Layers of Light and Time Captured on Single Frames Using a 4×5 Camera

London-based photographer Tony Ellwood has a project called In No Time that deals with our perception and awareness of our passage of time. All the photographs are of the same pier on a beach that Ellwood visited over a period of six months. His technique, which took him 18 months to develop and perfect, involves visiting the location multiple times for each photo — sometimes up to three times a day for multiple days. Using a 4×5 large format camera, Ellwood creates each exposure across multiple sessions, as if he were doing multiple exposure photography, but of a single subject and scene. Each exposure time ranges from a few seconds to multiple hours.

What results from the technique are colorful, surreal photographs that look like paintings. They have smoothed appearances due to the different times, lights, and tides that are captured in a single frame.

Ellwood writes,

Each picture is therefore an amalgam of realities, each layer blending with the other to form the final image. The location used within the work, is a place he visits to think, for inspiration or to escape the world for a while. In No Time is a reference to the phrase “In no time at all”.

Here are a couple more photos from the series:

A thumbnail view of the project shows how diverse the look and feel of the images are, even though they were shot from the exact same location:

Here’s a short two-minute-long video in which Ellwood discusses his work:

Head on over to Ellwood’s website to see more of these images.

In No Time by Tony Ellwood (via ISO 1200)


Image credits: Photographs by Tony Ellwood

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