Evaluation

Exhibition 

I decided that I would display my work in a room mounted on canvas with all 12 of my images on each of the walls .

Preview :

My research into Urbexing and Abandonment Photography helped me to discover a wide range of photographers who's technique, approaches and image manipulation techniques are very unique .Photographers such as Andrew Moore inspired me from this abandonment collection , especially the series of images taken in Detroit .I Decided I wanted to Photograph Iconic abandoned buildings and try to capture the beauty of their character whilst the building still exists.

I was inspired by Niki Feijen who’s photography I admired her because of her ability to edit her images and because of how she staged people within the scene. I started researching Urbex and abandoned photographers in my local area whose work I admired and I signed up to a forum,28Dayslater.co.uk where photographers exchange details of their shoots and locations of iconic abandoned buildings . I particularly liked the work of Matthew Christopher’s because of the diversity in between what he shoots .For my first photo shoot I decided to photograph an abandoned fire station located in Warrington it had previously been abandoned due to there being a fire and the building being unable to use. I decided to photograph this because its not everyday you get to explore a fire station and I thought I would find some interesting things there. I started the shoot just past mid day and I had spent all day there I had explored the tower, the offices and what looked like the garages, This was a great experience and I found some significant items as you can see in my images from the shoot. This place could easily have been converted or used as something else, I gained some great images from this shoot and intend on going back to this location with models and starting another portfolio piece. 

My second photo shoot was at a old peoples home local to me in Winstanley I decided to go and shoot this because of the personal information it might have inside as this would create a good story for my abandoned building, I must admit the building was in terrible state as the roof was falling in and everything was smashed, however I continued and photographed the bedrooms kitchen , roof and corridors as you can see my images were dark and I had to edit these a lot using an HDR filter. 

I didn't feel as if this building was iconic so I decided to arrange another shoot of the Duke of Lancaster In Wales which is an abandoned ship I thought that this would have been perfect for the iconic status as the Duke of Lancaster was made by the makers of the Titanic. From my researched I knew it had been graffiti'd on, whilst photographing this magnificent ship my only thought was that this is not being used to its full potential and we should utilise abandoned buildings/ places for the public to access them .

The next Photo shoot I did was at an abandoned theme Park 'Camelot' I had seen on Photography websites and had read that it recently closed and had seen other peoples images of Camelot, However I was told that this was now used at a Police Riot training facility, after looking up on Google the Theme Park i decided to photograph and document this before it was destroyed, I was really impressed with this location as I got to see the whole of the building and a ride. I only had a limited time to get around the park before being leaving off the area, after processing the images I was pleased to add this to my abandonment documentary, 

I used my tripod and the lighting to my advantage on both of these shoots as you can see in my final images .My images are high quality because of the tripod and light exposure, I decided to add an HDR filter onto most of my images I did this because of the textures within abandoned buildings I think personally that the HDR filter makes the image pop adding more depth of filed and better contrast .

My research then lead to another two Photographer Matthias Haker and Andrew Brook’s work inspired me and from this I started to research into abandoned asylums, after days of contacting people on forums I had found two asylums one in Whittingham and the another in Denbigh, which both of the having extensive background in ghost witnessing and murders. I was careful and contacted the owners before entering these premises as these were very unsafe to enter and had an escort around the buildings however I was limited to time but gained great experience from this tour of the abandoned buildings.

I think this brief has exposed the gesture of utilizing these buildings and places for the public to gain access to. Some of my photo shoots were unsuccessful due to the condition of the building however as you can see in my final images there are plenty of abandoned buildings which could generate attraction in the public eye for renovation and making use of these chrematistic places/buildings we have.