The Spring of 2020 will long be remembered as a period of containment and abject sadness. We will live for the day when we can return to our pursuits, with friends, family and the other photography enthusiasts we rely on to share our creative aspirations and to grow our practice. Due to social distancing, I have had to resort, as many others have, to find inspiration for new images within a few minutes’ walk from my home.
At the end of the lane next to our cottage there was a Workshop for classic and collectable cars. At some time it must have been raised to the ground in a fire – local lore suggests that it may have even been set alight deliberately. The result is a twisted and charred skeleton of a garage with some burned out cars and ephemera, now open to the elements.
As most Photographers will know, there is a certain pace we walk at – always assessing vistas, light, form and texture. Finding unique, beautiful and eye-catching textures is hard but if you start looking you will start noticing them a lot more. Eventually you will start encountering textures that are more unique and beautiful than others. You will soon get a feel of what is going to look good in a photograph, what is aesthetically pleasing, makes the viewer more curious or sparks a narrative. It was the contrast of the oranges and blues, from the rusted metalwork and the evidence of the heat from the blaze, in these images that drew me in. Then I started looking for compositions and the story started to unfold.
I found it bizarre that while buildings and vehicles have been destroyed, a shoe, some furniture and a piece of artwork have survived intact. Why has no-one returned to claim the shoe, perhaps the sitter or the artist? On reflection, I can see the influence of Alec Soth in these images and interestingly his latest exhibition is entitled “Photography is a Language”, perhaps a language with more questions than answers.
I took the colour photographs on a Fuji XT-2 with a kit lens (18-55mm) and the mono images below with my iPhone 6. Is there enough potential here to return with my DSLR and a tripod, to take a closer look?
In these challenging times, I hope that all my photo buddies will stay safe, be happy to look for new images very close to home or maybe organise those hard-drives full of great images some of us never get the time to look at! I hope that the memories of those wonderful landscape forays, city breaks, holidays and family events, will sustain you – we should never take anything for granted again.