Another Session Of Photography In The Cold At Maypole

I got a call from John the park cleaner who is one of my look outs to say he had found a burnt out car, of course I knew all about it yesterday but he confirmed that it was still there and worth a visit. Sometimes a car can be towed away within a few hours but I have known them to be in position for a week, I treat every photograph as if its my last with the vehicle concentrating on the most likely areas first. Unlike yesterday when everybody seemed very suspicious of me today everyone wanted to stop and have a chat including this man.


I told him what I did with my photos and invited him to look at my show at the Solihull Arts Complex and he said “Oh my daughters exhibited there”. His daughter is none other than the very talented photographer Michelle Lord. We are both involved in the Art and Business project “Visual” and we both exhibited in the group exhibition at Baskerville House last year.

The surface of the car hadn’t change at all which is unusual, I decided that after today there was no point in returning because the changes to the surface from now on will produce a quality of rust that doesn’t transform well in the photographs. Indeed I decided to pour water over the surface and while this will drastically transform the surface it will accelerate the decline in the quality for my purposes. Yesterday I took the bonnet home to work on that over the next few months.

I would like to work on one of these photographs now to illustrate my point but working with my old pc is ridiculously slow. I upgraded my PC last year so that it could handle large digital files and very large 45 megapixel files that have from scanning the 35mm film negatives, the upgrade was designed specifically for editing with Photoshop and to enable the viewing and selection of the hundreds of files. The PC is still on the bench being diagnosed.


I found out from this chap walking his dog that although the car appeared to me yesterday to have been joy ridden across the grass verge before being set alight it had in fact been in that position for 2 weeks with large For Sale signs advertising to those on the busy road.