A Change of Pace
Photography is an interesting passion. Early on, you pretty much want to photograph everything, because . . . well, because just pointing a camera at something is exciting. Later it’s often just to find out what something looks like in a photograph. As time goes on, you become more discerning. You stop pressing the shutter because you’re confident that the subject won’t work as a photograph. Then you start focusing on particular subjects and then, often on just those subjects. We all have our interests, but I think photographers often forget about the joy of simply photographing, of making the best image one can with whatever subject is there for you, that process of discovery and learning that photography can give, of seeing things anew.
Based on that, I think that periodically it’s good to have a change of pace, if just to add a bit of diversity to life and to seeing. If you’re lucky, you get excited again about the mere act of photographing and seeing things anew - that feeling you had back when you were starting. Sure, your standards have risen significantly, which means you’re much less satisfied with many of the images you might make (compared to early on when they all looked great, but weren’t). But introducing a change of pace sure can bring out the fun of photographing again.
It was with that attitude that I added Ivansson’s Junkyard Car Cemetery onto our Sweden trip travel itinerary, for both photographic and travel purposes. When I saw an icon for it pop up on Google Maps, and then started looking at images from there, I figured it would be a fun place to check out. And that’s what we did. We weren’t planning on doing “serious” photography there, so we went light, for me just a couple of cameras, no extra lenses, no tripod. Just a nice stroll through a car cemetery. Because that’s really what it was.
There were a lot of cars there . . . a lot. And it was obvious that many of them had been there for quite some time.
Fortunately, with that vast number of cars came a lot of photographic opportunities. Granted, none of the vehicles were in great shape, so this wasn’t the type of photography you’d do at a Classic Car Rally (which Wim and the Shell station next door hosted a few weekends back). And while the vehicles here were definitely antiques, they were also beaters. Not even that, because none of them were drivable.
But if you like looking at and photographing old, beat-up stuff this is the place for you!
We wandered around for a couple of hours, sticking more to the wooded areas instead of the big, open field of cars on the other side of the bimobil. Since we had no real “purpose” to our wanderings, we stopped a lot and photographed whatever caught our eye.
And that’s where having a camera helps. It helps you slow down, to look at things more intensely, to look at things differently and to explore what possible images may be there. Sometimes there is an image, sometimes not.
But it’s that sense of exploration that makes you feel you’re getting to know a place. Not everything about it, but more than just a passing glance, more than just a “that’s cool!” It’s not a check box off a bucket list, but rather a slow wander to experience a place.
Some of the cars were familiar, most were not. Many (probably most) I think were as old as I am. None were American (unless they re-imported a few beetles that were lumped together). But they were familiar because they were cars. Albeit cars stripped for what they were worth and now being overtaken by nature.
So we took our time and wandered, and sometimes that’s the best kind of stop. No set agenda, no real purpose, just seeing what is there that might be interesting and, with any luck, worth pointing a camera at.
If there had been a coffee shop in the center of the place, that would have been perfect. Walk around a bit, have some coffee, walk around some more. But there wasn’t so we wandered until we thought there was an image to be made, took our time composing and making the image and then moved on. Sometimes Ann would get ahead of me, sometimes I’d be the one out front. Fortunately, we tend to photograph at the same pace and never really get too far separated. But we certainly see differently and become interested in different things.
We wandered until our legs got a bit tired and we both seemed ready to call it a shoot at about the same time. I think when you’re observing the environment intensely, you become mentally exhausted. We strolled back to the bimobil and had lunch. After lunch, the sun was high, the heat was setting in and we decided it was time to move on for the day.
It had been a mighty fine stop, definitely a worth-while detour to what seemed to be the middle of nowhere, Sweden.