Long exposures tend to be characterised by "stars" of light and motion blur. It's almost impossible to avoid blur if your shutter speeds are below 1/10th of a second, if not from the camera then from the subject, although flash can be used to try and freeze at least some of the image. Anyway, if you're doing a long exposure then it's probably to get motion blur, or you're in a situation where that's the only way to get an image.
Digital photography lends itself quite well to long exposure photography with the amount of control the camera offers you, and also in the way you can review the image afterwards to check your settings have given you the result you want. Issues with noise and heat are the inevitable drawbacks, but these are still more controllable than long exposures on film, when you just have to hope you got all the settings right.
The above image was taken on a very cold winter night in late 2008, one of the coldest winters in British history. There was a thick frost which gave the grass a shimmering, crystal look, and particles of ice were just floating in the air. Under all the sodium lights everything look very unreal. I had found some leftover film (Ilford HP4) and decided to take my old Nikon out for some long exposures; something I had never attempted with film before, although there isn't any particular reason as to why I hadn't.
With my tripod slung over my shoulder and wearing some thick gloves to protect my hands from freezing to the metal legs, I wandered around the construction site of the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. This was a mammoth building site with new road networks, sewage systems, car parks, the hospital itself (a super-hospital which now claims to be Europe's largest) and a range of storage areas and service yards to house the tonnes of materials and equipment which was required.
Living nearby at the time, I had already witnessed an old incinerator being demolished to make way for a new road, huge, ancient chimneys being torn down, a massive expanse of brownfield land being tilled and bulldozed in preparation for the hospital and the surrounding scrubland being cleared of years of industrial debris. They had also begun excavating a hole which would eventually (as of last year) become a cutting for a by-pass underneath the railway and canal, which acquired a new viaduct and aqueduct respectively as a result. The site was formerly factories and a canal basin, long since overgrown and derelict. An old rail marshalling yard had been asphalted over into a car park in the 80s, although the red brick bridge supports for the railway still protrude from the embankments either side, covered in graffiti. All in all it is an area filled with thomassons and weeds, the echoes of a lost industry and the ghosts of heritage. Ideal for industrial photography.
With so much under construction I felt a certain amount of responsibility to document the area and the dramatic changes taking place. The original plans for the area, which had altered somewhat since the initial suggestions, were to build the super-hospital, the new by-pass, to reconnect the dried-up canal and basin to the navigable canal (the Birmingham to Worcester canal) and build a marina with apartments and a student hub for the University of Birmingham which is on the opposite side of the railway and canal. A supermarket would then relocate to the remaining space, allowing the previous site it occupied to become more flats or a park. But then the economy crashed.
So far only the by-pass and hospital have materialised leaving a wasteland that was once wooded, littered with quite dangerous chemicals, contaminants and machinery and which was a playground for the local kids. Now, it is filled with weeds and discarded building materials, and strange poles with tags on them, like a bizarre minefield or lunar buggy testing area. In essence, not a lot has changed for the majority of the land, save for the skyline which is now dominated by the huge hospital and the two new bridges. I have taken photographs of the changing landscape here for almost as many years as work has been going on. I have witnessed the changes for even longer, as I passed on my way to and from primary school, then secondary school, then work, and often on days out into the city. I could even see the chimneys and clock tower from my bedroom window, over four miles away. I then moved nearer, making it even easier to document the changing landscape.
I will post a few other images below, but I chose the main image above as it reflects a particularly intense period of construction work, when barely any of the area was accessible and was surrounded by steel fencing and security measures. The flood lights illuminated all of the machinery and created a very desolate and brutal terrain, which wasn't particularly aesthetically pleasing. The frost on the night this image was taken gave everything a magical atmosphere, as if it weren't real. It was very surreal to be wandering around the deserted, mud-caked roads that had once been bustling before the new layout was laid down and streets were closed to allow tower cranes and heavy machinery to operate.
Several old factories were demolished to make way for the by-pass, including a Georgian gun factory and a Victorian smelting foundry with kilns, boilers and engine houses dating from the 1900s and 20s. Birmingham's reputation as the workshop of the world was built upon these types of buildings but progress, in the form of the NHS in this case, was slowly taking over. Still, the Dudley Branch canal, which was built in 1801 to connect the local factories and the Worcester canal to the black country coal pits (but was closed and infilled in 1926 to become a weed-filled ditch), may yet receive a new lease of life for pleasure boats. At least some of the industrial heritage of the area may get a new lease of life.
This article was originally published in 2013.
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