So far in my project I have visited a small scrapyard in the centre of Coventry, documenting the area before developing my idea to produce high detailed close up images of the waste with large focal range.
For this next part of my project I have visited another place where different companies and the public can dispose of their waste, I chose this place because I wanted to see how a larger site dealt with waste. Furthermore, I'm hoping that photographing a larger site with more waste should produce pictures that impact the viewer more, thus highlighting our waste problem even further. I have decided that I'm only going to visit a few different sites of different size so that I can get a good comparison of scale and what happens at each one. Instead of visiting loads of different scrapyards I want to develop my idea by only visiting about three but which increase in size.
For this first shoot I decided to just walk around the site and document what I saw, I have taken these images on f/14 which should allow for a large depth of field allowing the whole image to be in focus so the viewer can see the waste in its full scale. This site due to its size isn't in the centre but just on the outskirts of a residential area in south Coventry.
These first two images above and below capture the massive piles of scrap that looks as if it has risen out of the ground and is not as tall as the trees that surround it. It also shows a good contrast to man vs nature and how mans waste is taking over what was once a natural place. Due to the site being dangerous with heavy machinery the site owner wouldn't let me go any further than this which was a shame because without a zoom lens I could capture the mountain of waste any closer up. The large depth of field has worked well to keep the fore and back in focus allowing the viewer to see all the details though.
Again like the first, smaller scrapyard I photographed, this site had a collection of broken engines as well so I decided to focus on those to show the comparison between the two different sites. Unlike the previous site these engines aren't as oily so I feel the photograph loses some of its nice tonal range.
On the other side of the site was some more piles of general metal waste including radiators and other objects, again because I was allowed to go further than this which did restrict the compositions I could produce. The large f/stop I have used plays a very important roll in this image meaning the car door in the foreground is just as much in focus as the lorry in the background. I think the two large grabbers photograph really well in this shot, rising out of the waste.
This is one of my favourite photographs that I took because I managed to get myself into position to capture a composition with just the large pile of waste. This reminds me of the photographs Hoyland and Juiliang captured which I previously discussed. I think the landscape image captured of the waste isn't usually seen in everyday life so could be a alien planet for all the viewer knew, until the look closer and get a reference to what objects have created this massive pile of waste.
This image I took to show the scale of the pile, because the viewer can understand how large the grabber is and then compare it to the size of the pile, making it in the region of at least 50ft tall.
These two images above and below show the grabber in use, while its loading cars and other metal objects onto the lorry seen on the right. In the photograph below you can the grabber has a squashed car in its grasp.
This image reflects some of the ones I took at the first scrapyard. It works well again to show just a small portion of all the tires they have sitting in piles at this site. Photographing them using this composition means that the viewer doesn't know how many tires there is and in their mind the pile lasts for ever, due to the whole image being taken up by tires.
This is another image which shows the scale of our waste problem, with mountains of waste taking over our landscape. I like the fact that these are still life/landscape images but they are man made landscapes, some would say they capture blots on our landscape that ruin the natural landscapes.
Like the first scrapyard, this larger one also had cars. But unlike the first one, this scrapyard store cars on-top of each other on this steel structure which can hold around 35 cars at a time. I think the fact that you can just see the trees struggling to become noticed on either side of the frame is very powerful with how nature cannot cope with out waste problems. Also I think these piles of cars photograph really well because most of the public will have never seen cars displayed in this kind of way. I think this image works well to suggest our waste problem and show its scale to the viewer.
Again like before, this image shows the grabber loading up the lorry and also this red van unloading more waste. This shows how alive this metal graveyard is, even though its basically the place where all unwanted metal items come to die.
Even though this image is unlike the others that I have taken, I thought I needed to capture this because it makes the viewer think of a powerful moment when this huge engine was dropped on this old car which has made the roof cave in. I think its a good sign of the struggle and power our waste has affected things.
This image just shows the hundreds of cars piled on top of each other rising like the trees into the sky. Its not everywhere that you see a site like this.
One downfall with this place compared to the first scrapyard I photographed was that I wasn't allowed to go near the large piles of waste meaning that getting a good and impacting composition was difficult. On the other hand this site was still really useful for my project because it has shown a site that deals with a much larger amount of waste and also waste of different objects including house appliances instead of just cars like the small scrapyard I visited for my first three shoots. This site in general was ore-inspiring due of its scale, it made me feel how small I was compared to how big the impact of the waste we create is.