Temporal Photography

Most fancy digital cameras these days have an option allowing you to “stitch” together a series of photographs to form one huge panoramic shot – through some fancy digital shenanigans the camera is able to match up the end of one picture with the beginning of the next, and so join the pictures together in one seamless strip.

But, as usual, whatever complicated technology can do, man can do better, albeit with a little more legwork and general effort.

Most of us have a specific journey that we take time and time again, day in day out. Whether it’s the route you take to work or the favourite walk you tread with your dog, each one of us probably has a particular path in our lives that we’ve trod enough times for us to make it our own. Even if it is just the saunter down to the pub. So, on the first of January, at nine in the morning, go out and take a photo of the start of your particular walk. Then follow your favoured route a few more steps down the line, and take a second picture whose edges overlap slightly with the first.

Then, on the first of February at ten in the morning, take your second photograph with you on your walk (as well as your camera, of course), and try to reproduce it exactly. Take the exact same photo, as best you can. Then take another photo a little along the line which overlaps slightly with the picture you’ve just taken…

I’m hoping you get my drift by this point. Each month, on the same day (or near as dammit, depending on weather conditions) but an hour later each time, you take another picture, along with a reference shot for next month. As the months roll by – as they inevitably will, what with time being the single-minded recalcitrant bastard that it is – you’ll capture all the aspects of that familiar route: sun-kissed by summer, with everything blazing frantically beneath a mid-day sun, or (just as appealing), a bleary-eyed, half-slumbering autumnal landscape being grudgingly nudged awake by the slanted twilight shadows that the lateness of the photographed hour has lent them.

After a year has passed, you’ve got twelve photos, which - after a few hours of Photoshop-centred chicanery – merge (almost) seamlessly into a single panoramic strip. Not only has the passing of the seasons been captured, but (given that you’ve remembered to take each photo one hour after the last) you’ve also caught on film the longest day since Neptune last revolved around the sun.

Imaginary Variations: If your journey is circular, so much the better. Seems kind of fitting (given the whole cycle of the seasons/cyclic nature of day and night) that the final photo should link back to the first. Might make a nice frieze if you have any spare circular rooms in your house that you’re unsure how to decorate.

Use a timed camera. It might be fun to put yourself in each and every picture. In a “Where’s Wally?/Waldo" kind of way. “I'm the guy wearing the duffelcoat/fleece/t-shirt/nothing/t-shirt/fleece/dufflecoat…” Hours of fun.