amount of time and energy to pursue what they're passionate about. Travelling continents and visiting many locations time and again, just to catch the right sort of light, the atmosphere and the true essence of their location. The results they produce are breath taking and makes the hard work truly worthwhile.

His images mainly consists of forests, trees and mountains. The one thing I have noticed about most of his images is that they are very vibrant and full of strong colours. They have a sense of drama and excitement about them and are a bit of a feast for your eyes. I am hoping to achieve results which are not too dissimilar to Friedman's work, in terms of texture, variety and colour.

Abstract and long exposure photography go hand in hand and when researching long exposure landscape photographers, I came across Canadian photographer David Burdeny. Born in 1968, David started young and at the age of 12 he started photographing landscape. Using his bedroom closet as a makeshift darkroom. David works with low light to produce what's been described as 'haunting and ominous' images. Like many landscape photographers, he has a great love for light and the vastness of the open space all around us. Another photographer who uses film, relying on the elements to produce stunning results.

His 'Drift' series has the type of images I am hoping to produce. Looking through the series, although they are very aesthetically pleasing, in my opinion there's not enough variety in shape and texture. However, they have given me a good knowledge base and ideas for the changes I would make when I'm doing my shoot.

One of the most well known practitioners for landscape photography is German born British photographer Fay Godwin. Fay's career followed from series of portraits of well known writers, through to reportage and finally landscape. I found her 'Glassworks' series, produced in 1999 quite interesting, as they consisted of abstract and close up images of various plants, flora and fauna. This was very much in line with what I was looking to produce.

Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto's seascape images are truly captivating, showing his exceptional craftsmanship. He has a varied portfolio of work ranging from seascape, theatres and architecture. Although very minimalistic, his seascape series have a lovely poetic feel to them.

The final photographer I looked at was Michael Kenna. Anther black and white British landscape photographer. Again like many others he works at early morning or at dawn, sometimes working with exposures of up to 10 hours. Working with a Hasselblad, he also has a minimalist approach to his images. His images have an air of mystery around them, with very little distraction that comes with colour.

If there's one thing I've learnt from these innovative artists, as obvious as might be, is that to produce work of such high technical and aesthetic quality, first you must have a vision, the right tools and a tremendous amount of dedication, tenacity and patience.