The Woodyard

“All travelers to wild places will have felt some version of this, a brief blazing perception of the world's disinterest. In small measures it exhilarates. But in full form it annihilates.”
― Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places

For my major project I wanted to capture nature, flora and fauna and how it always catches up and overtakes our modern, industrial and technical world. Nature is timeless and will always spring back despite being temporarily bulldozed out of the way by giant earth moving machines. These great hulks, when abandoned, quickly succumb to natures song, and start oxidizing, splitting layers and breaking off into scaled shards of rust.

I like the idea that despite all our efforts we are temporary, and the march of nature continues with or without us.

I already had a strong idea of what I was trying to capture following my project idea.

I knew the perfect place to capture some of these ideas. My old workplace at Hanbury in Droitwich, Worcestershire. Where I worked with my family felling trees and hauling timber. We used old, antiquated vehicles and machinery that were already vintage when they acquired them. 

Sometimes the machinery and equipment had to be abandoned when a gearbox broke or head gasket blew. These were often parked up and left as a hopeful patient awaiting a transplant. Many were repaired but many were not.

I went around with my camera on a blustery spring day, with heavy downpours, hailstones and wind to try and capture these ideas and in the moments of broken cloud used the sunlight to help me achieve this.

These a few of my attempts where I experiment with different camera settings.

 

The old decaying machinery that was being absorbed back into the landscape was compelling and helped to me to visualise my ideas. Seeing how plants seem to grow on almost anything help to create a microcosm that is otherworldly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

I chose to experiment with different settings on my camera with the intention of comparing images later, when I returned home and downloaded the images to my PC. I could examine the photographs more closely and make side by side comparisons of the same image to see what different aperture and shutter settings were doing to the image.

I took exactly 202 photographs that day and ended up not using my tripod at all. With my collection I will create a shortlist of images that will be further slimmed down to 6 final images for my project to communicate Nature in Abandoned Spaces.