Splash CMYK style

It may be the end of term but I've finally got some printing done!! And I had to pick a tricky way of doing it. CMYK = one giant screen with four images on it which when printing need to be lined up exactly otherwise it doesn't work, but I think I did okay for my first one!

Once the screen is made, and everything's lined up I enjoy the printing process because it's nice to feel like I'm actually making something and if it ends up looking right all the better!! To end up with having a choice of which print was the best I made 4 (2practise on bread and butter paper) prints on Fabriano paper with the idea that all future prints will be the same size, on the same type and size of paper so that when shown at the end of the year they all link together.

I want these prints to tell a story of a journey so still focusing on the Exeter to Dawlish trip I'd quite like to have maybe five or six prints in the end showing each stage of the journey, with Splash perhaps being the last one. I think that having Splash as the last one would be quite appropriate, ending the Journey not being able to see the view through the window.

Dawlish stills

I've been experimenting with print screening shots of the videos I've been taking and the ones that I've liked the most are the ones between Exeter and Dawlish. I knew before I took then that this would be my favourite section of the journey and it turns out that I got the best stills of these videos too luckily enough.

This one of my favourite shots because it was when the waves were so choppy and strong that day that they actually came over the wall between the beach and the railway to splash the train itself. Which I think shows just how close to the sea this particular stretch of railway is and on a choppy day like this being on a train is the closest you can get to the coastline because the pathway for walkers is underneath the high tide. 

Splash

Then I feel like these shots show how much your vision of a view is blocked by what's on the window, because until it dries it's spoiling your view.

 Then this just shows the difference a day makes. This shot from the video I posted last week and is from the second trip I took along this path and I shows just how different somewhere can look with different and more attractive weather.

Now that I've got solid photos to work from I'd like to start some printing and my tutor has been telling me about the CMYK form of printing where it's like a printer in that there's four layers of ink over the top of each other so that's how you create the different shades of colour, so I think that would be the best form of printing to get an accurate version of the photo.

The Dawlish Coastline

Continuing with the theme of my own journeys I had the idea to photograph them. I travel by train quite a lot (hence my interest in the original posters) either to visit friends or go back home to Plymouth for the weekend, and I thought you see sights that sometimes go unnoticed. Railways can go places roads and therefore cars can't, but either due to the speed of the trains or whether it's just that people get bored of looking out of a window so always occupy their journey with a book or a film some sights can go unnoticed.

I wanted to try and photograph some of these sights to represent my train journey home (Bath - Plymouth) however due to the speed of the trains it's near impossible to get a clean crisp shot of anything other than when the train is sat in a station. I've also never noticed before just how dirty the windows on trains were until I tried to photograph through them and my camera kept tying to focus on the dirt on the window itself rather than the the view through it.

I didn't want to just give up on this idea so I tried videoing the journey through the window instead, however I didn't have a tri pod on me let alone even own one, so I did try to keep my hand as steady as possible but it's difficult on a moving train and I found it really frustrating when I'd watch these videos back and the camera was moving even if it's ever so slightly in every single one, and also the dirt on the window was really starting to get to me. So the following weekend when I went home again I tried a different tack of having the camera right up to the window so the lens was actually resting on the glass, and in doing this my camera didn't focus on the dirt as much, but more on the view that I was trying to record, and in having something steady to lean the camera on it made the videos more steady, not perfect but a lot better than my last attempt.

This is just one of my many videos that I've taken but I knew even before I took it that it would be my favourite. No matter what the weathers like, what mood I'm in, what I'm doing on the train even if it's some university work or something I will always put it all down when the train leaves Exeter St Davids station because I know that my favourite part of any train journey is coming up. When the train is going through Dawlish it could be the first time I've seen the sea since I've been home last. It could be months, and to someone who spent 18 years taking it for granted seeing the sea every day just by looking out of the sitting room window, I never realised how important the sea side is to me until I came to university and didn't see it everyday. So that's why this is one of my favourite sights, and why I'd like for my art project to continue down this path, perhaps using sights like these to design and create posters advertising the coastal towns of Devon and Cornwall.