This week has seen three separate Stories coming to fruition. Largely thanks to the amount of image gathering and video work I carried out in the summer. I was now finding that a lot of the visual gatherings I conducted, simply through filming and/or taking stills along the river, have paid off.

Rosie’s Story became the next completed work, as with Fliss, Rosie created her recording, an element that I was now starting to support more as often the audio narration was more real and sincere when done by the contributor on their own. I can speculate that this allowed much more freedom as to when and how the recordings where made.

Either way, Rosie’s Story focuses very much on her recovery and growth after going through a very challenging life experience. This had left her feeling very disassociated with her direction.

When she started to visit the local river, she found the space to be very relaxing and allowed her to re-connect with herself. The waters of the river acting as a conduit, within which many of her worries could flow away.

The focus to Rosie’s Story has been bridges and the metaphorical and metaphysical symbolism they came to represent. As such, it made sense to include a scene of a bridge for her Story.

However, when considering the audience interaction with this work, I decided that it would be too obvious to include a simple image or video of a bridge. The age-old use of time-laps, for example, being the obvious choice.

Instead, I decided to record a video of the bridge as seen from below the waterline. The bridge, after all, carries its passengers over water. The subjective view from underwater looking up to the reflection of the bridge – showing as ever moving and continually fighting the river, seemed to be most suitable to fit with Rosie’s Story.

To record such a scene, as with all other underwater scenes, I use a GoPro camera on a stabilised rig to produce the footage. I then slow that footage down enough, so the water movement becomes more ethereal. This allows the observer time to study and explore the scene, that in real-time, may only be a few seconds in existence.

This method of image capture has served me well during my MA, but I am only now starting to explore and better understand its capabilities.

Rosie’s Story can be viewed below: