Many photographers set out to capture the world in a fraction of a second, freezing time to seize that moment that tells story. My Project with #SIGMAUK was and adventure to explore the world not in fraction of a second but in minutes and hours, as Bill Brandt Famously said “Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved”.
It was very liberating to throw away the limitations of ‘instantaneous capture’ and look to capture more holistic interpretation of what I was to photograph – in the image below taken on the steps outside The National Gallery I first watched the scene I would photograph for an hour or so to actually see what was happening before taking any Images. As it was around lunch time three main activities become evident, eating, going up and down the stairs and taking photographs – simply out of personal preference I went with the Photographers and their subjects. The process involved taking around 200 images from one stationary angle, this image were then purged of the walkers and eaters and the remaining Photographers and their subjects were left. The subsequent college creates a new way of seeing reality, it did happen, they were in the places shown the only thing utterly disregarded was any adherence to the rules of time.
I have always had a fascination with large open spaces and how time changes how we interpret them. In the image below called the ‘Girl in the Yellow Dress’ time seems separated into sections, the hallway becomes the stage the crowds flow across, the highly distorted girl in the yellow dress out of sync with all those around her and the photographer in the bottom right hand corner who captures the scene.
The image of Regent Street below was taken over a period of two hours using colour to simplify the interpretation of this busy scene, the girl crossing the street on the left hand side in front of a bus creates the only motion in this time locked view.
The image below of Piccadilly Circus was a challenge at first, but after 20 minutes of watching the seemingly chaotic interaction of buses, cars and pedestrians it began to harmonise and I glimpsed an orchestrated movement that I have tried to recreate with the 150+ Images I had taken.
The images below looked at how night and day pictures could be merged to create hybrid images that blend time together with light.
The techniques are included in a new exhibition created with the SIGMA sd Quattro H camera and SIGMA lenses, currently showing at London Bridge Railway Station which will run until the end of September.
You can see more on the following links:
http://totallythames.org/event/
http://www.reichholdarts.com/thames.html
See the amazing large scale SIGMA sd Quattro H image of London Bridge on the Gigapan site:
http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/e8b2b2945dc6d5cca7dd0ccc963c84d4
Featured product: SIGMA sd Quattro H
