Abandoned – Artificial Light (write up)

So for the first brief, we were given the topic of “abandoned” with the use of natural and artificial light. The topic is fairly broad, so I knew there could be a good variety of things I could do with this project.
I wanted to think “outside of the box” – a lot of people were discussing finding abandoned warehouses, vacant areas that had been worn down, etc. I initially wanted to be different to everyone else with what I was going to do, so I sketched some ideas down. My first thoughts were to maybe talk to some homeless people in town, which I thought fit quite well with the brief and was relevant to the title. However, weighing up the risk/safety factors and asking the persons individually, I decided not to go with the idea. Instead, I thought to look in to toys. After watching the film Toy Story 3, I looked in to the abandonment of toys and children growing older leaving their toys behind. Initially in my opinion I thought the idea would stand out and be interesting enough to be creative with, rather than finding a couple of worn down buildings which would take a lot of careful planning and attentiveness due to the safety risks. I visited some charity shops in the centre of Leeds to see if I could find a raggedy toy to use for my project and came across an old teddy, which was ideal. I thought it was relevant to our project title, the fact of someone giving up toys to a charity shop relates to the film Toy Story and how they’re unwanted. I messed about with the toy and took it out on to the streets. I went out quite late at night to creative an eerie effect, which I thought would play out well with the teddy. Using my own tripod, I first set my camera to a low ISO, with a high aperture and a long shutter speed of roughly 20/30 seconds in order to catch the light streams of the remote cars on a cross roads next to the bus station. The idea of light streaming on roads I thought would look attractive with the toy and could relate to the “artificial light” side of the brief. I thought it could also be seen as ironic as streets and roads are never abandoned – until the night that is – and how children should never be on their own crossing a road. The streets were empty, with a mere couple of cars on the road – the photos came out dark and lonely, with the feeling of abandonment as the cars travel past the toy. I moved the teddy to a few different positions and locations surrounding the bus station and under the bridge, along with changing the settings occasionally to create different effects. I also used red and blue filter settings that are in-built with my camera to try and resemble different moods and tones within the image. A few of the images don’t actually have any light streams; therefore I played with a smaller aperture to emphasize the “abandoned” teddy along side the empty road. The images with the stream of car lights in the background are very subtle as there were limited amount of cars on the road being so late at night, though I think this adds a wonderful mood to the images. However, I’m happy with how they’ve turned out and I’m pleased that I tried something a little different with the brief. Being creative is important to a photographer as stamina is to an athlete and I truly believe if you’re persistent with an idea you can make anything happen.