Project: Roadtrip

So I am leaving Brisbane with my family, packing up and moving to Adelaide. We are taking a road trip on the way, about 5 weeks travelling along the East coast of Australia, over to Melbourne and then straight to Adelaide where I start a new job towards the end of March. It’s an exciting and busy time packing up our house and planning the big changes ahead. And explaining it to our 3 year old! We are planning on camping for the majority of the trip, which should also be interesting with aforementioned 3 year old and our 6 month old. But we are up for the challenge and will add it to our list of accomplishments when we make it safely to Adelaide.

I need to prepare photographically for this once in a lifetime trip! I need to be bold and take lots and varied photographs. A few notes below for myself:

• Frame the picture – car/tent/kids bike
• Capture the emotions – good and bad!
• Get in the frame myself sometimes – use my new Gorrillapod tripod
• Time of day and light and weather – capture it all
• Stop the car often for photos, even if annoys my husband!
• The banal – meals, tent, packing up, setting up, long straight roads, roadsigns
• The beautiful – but try not to be clichéd if possible! Only stunning sunsets allowed!!
• Family/friends – part of the trip will be to see people – capture them uniquely
• Try to be quirky
• Think about different/interesting angles and juxtaposition

Artists who inspire travel:

• Martin Parr
• Trent Parke
• Alex Soth

What is the aim of the project – to capture it for us to remember – perhaps in the form of a book? I will be keeping a diary with my son with drawings and postcards pasted in as we go along which may also be included with any photo book which I create as a result.

Since I typed up the above post we have been flooded and delayed our departure by a week, but we are all safe and getting ready a second time for departure, hopefully nothing further delays us! Unfortunately it’s a week less on the road, so we won’t really see much between here and Sydney, but the rest afterwards will be well deserved. Interestingly, when we were flooded I didn’t take any photos (the mother was in full-speed mode, not the photographer). Lucky we didn’t lose anything sentimental and the damage to the house should all be fixed by the insurer. The timing was pretty terrible, but at least we are all OK and didn’t really lose much.