Assignment 4 - Amendments & evaluation

Evaluation:
Had I not had the brief to work too, my images would have been quite different. The challenges I found with the brief were establishing a plan for images that were of a non-tourism approach, this was really quite tough as the area I'd chosen was a key tourist destination for the city.I ignored the usual scenes that appeared in promotional publications, preferring the scenes that meant something to me as a local and also to people I'd spoken to during my planning.

My desire to take night time photo's of deprived areas following my inspiration from Todd Hido's images of houses at night time was thwarted by my nervousness with pointing my camera on a tripod at people's houses in areas I am not familiar with. I therefore changed my choice of area in order to take this kind of image. I would still like to produce a set of night time  images in such areas as these I find interesting and have more emotional connections for me.

I created a dilemma for myself in that my night time photography produced 2-3 nice images, but also my day time images had also. Putting them together I wondered if they looked like a set. After great deal of thought I decided to replace one of the day time with a night time, resulting in an equal set of 3 night with 3 day. I need to tie them together to consider the order of appearance in the blog and in the prints. When viewing Todd Hido's images when displayed in exhibitions, they are quite mided up, like jigsaws that just seem to work, telling a different story with each arrangement, giving the viewer the task of creating their own story. Hido prints out the images and puts into pairs, which then creates a chain that shows the shape and structure of the story, a 'paper movie'.



This is the approach I took to my final selection and the resulting order of appearance. I feel this technique was very useful, it allowed me to move the images around without the constraints of a keyboard and screen, giving the images an instant quality, allowing my thoughts and feelings to flow freely without delay. I'm sure I will use this approach in future.

 Hido states in his book 'On Landscapes, the interior and the nude':

"The viewer should be led along and then surprised. Just when the viewer knows what's coming, do something different. When they've just seen a number of houses at night, introduce a landscape from the daytime. The reader will think 'where'd this come from, and why is it so blurry' (many of Hido's landscapes are often blurry) That picture is there specifically to keep the reader engaged, to be the wrong picture at the night time. In a way, it contaminates the rhythm and spoils the sequence, but in just the right way. Todd Hido 'on landscapes, interiors, and the nude', Aperture p114.



Amendments:

My tutor commented that I may wish to replace the daytime images with night time in order to produce a cohesive set of images, the following replace images 1, 2 & 3:

I chose this image to replacement for image 1,  with the influence of Todd Hido in mind, I chose images that had a sense of feeling and reminiscence, with this image I was reminded of my daughters dolls house with the Georgian windows and pastel colour, the Christmas tree in the centre window, although not immediately noticeable, adds an element of interest and the perfectly placed street light gives the impression of a very bright moon. 

This image shows the Christmas tree outside the cathedral with all the messages from loved ones for this special time of year, once the viewer's eye moves from the star down to the bottom of the tree where the messages are pinned, a woman it noticed to the right of the frame, bending down looking at the messages, adding a human and a suggestion of emotion to the image

This replacement for image 3, shows part of the rear of the Bishops Palace where part of the castle wall is visible, when looking at this view while taking the image, I was drawn to the light on in the roof window with the light on in the porch way, with the car waiting outside the door, has someone arrived to collect a resident who's not yet ready to leave perhaps?