dimanche 28 novembre 2004

Sequence... Time of Year A Seasonal look at a familiar scene As I said yesterday there are a number of other photographic ideas worth exploring with longer timed sequences... as here, an example which shows the four seasons of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. This is an edited version one of several monthly sequences I've regularly undertaken in the past couple of decades... and as with the "Time of Day" sequence where showing every hourly shot is generally too subtle (or boring) for the viewer, so is a monthly sequence. Unlike the dubious photographic advantage I mentioned yesterday of shorter days helping photographers by shortening the number of times they have to revisit the same spot compared to a summer shoot with up to 20 hours of daylight... photographing the seasons can mean long hours of travelling to get you to your chosen location if it isn't fairly local. You obviously have to be fairly close to a location for a "Time of Day" sequence whereas a "Time of Year" can be taken literally in another country if you're a frequent traveller. My example here of the Westbury White Horse was fairly close to one of my previous homes in Wiltshire when I lived in the UK... about 10 minutes drive away. However, as you can see from the elevated viewpoint there was an important question of accessibility to be considered because the location I had chosen - and established in the Spring of the first year I was there - was only accessible by two steep single track lanes... or by foot of course. I obviously wanted one of the images to include snow to best represent the "Winter" part of the sequence, but (like a typical PR excuse from British Railways) I didn't want it to be the wrong kind of snow. I wanted snow in the shot but not on the narrow access roads... I wanted snow to cover some of the landscape but not to obliterate the White Horse. Another factor to study closely is the local weather situation. You may be a fair weather photographer (and there's nothing wrong with that) but will find your images are not too interesting if you have plain blue sky or repetitive fluffy white cloud formations in all your shots. Obviously different seasons produce different weather patterns so it's advisable to be familiar with them or know someone who is. I knew exactly what the weather would be like at this location because I lived only a few miles up the vale on the same side of the escarpment... what I saw out of my front windows was what I saw from this viewpoint a few miles away and few minutes later. For distant locations it's advisable to have access to good weather reporting on local radio (I don't find internet reports very accurate) or find a site with a nearby static video camera link... I know there's one up at Mount St. Helens in Washington state which would make a great sequence but maybe that's a bit too risqué at the moment! Also, depending on the climate, some seasons will change more rapidly than others... or change earlier or later in one particular year. This is why I think it best to photograph the seasons every month if possible... after a year of doing this you'll be able to pick four quite different images which may not have been taken at three month intervals... but they will appear to show just that. Only you will know the actual time lapse... but it won't matter to the viewer because they'll be genuinely surprised at the actual difference in the same scene from one season to another. The secret is in finding the location you can go back to time and time again... for the year. 8:31:08 PM    comment []