REFLECTION

This project stymied me at a lot of levels.  First of the constraints of a topic seemed artificial to me.  I don’t think as a photographer I would go out seeking to photograph things that conformed to a theme I had previously identified.  I’m pretty sure that’s not how inspiration works.  Beyond that, finding something I’m interested in, and then addressing whether it adequately fits the theme was stressful.

Thankfully I have a love of abandoned places, which inherently fits the theme of the human condition, so I simply had to find one.  The choice to do the series in black and white was an easy one for me.  Abandoned places are stripped of human presence, and therefore stripped of vibrance and life.  Stripping the subject of color is an attempt to reflect that.  

I found when shooting I had to call on all my skills to get the exposure correct, going from a bright exterior to a very dark interior.  I found the challenge incredibly rewarding.  The biggest problem with this series is limiting it to 10 photographs.  Ideally I would have come back on several days, taken thousands, and whittled down to a few dozen.  These 10 were culled from about 350, and I was only able to spend about 90 minutes on the site, not willing to press my … let’s say not exactly authorized entrance luck.  Given months on the project I could come back many times, in a varied time and interval duration without arousing too much suspicion.  I believe I will actually do that in the future.  

All in all I am happy with how the project turned out, although I am excited to go back and try again.