Between the lines...

Oh dear, two railway-related posts in two days?  This is no way to shift my nerdy image.  Ah well.

And so to another entry, and a cobbled-together-at-the-last-minute-project…

This was all conceived for the South Square Gallery open call “Dromolgy”, which, with the aid of a thesaurus, Wikipedia, a scientist, a language expert, and a filter provided by several pints of the excellent product of the Purple Moose Brewery of Porthmadog, was found to mean:

Basically how the speed of modern technology/our busy lives alters the perception of the world around us.

The rough ideas I had were refined over the course of an hour waiting for arrival of customers at The Day Job, and it inevitably ended up as another mad-capped project using miniatures.

I decided to shoot long-exposure pictures of a journey, but in order to keep a constant viewpoint/ point of reference in each picture, I thought of doing the journey from the cab of a train.  And being as most train drivers these days aren’t keen on random nerdy photographers climbing aboard with cameras (and northern rail would be hard-pressed to get a train travelling fast enough round here) I decided the only practical recourse was to shoot using miniatures.

To my personal relief (and Amys not inconsiderable irritation) I don’t like throwing things away; experience from previous projects has shown that the minute you throw anything away, somebody will ask you to reshoot or expand an idea.  After the irritation of having to buy three lots of stuff for the “Happygoth” fashion shoot three years on the trot, I decided to never bin anything remotely useful. 

I grew to despise the “Britannia Model Village” for what that massive project did to my sanity, bank balance, friendships and relationship with Amy during its production (turns out girls don’t really like a boyfriend who stays awake for 48 hours desperately repainting 1/32^nd scale Britains figures ready for a shoot), but it did lead onto other projects, and I’ve been loathed to clear out or bin a lot of stuff from the shoot, because every now and again it comes in useful.  As in this case.

The loose idea for “Getting There” had been rolling around in my head for a while, but it would have been a daylight shoot.  So in this case things could be a bit more improvised and cruder, which was handy given the restricted timescale of the project.  One of the most important features though would be the camera rig- the only way to ensure the same viewpoint was kept, the camera movement smooth, etc.  The rig was somewhat restricted as rather than a specialist item (I have one designed and part-built for a different shoot), this one needed to be built in a hurry.  The camera was an issue- my usual choice, the Nikon D90 is a very heavy bit of kit and couldn’t balance, so I had to resort to my old Canon 350 instead, which is considerably lighter.  It’s not a bad camera by any means, but it’s on its last legs after being used excessively in all weathers for several years.  As can be seen, the rig is very quick and nasty, built around the chassis of a pair of cheapo toy train carriages, and whatever could be cobbled onto it.  The camera is kept centred with the securing boss from a broken mini-tripod which slots into the groove in the wagon.

The track was tarted up a bit from the days of the model village (for anyone interested, its Triang “Big Big Train” from the 1960’s, and probably quite the collectors item before I attacked and repainted it for the model village).  Being as I was working on a budget of Nothing Pounds and No Pence, I couldn’t afford proper model train stuff, so the ballast is simply garden gravel, which shouldn’t matter on a long-exposure picture.

Just to make sure I didn’t end up wasting a great deal of my time on idea that wasn’t going to work, I decided to cobble together a mock-up for the project, which sort of proved the idea whilst revealing some of the pitfalls to avoid in the final shoots…

Now, shooting pictures in the dark during the summer is tricky, so in order to not have to wait around until late, I decided to shoot the pictures in the darkest room in the house; with a certain Harry Potter-esque twist therefore, it meant me being exiled to the cupboard under the stairs for the evening.  I put up black backdrops, just managed to squeeze a board in there on which to arrange props, and set to work.  Buildings and such were assembled from whatever was lying around in various boxes from ex-miniatures projects such as the Steampunk series.  It still took a good couple of frustrating hours to set up though, and in fact was nearly dark outside anyway by the time I started shooting. 

Its usually round-about this time in a project I start wondering what the Normal People are doing of an evening, and also what would have happened if, like most of the rest of the students on my photography course, I’d spent my time photographing female drama students in various states of undress…

Annnnnyway, to work.  Initial pictures were disappointing, until I realised like the complete pillock I am I’d failed to switch on the torches on the rig.  Thereafter, it was a case of hastily assemble sets, photograph, and dismantle.  The problems that arose from using loose gravel became more and more apparent as the floor got covered in more and more gravel, models broke, batteries failed, and more problems arose.  Round about midnight I decided I was making too many mistakes and abandoned the project in favour of watching American Dad instead.  Set-up time 2 hours, shooting time 4 hours, dismantling time (the next morning) 4 hours.  A typical ‘quick’ shoot then for Benjy, with horrible memories of trying to shoot over-ambitious projects at college in two-hour slots in the studio being bought to mind.

 The above shot shows the basic set up- note the filing draws, in-trays, and christmas lights, which with carefu lighting and techinical jiggery-pokery becomes...



But Lo!  And the pictures were finished, and pretty much achieved what I had set out to.  This is an idea I probably wont return to, as it annoyed the hell out of me getting it done.  Having said which, its always my most complicated projects I end up doing which end up having to be constantly reworked, so hey-ho.

Ben

In t'North.

By-Eck.