Assignment Two: The journey.

Assignment Two: The journey.

From Deal to Sandwich via Golf Road and Guilford Road. Abandoned.

The area over which these roads pass was sea until about 1000 years ago and was formed by the silt deposited by the River Stour.  It is protected from invasion by the sea by a dyke that runs from Deal in the south to the river estuary in the north.  Because it is flat and low it is very prone to flooding, which the present weather is demonstrating.  The only permanent buildings are a few farms, a bird observatory, a pub/restaurant, the Cinque Ports Golf Club, the private Sandwich Bay Estate, and a toll gate and booth.

As the land consists mainly of sand and is liable to flood it is given over to a mixture of grazing and golf.   Much of it is too wet for farming or recreation and is left as a wetland reserve.  

My transport will be a bicycle and my camera a Canon G1X.  I can’t do a Richard Long and just follow a line but taking his work as a starting point I will take only those images that are available from the road.  

My aim is to show current land use and evidence of former use.  There are in fact three routes that form this route which join up and then separate at various points: a footpath which is a new addition, The Ancient Highway which is the oldest and the road itself which forms part of the National Cycle Route 1.  

First dry afternoon for a while saw me out on my bike taking photographs.  Even while I was out I realised that this exercise was not working.  There was nothing to guide me but the scenes on offer.  I found myself seeking for the obvious and not that which described the journey.  There was not direction and nothing to guide me.  I was just looking for the pretty or interesting.  

Below are a few of the 102 images I recorded.  These are not submitted as part of the exercise but as 

illustrations of what was wrong.

 A journey.

From home to The Albert.

Having abandoned the concept of a ride across the floods I went back to the drawing board.  

What I needed was some discipline and purpose: some reason for taking the images.  I looked for inspiration from what others had done.  Throwing a stone and taking a photograph from the point where it lands or walk a straight line on a map like Richard Long: not very practical in Deal.  Take a walk round Britain and shoot every 50 miles as done by Kate Mellor in Island (1997): too long.  From these concepts, however, I formed the idea of taking pictures at regular time intervals along a given route.  I needed a system of randomising the shots.

My first plan was to use stills from the camera in my car.  The camera records continuously and stores the recordings in three minute slices.  Take the first still of each new three minute slice and I have my random shots.  The idea is OK but when I looked at the quality of the images I was forced to think again.  I liked the idea of the fixed time shot taken on a given route, so adapted it to suit a walk round Deal.  The three minute interval seemed good as it would ensure a change of scenery for each shot.  The route was one that took me from home, down through the High Street to Deal Castle and returning via Beach Street.  I estimated that the taking of the images, plus the three minute intervals, should take about one hour.  The choice of shot would be left to the timer on my phone: the antithesis of Cartier-Bresson's decisive moment.

By employing the 7-14mm lens on my Olympus E3 set on its widest setting (equivalent to about 14mm on a full size sensor)  I was ensuring that each image would give the widest general view and remove the choice I had of framing or selection of subject. I was planning that the resulting images would be both random and illuminating: showing Deal for what it is and not the series of chocolate box pictures that are normally presented.  Not quite the Edgelands of Deal but certainly the Deal as seen every day by its inhabitants rather than the one sold to tourists.

Map of walk showing the stopping places.

0 Minutes.  View from front door.

3 minutes.  

6 minutes.

9 minutes.

12 minutes.

15 minutes.

18 minutes.

21 minutes.

24 Minutes.

27 minutes.

30 minutes.

33 minutes.

I found this to be an interesting assignment as it gave me the choice of subject but not the choice of how to present it.  On a normal walk round Deal with my camera I would be looking for the picturesque, the unusual or the amusing.  On this walk I past Deal Castle, the fishing boats, the Time Tower and many other worthy, and much photographed features, but was not able to photograph them because of the restraints I had placed upon myself.  The only image I cold be certain of was the one taken as I left my house, the rest were decided by the timer on my phone.

On this first such exercise I limited myself to what was in front of me.  I achieved roughly what I set out to achieve which was a view of my town as we see it every day and not as seen by tourists.  One thing I will try when I try this again will be to use the timer as before but perhaps give myself more freedom as to the subject by not limiting myself to only that which is front of me but looking round from the spot where the timer has stopped me and seeking out the best shot.  

I will be taking other walks round other towns and will most certainly use the same wide lens and the interval of three minutes.  I also intend to use my car mounted camera for a similar exercise.  Perhaps a circuit of the M25 or a run across the Romney Marshes and Dungerness.

The work of Richard Long and Kate Mellor were major influences on how I have tackled this assignment.  I believe I have adapted their approach to the urban environment quite well.

I cannot comment on why I chose certain views as they were imposed on me by the constraints I imposed and were therefore self selecting.