Undertaking the assignment:
The brief of this assignment was to give a selection of
images that express the character of my neighbourhood. This was an
exercise to show the type of area I live in and I wanted to show you
my immediate area as opposed to generally showing a broad area of the
whole of the town.
I live in a rough neighbourhood where everyone tends to
keep to themselves and stay behind locked doors. My estate is
synonymous with crime and police presence is an everyday occurrence.
But this perception of my estate has really controlled how I can
undertake this assignment.
I am not comfortable walking around my estate with any
of my camera equipment, not even my compact camera, so I have decided
to shoot this entire assignment using my Iphone, however, I may be
able to use my compact camera for a few shots when I get off my
immediate estate and a bit closer to town. But even shooting with my
phone camera needs to be done discreetly and with company. Walking
around brandishing anything that is worth a few quid, or looks like
it does, is still an easy target to the minority of people and I
daren't take any photos of people incase I anger the wrong person. As
you may notice, I don't feel particularly safe undertaking this
assignment.
I shot the images for this assignment over a few days.
Firstly, I took a walk around my immediate estate with my family. My
estate has been built like a big cul-de-sac with one main road
through the middle with all the streets stemming off it. Here, I was
able to capture the basis of my collection giving the viewer a
general outlook of the structure of the estate. I was also able to
capture several symbols including the community notice board, street
communal field and school sign, to emphasize that it is it's own
community consisting of many families who are catered for on the
estate itself.
Visually, the estate is very attractive and to look at
pictures of it on a lovely sunny day, you wouldn't think that it was
a rough area. I tried to capture visually pleasing images of the
general estate, even venturing to wasteland not far from my door,
just at the estate entrance, where you wouldn't think there was a
housing estate at all.
Another walk, again with company, took me on a common
walk, the main walkway from my estate to the town centre which is
only a short walk away. This walk involves walking under an old stone
bridge and through a back lane, which houses the garden entrances and
garages of the old terraced housed streets on the outskirts of town.
Walking through this lane gives a more appropriate view of the
estate, even though it is technically not on the estate itself. Here
I wanted to capture the broken fences and graffiti that is common in
this walkway where people can undertake this vandalism in the
shadows. You also get gangs of kids hanging around under the bridge
of an evening which is why it's the part of my area that I really
don't like and tend not to venture to unless I have to.
I also included a couple of images on the walk from 'the
lane' into the town centre. I tried to capture the difference of
appearance of the streets from each side of the lane and also the
fact that in the space of a few minutes walk, my area changes from a
suburban cul-de-sac, to an attractive historical street to a town
centre, and a more poverty stricken town centre at that, with more
empty, run down buildings than lively welcoming shops.
As I was undertaking this assignment on foot, I only
ventured out on dry days, but the weather was kind and I had a lot of
sun as well. I took quite a few images but then chose the best ones
from the small selection, which I felt showed a good overview of my
neighbourhood both visually and characteristically.
I've kept all my images to Abobe RGB colour profile as I
intend to print all my images out even though these will not be sent
for assessment submission. I have also kept the images full size so
that they are true to shooting. I am a big fan of using black and
white for documentary style photography such as this assignment
however, I decided to keep the images to colour to enhance the beauty
of the area and not just to focus on the subject. The idea of using
my Iphone may not be seen as good by photography standards but I
think that it's quite fitting for the assignment being as the images
will be of a lower quality, much like the area that I live in. This
adds to my conceptual approach to this assignment.
Final Images:
Conclusion:
My aim was to give an insight into the immediate area that I live in. These images portray that. Had I used my camera equipment I could've possibly tried to capture more arty type shots but that doesn't portray my estate at all. I live in a basic neighbourhood, pretty on the outside but with some dark secrets. I wanted to show that it is a family based community which is shrouded with poverty and a bad reputation, which could be evident if you were to look for it. I'm happy that my images portray that.
