While working through this photographic project, I have discovered a deeper meaning in the photographs I have produced; this is where the fourth dimension comes into play, through the element of Time...
Presentation of time through photography
There are many different ways to present time through photography, one is to feature the same subject at different points throughout the same composition, I looked at this technique in my previous project for Surrealism and include some of the images later in this blog post.
Anyway my objective for that project, on which this one builds in real terms, I wanted to show how time can be shown in a single image instead of through a video clip, simply showing moment of an individual through a particular scenario from one side of the composition to the other. My inspiration for these initial ideas came from some up and coming photographers online which showed me some interesting techniques through the use of a flashgun.
I did enjoy doing this project but I wanted to shift my idea so that it included elements of nature; things which I am interested in as a landscape photographer. Firstly let's start by checking out some of my work from the previous project, to see how I moved from these ideas into my new idea:
This is one of my images from the Surrealism project which shows Alex gracefully moving through the church graveyard from the wall to the ground, a movement which may occasionally be captured in a single still photograph, but is not often caught as a series like this one, without any Photoshop trickery I captured a portion of time within a single frame which stretches out over a much longer period of time than a standard capture.
When I began this project I gave a great deal of thought to how photographs interpret time, the continuous idea I saw, and still see is that they capture a 'window' of events in a split second, meaning that no movement or anything is captured, just the event as a still image, which in my opinion is appropriate for most photographic purposes, but I wanted to push to the next level and capture an ongoing event which would 'wow' viewers.
Why the stars?
As I come from a family who seem to have particular interest in astronomy, particularly my dad and my grandad, I think some of the interest has rubbed off on me as well which is good as my family are keen to see what I have seen through my photography when I arrive home. I pay particular attention to events happening in the sky, such as meteor showers and alignments of certain constellations which may result in a more amazing image than normal.
My interest in the night sky paired with my knowledge of some interesting foreground subjects around Devon make a perfect pair to provide me with some excellent compositions for this project.
The stars and time
The night sky acts as an excellent time to shoot photographs for long periods of time, as the sunlight simply provides too much light which would cause overexposure of any image after around 20-30 seconds. Whereas if you shoot the same image at night, you can keep your shutter open indefinitely, as long as the camera is not pointed into a light source, your photo will not overexpose.
As for my choice of subject, it requires a great deal of thought, as I described in the 'Choosing the Foreground Subject' blog entry, it has to be interesting, easy to light using stray bits of ambient light/ moonlight or star light. The subject also has to be away from any strong ambient light as this will ruin the star trails.
So far I have produced a few images which show my experimentation stages, although I am now ready to go for some full length images which should provide me with some amazing star trails and also some interesting foreground subjects.
Thoughts
When I'm out shooting these star trail photographs, I do get a great feeling of being 'at one with my environment' , a very cliche line, but it really does! This is probably because everyone else is in bed or out drinking in town, but I do start to unwind and experience some amazing sights such as shooting stars and other things, which I simply wouldn't see if I didn't force myself to stay up into the early hours of the morning.
Most people think i'm mental or something but I don't mind as I get to see some amazing things when I am out and when i show people the images I have taken so far, I do get positive feedback and many people ask 'How do you do that?' and the likes, which boosts my confidence to continue the project until I get something amazing.
As for capturing time in these photographs, they do take a considerable step onward from the photographs I produced for the Surrealism project, as these ones show time in another scale in comparison. In these photographs I want to show how the sky above is not changed by time in any way, as the stars will continue to rotate around the North Star..forever.. It doesn't matter whether I'm there or not, whether I get my model to jump off the wall or not, the stars will continue going round and round, forever.
In my photography I hope to bring the night sky to the daytime by photographing it and printing it so that all of my friends and family can experience the period of time which is often spent doing other things than being outside.
I also hope to present how the foreground subject links to the stars themselves, as for example, the Tors on Dartmoor have been there for many thousands of years, so each of the subjects stand as a monument of time, while I use a very modern piece of equipment to capture these amazing monuments of time which have been there for millions of years before me, and will be there for millions of years after I die.
One person who considered time in a very different way is Salvador Dali, shown below is one of his most famous paintings called 'The persistence of Time' wish literally depicts time 'melting away' through the appearance of melting clocks in a landscape
Image source: http://www.artquotes.net/masters/salvador-dali/the-persistence-of-memory.jpg
The painting also symbolises how time is frozen forever within this particular canvas painting, although in my images I have physically captured a change in time with the movement of the stars so my work contrasts completely with the message this image is trying to portray to the public which is that time is frozen in this image and doesn't seem to feature time, rather it features time in a still form, it has been fixed for the purpose of this image.
As I continue with the project my interest is building as I move on to new foreground subjects, but still try to maintain the same background setup, anyway time to stop talking and shoot some more photographs!
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