Down Ramping

[Mick Fagan]

Taken at my local shopping centre complex.

Wondering whether I would be checked by a security guard, I assembled everything ready to go in the shade of one of the wing doors on the truck, then all I needed to do was walk over, compose, focus, and wait for an appropriate amount of automobiles moving slowly before I pressed the cable release.

Shen Hao HZX45-IIA
Fujinon SWD f/5.6 65mm
Centre Graduated Filter
1/30 at f/16
Ilford FP4+
D76 1:1

[Maris]

If this was a painting it would have been done by that famous Australian artist Jeffrey Smart noted for his implicitly surreal urban landscapes.

Mick, your photograph raises question. See the white Beemer slightly blurred as it accelerates under the shadow of the big black portal. What's the portal for? Surely it isn't to stop over-height vehicles escaping into the street.
Look at the sign at the extreme right. It's arrow shaped shadow insists that the observer attends to what is happening on the down-ramp. Why?
Then there are signs, a boom gate, street light standards, surveillance cameras, some sad trees, and a gloriously dotty anti-slip pedestrian ramp dead set in the middle of the picture at the bottom.

I'm glad the security guard forgot his anti-photographer badge.

[Mick Fagan]

Maris, the reference to Jeffrey Smart, I'll take that as a compliment.

About two weeks before I exposed this sheet of film, I was viewing two Jeffrey Smart paintings. Subliminal influence, perhaps?

Regardless, once I viewed the negative on the lightbox, and saw the simplicity of the automobiles coming around the curved ramp, I immediately thought of the two paintings I had so recently seen.

As for the big black portal. This ramp, and another to the left that is unseen, were part of the original car parking build of this new extension to Southland, which we still call the new part even though it was built somewhere between 25 to 30 years ago. The parking and trafficking arrangements of the shopping complex, have changed quite a bit over the 37 plus years we've lived nearby.

I cannot really remember, but it is identical to others around the place letting people know that there is a 3m vehicle height limit. The signs on the other big black portal is a steel or aluminium bar hanging from those three hooks. I have a suspicion that the tractor vehicle with a long trailer attached for gathering wayward shopping trolleys, could have been hitting or at least scraping the beam because of the ramp on the rear dog trailer axle.

[Mick Fagan]

I'm not sure if this will work, but this goes to maps and shows one of the entrances to Southland in Marvellous Melbourne, where I took the exposure.

https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-37.957 ... FQAw%3D%3D

[Maris]

Thanks Mick for the Google Maps link. It gets me to a spot very close to your actual camera position. The question for me is by what convolution of eye and mind caused you to set up there and produce an evocative and idiosyncratic Down Ramping.
Can't be luck, you've been at the game too long!

[Mick Fagan]

Hmm, in business quite a few people seem to have luck all of the time, I prefer to think they seize an opportunity when it becomes available or apparent, then switch some or all of their business into another direction.

I cycle around my local area quite a lot and I'm always looking for certain angles of architecture that look interesting from certain viewpoints. It then becomes a matter of configuration with regard to time of day and season, this is mainly for the light. The focal length that is required to obtain the negative that is in my mind, needs to be in my arsenal of objectives in my camera bag as well.

I viewed this image as a possibility quite some time ago, and over many visits to the adjoining carpark at various seasons and time of day, I checked out the angles of light until I roughly knew it was what I wished for and when would be an appropriate time.

On this visit I was prepared to wait for the light, so I brought the truck camper; which allowed me to have a coffee and biscuit. I studied the ramps and the traffic flows and worked out what I was going to do.

I chose the 65mm, and I was fairly certain I could get what I wished for. Viewing the ground glass with the camera in about the only place I could put the tripod, I was happy to see that I could just squeeze in the important pieces of architecture I was after. Using such a relatively wide angle lens for the format, I figured that the sky area may need to be cropped slightly. This did indeed happen, however left to right and foreground were untouched.

The line of vehicles was hard to get and I knew I needed a busy day so that the vehicles on the ramp, lined up behind each other. To do this the white BMW needed to be blocked by traffic lining up on its right side. Immediately after the last car cleared the road for the white BMW, I knew it would start to roll. I was reasonably certain I had it in the bag; viewing the negative on the lightbox was wonderful.

As the immediate surrounds were all dark, ramp walls, overhead bar, and so on. I decided I needed a very light coloured vehicle as the lead vehicle, with muted colours of the following vehicles so they didn't pull your attention away from the lead vehicle and surrounding architecture.

1/30th of a second was my chosen shutter speed so some movement would be recorded, then I allowed approximately 1/3 of a stop over and above what the centre graduated filter blocked out; light wise that is. The idea was to ensure detail in the quite dark ramp walls, it seems to have been successful.

I exposed this sheet of film at 14:00hrs on the 10/11/2024. My window of opportunity, light angle wise, was from around 13:00hrs through to 14:30hrs. Any earlier and the light isn't falling onto all of the ramp walls, any later and the shadows from the unseen trees on the far right start to encroach onto some of the ramp walls. I was facing south, so the sun is behind my back.

So I had a bit of luck that when I was there, everything seemed to fall in place; which was a definite bonus.