Summer Spontaneity

Posted by pireze on Jan 5, 2012 in Featured, Photo Thoughts | 0 comments

Should the smartly-clad businessman, or the rich folks sitting in the pool of the country club have asked me how I came to be in their nicely air-conditioned office, or on the grass just outside their club taking photos, they would learn that I started the morning with no plans other than a rough idea, to go out into the world and walk around. I packed my camera, but making pictures wasn’t a given – in a way, the camera was there just in case.

This last week of the holidays has been quiet – there have been no long road trips, no exotic new locales. I was at risk of relapsing to my old ways of just staying at home and stewing in a depressing mix anime, movies and games. To be honest, it has been a disappointment, because a number of shoots I had attempted to set up over the holidays fell through, leaving this precious week empty.

However, if plans fail, there is one other strategy to fall back on – spontaneity.

Philsophically speaking…

I am a big fan of planning. If there is a shoot, I plan my lighting, my angles, the overall feel, the location, how to get to a location, timing of public transport, etc. But at the shoot itself, there is a conscious attempt to stimulate spontaneity – to allow for happenstance and accident to work their magic. It is, in a way, the secret ingredient, the quirk that bestows that small, small chance at brilliance.

Yes, what I just said seems contradictory to what many people would consider to be important to photography, where composition and angle is meticulously planned, where every light source is metered, where the language of the photo is clearly expressed through careful placement of all elements. But to put it in a simplistic manner, all those things are just the craft of photography, which I personally (in a philosophical manner) distinguish from art. But that’s a discussion for another day.

A dead beginning

So it was that I set out to walk to a park I had seen on a train. A remediated industrial area, it looked good from the high vantage point of the train, but was singularly lacking in inspiration. Rhodes is one of those suburbs that is being developed into high-density housing. From the outside, it looks nice (and has an Ikea), but over the course of a number of visits, I have always been struck by the rot and singular deadness that it conceals. Walking on the roads around the Parramatta River, the rubbish and sheer amount of industrial and household waste just littering the area is astounding.

The park itself is sterile. It’s designed to be modern, but it’s just a filler for a toxic dump. The grass is overgrown, the paths lead to dead ends blocked by makeshift fences. Any joy from walking along the riverside is quickly diminished by signs warning that substantial amounts of industrial chemicals have been found in the shellfish and marine specimens in that area. There are a number of aesthetic points within the park, but these are hard (photographically anyway) to isolate from the apartments nearby.

So I walked across the bridge to Meadowbank. It’s a nice bridge. We could use it for something, but there is quite a bit of walking involved to actually get on the bridge. And at the end of the day, it’s just a bridge.

Through the looking glass

The plan at this stage was to use my nice unlimited public transport ticket to take a ferry from Meadowbank to the city. But I was not discounting the possibility of spontaneity. Indeed, it was not long after I boarded the ferry that on a whim, I stepped back off, the only person to do so at that particular wharf. Certain features of the coast line had caught my eye, and so I decided to invest a few hours of my time to explore this place I have never been to.

I started along the walking path that meanders as it follows the shoreline. I see a rolling hill dominating the landscape, a large building, white, shining in the sun. I see adjacent to it the tell-tale dome of a gazebo. I can never resist gazebos. I climb up a short stone wall by the path, struggle through bushes and thick grass and uneven rocks underfoot, and make it to the hill.

 

It’s too big to be a residence. It’s a country club. I am on the public land outside the country club, and a few people in the pool stare at me as a I take my pictures. I feel like a stalker but it’s public land. Surveillance warning signs are all over the place.

I shove my camera over the fence and get a shot of the gazebos too. The sun shines down, everything is bright, and I cannot see what I am shooting. Summer is here, and this suburb I have never been to is an alien world to me. The concrete on the pavement is marked with the name of the suburb. The houses are white and bright and beautiful. Many are empty, and the air smells of newness and class and money.

I walk on, back down toward the waterfront, where I would find the dilapidated building I saw from the ferry, standing out on the coastline from the many multi-million-dollar new and shiny townhouses lining the water. It has been around for years, and they still haven’t managed to tear it down, for some strange reason. But that’s a story for later. A park suddenly emerges in front of me. It has got a gazebo’s tell-tale dome, and I cannot resist.

 

It’s a beautiful park (by the standards of Sydney, where most parks are just a patch of grass), and I don’t know if it is considered private property or public property. The shrubs are manicured. Some are conical. I can just imagine how nice it would look at night, when the shroud of darkness and a shallow depth of field renders the apartment buildings and construction cranes into balls of light. And the gazebo, it’s right there in the middle of it all.

Parts of the park are like a secret garden, doorways to fountains scattered with rose petals.

Vestiges of a rough past

I finish exploring the garden, and head back down to the path along the river. At last, amidst the new houses, I see the red-brick ruins of what once was an industrial building. It is protected by two fences, one set a distance away, another closer in.

I have, in the past, enquired about shooting at this building, but the site management declined the request due to safety hazards like sharp bits of rubbish and needles. To be honest, that’s a pretty non-hazardous hazard provided proper footwear is worn but that’s that. Unless someone climbs the fence, there is no way to access the place. I still don’t know why they haven’t managed to tear this place down though – it is literally in the middle of a number of high value properties.

I continue down the footpath until I get to the display office, which is nicely air conditioned.

 

True story: I am looking to buy a house in the next 3 to 4 years, so I wasn’t lying when I asked the man inside for a price list of the properties in the area. The printout he gave me confirmed my suspicions of course.

And just opposite the display office, I see yet another industrial ruin. It is substantially easier to access if needed, but from the fence I could see the ground level was flooded with water so I didn’t bother trying to get in closer. The second floor looked interesting though.

Getting off the ferry

The destination of the ferry was pre-determined and certain. If all went as planned, and the vagaries of my curiosity had not been piqued, I would have had a picturesque ride into the city. The important step, even after noticing something interesting, was to act on it. To get up on an impulse and walk off that ramp from the ferry. Spontaneity and the potential for discoveries are everywhere. They are down the alleyways, through doorways and in shaded paths. But to allow for true discoveries from chance, that tiny potential must drive an action, be it getting out of the house, or turning down that unknown path.

“Can’t be bothered” has been a mantra for me for the best part of my life, and it still is. But more and more, I am learning that being bothered, actually defying convention and doing something random (as opposed to just paying lip-service and describing yourself as “totally random”) can bring those changes and new perspectives we yearn for.

The suburb I explored is easy to find. In fact, many people might already know about it. For those who don’t, you know roughly how I got to it. I’m not going to give you the name of the place on a plate – if you want it, go find for it.