Expanded Project - Light Estate

I found this estate whilst turning round to photograph some houses I passed for the previous post. It is situated in the Temple Newsam Conservation area in Leeds. This relatively small estate with around 32 buildings incredibly had about half lit up with varying amounts of fairy and christmas lights. I thought it would be interesting to photograph every building in the estate and put them together to see how they appear visually to put into a more visual perspective the ratio of lit up houses. The images are quite dark in places as I shot them all at f22 to try to keep as much detail sharp as possible but was limited to a 30second shutter speed.

The body of work isn't particualrly successful I dont think but it was an interesting exercise. Plus I eventually figured out contact sheets in bridge which is very useful.

Expandable Projects... Lights

After passing many houses decorated with lights for chirstmas it occured to me that this could be interpreted as a way of an occupant expressing themselves. It was also a good excuse to try to create a set of extravagently lit houses. However I found a lot of these house were in hard to photograph in areas which was a shame. These below are a few examples of that I got. I found that without over laying images and photoshopping (which I am not a fan of) it is particualrly hard to get both the lights and the houses lit sufficiently and sharply. 

[I think this is the only one that works. This is because the image is quite dark

but due to the excess of lights on the house it us sufficiently illuminated and sort of

just shines out of the darkness. I think it's much more visually interesting than the rest]

Expanded Project... Inside

Earlier in the project I decided I would like to look inside people's houses at their living rooms because that is the most common place a visitor would go to on the whole and so I think a persons living room says alot about them. To put my mind to rest I decided to photograph a couple of living rooms to see how it turned out. Rather than moving anything in the room I decided to go with what was there so the images were more authentic.

The houses are from the same estate built 14 years ago, neither of these rooms have been psyically altered since.

I shot a return of each of the rooms to try to give a greater perspective. I am not very pleased at all with these images and am quite glad I did not pursue this path. One thing I would have been greatful for would have been a wider lens than a 50mm however. The first set has very different colour levels which just looks plain odd as does out of the windows in the bottom one..

302 Final Images

Below are the final images I handed in for module 302.

I chose these images as i felt they are the strongest images in terms of visually reflecting my concepts. In particular I find that the grouping of the far out and close up images creates a contrasting views of the utopian ideas and the harsher reality of the estates being built.

A more in depth critique can be found here.

Estate Three Final Options

I grouped the images like this because I felt that by looking at the house far away you get an over all view of it, but then when a 'decaying' detail is brought to light the house is put into a different perspective. From something like a supposed present day utopia to a more disheveled realistic view of the property.

The images are displayed next to each other to make it clearer which goes with which. The large white backgrounds represent how I think I am going to print them.

The images are the possible finals. I am not sure whether to include them all or edit the set down.

Below are scans of the possible layout ideas I tried out.

Below is what I think would look quite good in much larger print hung.

I think displaying the two rows (houses and details) next to each other it would create an interesting view of the images because they would not be directly next to each other, but easily couplable. It could be like separating the two view points.

Estate Three - Return-Return

When I returned to photograph more detailed images of certain parts of the house I began to notice that certain things that were 'decaying', for lack of a better word, that didnt appear to fit in or appeared much older then the few years old they are kept cropping up. There are three main things that this was the case for: rusting doorbells, peeling doors and decaying wood. Aside from these there wasnt really much showing at ground reachable levels to say much about the occupants or the house itself.

I found it quite suprising that up close the houses were pretty much as bland as they appeared from further away.

I aimed to photograph these details straight on in the same style essentially as I shot the houses from further away previsouly. I feel this makes a clearer statement about the houses, what is happening to them and maybe even about the occupants. As well as this the images will fit together better if they are in same style.

Estate Three - Return

Having reviewed my imaged from my first visit to Lytham Quays, I am happy with this estate being the focus of my work. In order to see the potential in the images and to see what the next step should be I grouped together the houses into sets so that similar styles of houses were together. From this I chose the set of houses with what I percieved to be the highest potential. I have chosen the two styles of houses below because they are quite similar (within their seperate groups) to each other which I found particularly interesting as they are all on the same cul-de-sac.

Whilst I was photographing the houses I decided that rather then essentially repeating what I had already done I should try and expand the project. For me the way in which I felt would be most effective that came to mind was to go closer in and shoot a particular aspect of the properties much closer in. When looking back on my images I can see that I did not really get close in to any particualr details that would be of interest to the viewer. There is also rather a lot of foliage in the images which does not really say alot. I can see that although my intentions have been to see how the occupants of houses have individualised them to make them their homes but now I have moved onto more newer, luxery housing estates it would appear non of the occupants have particualrly altered the exteriors of their properties. Instead what can be seen the the cracks the house is begining to show after only a few years of being built.

I think this detail shot is the strongest image from this shoot. I particularly like the tighter crop on the image to really draw your eye to the detail, the small sign that signals occupation and something personal against the repetition seen from a furter away view point. If i am to carry on with the attention to the details so to speak I think I need to be at least this close in to show the 'decaying' aspects in more detail.