Before leaving Yokohama, I had a few considerations about space and time. Realising I was about to travel on the Shinkansen, I speculated that time could be experienced in a still image, through the use of registering blurring at speed. High speed photographs of moving water produce a well known blurring effect, for example.
Then I thought that it would be good to contrast high speed movement with utter stillness. As we were traveling to Kyoto, the idea of contrasting the utter stillness of a temple reflected in water, to the Shinkansen photograph came to mind. It was only later when reviewing images, that the notion arose of using photographs of the stone garden at Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto.
It turned out that simple as it sounds, getting a shot of country side blurring past wasn't straight forward. The further away parts of the landscape were, the clearer they were in the field of camera view.
After experiencing Ryoanji and the consummate stillness there, it became clear that these were the photographs to contrast to the ones taken from the high speed train.
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