Previously on ...the blog.
"Observe to Preserve! Miniatures! No Decent Shooting Locations! Bad Weather! Deadlines!"
So picking up where I left off, the project originally had three days of shooting planned, one rural, one semi-rural (Thackley), and one urban (Keighley)
Then the weather went to hell, and I could only use the pics from the first day in Haworth, and had to send those off, without any real expectation of getting this into the Open Call. But I also needed to get some extra shots done Just In Case, but I knew I'd be down to the West Midlands that following weekend. Well, it might provide more urban locations than Keighley had to offer, but I needed a plan.
Going back even older than the Artist:Health and Safety shoot from 2004 (above)...
...back to 2002/2003, a different college, and a shoot on abandoned industrial sites and a wee bit of Urbex in the West Midlands for another project. I grew up near here, still have family nearby, and it seemed a logical place to shoot early on the Sunday when nobody else would be around.
I dug out the old sketchbooks, as I have no idea where the original photos are any more.
When I was a tiny, tiny child this place was still working, and terrifying (I can still remember the heat coming from inside, and the thumping of the hammers inside, one of my earliest memories). I knew it had been demolished since the Urbex shots of the place, as we recce'd the location for the "Home is...", but it still seemed a likely location.
2003...
...2017
Go urban regeneration... nice to see them cracking on with the redevelopment.
A little bit of squeezing through a razor-wire fence later, and I could get the tower block in shot without the fences and so on ruining the composition and scale too much.
I'd looked at several other locations too, for afterwards, such as the canal under the motorway near Tat Bank Road...
...and the abandoned railway line into the old Albrights and Wilsons chemical works. So after the tower block shots were done, I jumped into the car, and the Trademark Disaster On One Of My Photoshoots happened...
BOOM.
This was the weekend of Storm Doris, by the way. The trip to the Midlands had already had to be postponed by a day due to the storm bringing down trees and closing motorways, and near to the destination on the Sunday morning I swerved to avoid an oncoming taxi which was too far onto my side of the road, I hit a lump of debris, heard a thunk from under the car and the tyre went lumpy, so I banged on the hazard lights and swung off the road- where I curbed the damned thing on a projecting metal storm drain cover poking out of the concrete and wrecked the tyre completely.
Ironically I'd managed to bin the car directly over the road from a tyre place. On a street with eight garages specialising in car repairs.
On a Sunday at 7.30am.
So nowhere was open. The car, for reasons of cheapness, had no spare wheel, just a can of foam stuff to fill the tyre up solid to get you to a garage, not much use when the bloody thing has ripped open. Then managed to find that Vauxhall didn't class bursting a tyre irreparably and damaging the wheel rim, and potentially knackering the axle, as something worthy of their breakdown recovery service.
To say I swore a bit at this point would be an understatement.
Then it was a toss-up between ringing the AA or ringing my Dad, so it was time to drag my Dad in his car on a vast round-trip to the only open tyre place on the other side of Dudley, via a return trip home to get a socket-set to fit the stupidly odd-sized wheel nuts on the car.
So a little over two hours later we'd driven back and forth over the West Midlands and got a new tyre fitted, and I'd cursed Vauxhall, Kamikaze Taxi Drivers, Storm Doris, and my own driving until I'd run out of expleteives. And then went to the location to shoot the pictures.
I've been dying to use this as a location for a shoot for years (being as we never got to shoot the "Home is..." project in here for time reasons), and given the motorway is about to be heavily rebuilt, this maybe the last chance to do so for a while. Certainly makes you paranoid seeing how the concrete is failing and the water is leaking out of the decking...
The collosal cock-up with the tyre and the need to drive back Up North meant I had to abandon the shoot on the railway line, but I was happy with the pics here, especially the above shot with the motorway in the background. Pics taken, all done.
But wait!
Amy had been experimenting with focal-stacking some shots of mineral samples (more in an upcoming blog), so I'd decided to shoot enough pics on each visit to be able to do some focal stacking experiments with the images.
The first experiment was with shots done at Haworth, and the focus went a little fuzzed, probably because the tripod was on slightly spongy, mossy ground.
Under the motorway went to cock as well, because after all the shenanigans with the tyre I'd managed to leave the tripod in the car, and wasn't about to run back for it.
Which meant the last pic went a bit 80's Prog Rock Album Cover. Like it though.
So that was the shoot. Just once I'd like to have one of these projects where things go right. Anyway, because it was a bit rushed, and not really fine-art enough, it didn't get picked for the open call. No matter, it was actually pretty fun to do in places, and I'm planning on an expansion from this idea.
Next up, the OTHER idea I did for the open call, which is a bit more colourful and another interpretation of an older project, taken off on a new tangent...
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