Or rather three pictures.

These images are of freeway sound barriers at various points around Melbourne. On my road trips I’m quite taken by some of the sculptural elements that have been incorporated to break up or sign post our journeys. At the right time of day they can be quite mesmerizing, especially when sunlight pours through them at low angles, creating streams of coloured light. I came to enjoy incorporating freeway lights into the images, playing with the artificial light, translucent barriers, and natural light.

I spent 42 hours exploring different locations to produce these images. Walking through them, around them and under them. Shooting them from various angles and using various lenses. In each location I spent around 2-3 hours, sometimes more and sometimes less. By inhabiting the space for that amount of time I allowed myself to familiarize myself with the space, watch the passage of the light, and look for the unique angles that produced ‘contemplative beauty’. Sometimes I would find the perfect angle where elements aligned, but decide to come back later that evening or next morning when the sun would be shining through transparent elements from the correct direction.

Many locations would produce great images but would only sit with certain others. Only through spending time in all of these locations and making images did the images I was trying to make reveal themselves. Without spending so much time in so many locations I wouldn’t have made these images, and would have settled with something far more obvious and less appealing.

So, 42 hours of shooting and exploration to produce this 3 image triptych.

But it doesn’t end there.

These images are part of a wider series that I worked on for around 6 months. That series involved hundreds of hours of investigation, research photography and AI experimentation to produce an outcome. The outcome was a digital work called ‘Freeway’ incorporating my photographs, AI generated images and a soundscape. I produced two of these images as inputs into that project. I felt that there was something in these images by themselves, so created the third after I had finished ‘Freeway’.

But, does it end there?

That outcome was the culmination of four years of study at Photography Studies College. Through exposure to new ideas, new photographers, thousands of images, the work of my peers, being critiqued and critiquing others I’ve accumulated knowledge that allowed me to see these images. So, it could be said that it’s taken 4 and a half years of work to produce these images.

I’m not sure if you like them, or see something special in them, but for me, these are elegant, considered and controlled. Creating something beautiful out of something quite mundane. Without going through four and a half years of study and all that goes with that, these pictures may never have existed. Would someone else have loitered around the freeways of Melbourne for hours on end looking for them?