A few weekends ago I wrote a little piece on Mitch Epstien as he was mentioned in the Weekend Guardian regarding his American Power book which is just faborooney. For those of you who missed it you can read the piece here.
Why am I bringing this up again? Well a good photographer friend of mine has approached me with the idea of doing a collaboration of sorts. Without giving too much away in these early stages we would basically be making pictures in the same area, but at different times and under our own speed (soon all may be revealed, but rest assured its a great idea). As I am always interested in how other photographers interpret the same places and subject matter this could turn out to be a very interesting project. And no it wont be like my college days when we where all given the same brief and would fight for studio space, the same model or the best viewpoint under Blackpool Tower.
Anyway, back to Mr Epstein..
To show you an example of how such a mentioned project could work, the above image of the Oil Refinery with the flag is by Mitch Epstein. The one below it is by myself and is of the very same refinery but from a very different angle. I am guessing the images where made around the same time as I made this about four years ago. I remember driving past the monstrous earth polluter during one of my road trips and just had to stop at the conviently located diner directly opposite.
My plan was to photograph the refinery at dusk and I have to point out that the very angle Mitch has taken his image from was the very angle I had chose to shoot at. I selected my window seat in the diner which was in full view of the chimney sweeps nightmare. I ordered a short stack of blueberry pancakes and a side of ham with two eggs (otherwise known as a Lumberjack) and waited for the sun to go down.
More often than not I find myself waiting for the right light, but my friends the longer you wait the more chance there is of some twitt who has driven for fifteen hours from Texas will pull up in there fifty foot long motor home in the very spot you planned to make the picture. And he ain't moving... After swallowing a little bit of bluberry and ham sick I decided rather than wait until morning for the house on wheels to move I would just look for another viewpoint. And so my friends there you are. But what might of happened if I had waited until morning you may wonder? Well as a matter of fact I did. The shot is almost identical except for the leaves around the edge of Mitch's version which look like they may of been trimmed. But I wont be posting 'my version' here for fear of being called a plagiarist which is simply not true as I probably did mine first..
Heres to great minds thinking alike...
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