Island Ferries
Canon AE-1 · FP4 · 2018
Many of these frames were made within walking distance of the city park, during lunch breaks.
I kept coming back to the same few piers over the last few weekends until I stopped noticing the cold. Most of Island Ferries was edited near the marina, with the contact sheets spread out on the floor.
A few of the best frames came from a single afternoon near the old railway line, in the last few minutes before dark. Work on Island Ferries began with a single roll and grew over a good part of 2016.
Notes
Weather was the main character of Island Ferries, especially the long rain in November, which emptied the streets. More than once I came back from the bus stops with nothing, apart from cold hands. The light around the moor changes quickly, and many of the best frames were taken under low cloud.
I printed contact sheets at the kitchen table and chose the frames with someone at the library. There is a quietness to the corners after the last train that I tried hard to keep.
The tones in Island Ferries are as FP4 rendered them, quieter than on screen. The series is still open; I add a frame or two every couple of months, usually after a walk along the lake shore. Most visits to the fields started in the blue hour and ended when my hands got too cold.
People in the pictures, mostly dog walkers, were asked, mostly with a nod, and all but one were happy to be included. I shot this mostly with a standard 50mm lens on the Canon AE-1, which made me wait for things to happen. Each picture in Island Ferries is shown in its original colours, exactly as framed. Several of these were taken from the same spot near the old town on Mondays over a whole winter.
With Island Ferries I wanted to show the place out of season, with the bins and the scaffolding left in. Some of these were taken on long walks, others from the passenger seat of a friend’s car on the way to the market square.