Five strategies for a journey to Ilford
Walthamstow, Ilford, these aren't names to conjure with. Resident for some years in the former, I'd never had occasion to visit the latter. A need arose which could best be fulfilled by a journey on the 123 down grey dual-carriageways to Ilford town centre.
Apart from the company of my son, my dread at the prospect of this journey was mitigated only by the thought of taking some interesting pictures. We sat on the top deck of the bus, at the front, taking in the view as the automatated announcer monotonously named each stop. I pointed my camera and shot random photos. A drunk took his place on our right and quickly fell asleep. Towards the end of the journey his phone played a highly explicit song that failed to wake him from his slumber.
My pictures were as pedestrian as the scenes they captured. I liked a few of them, but I knew they wouldn't interest anyone else. Just a handful of random pictures, but I wanted to create something out of the experience, out of the images. After some weeks of experimentation, consisting mostly of near and complete misses, I developed five strategies:
Focus
Nature
Split
Reflect
Ghosts
There are four examples of each in the following slideshow.