Picture ESsay

Picture Essay

Picture Essay

When I first began this project I was at a loss for an argument that I felt I strongly wanted to convey so I started from the pictures that I wanted to use. I was looking through some pictures that I had taken before and stumbled across some beautiful photos that I had taken last month at Allerton Park. I felt that those pictures really showed the irreplaceable beauty of nature. From that sprang my idea I wanted to express a juxtaposition between the indoors and the outdoors emphasizing the juxtaposition between nature and man-made structures. I looked through my pictures and found a couple from the architecture building that I thought were fitting and went took out my camera to take more pictures. I really did not know what I was looking for as I went along because I only really had a sort of theme rather than a narrative that I was looking to tell. So I just took pictures as I walked around my apartment building

. As I took the pictures I realized that I was taking a lot of photographs of doorways and exit signs. I came up with a story as I was going along and also reviewing the pictures I was taking. Generally I wanted to express a sense of confinement in the man-made structure, my apartment building, and of the freedom of being in nature. For a narrative I decided to go with a bit of the fantastic to connect the two parts of my essay, in and out, so I decided since I was photographing so many doorways, that one of those doorways would be a sort of magical door that would lead to a sort of nature paradise. I really felt it was important to not just take pictures that suited the story but learn how to use pictures to make the story, so the only purposeful picture I took was the one of my hand on the door slightly pushing it open. I did not want to use the pictures in some chronological order so I l put together pictures from different angles and from various distances. I wanted close up shots juxtaposed with distance shots. I thought that my pictures of the camera and the temperature control were really interesting and indicated really the controlled nature of the building—we are being watched and our environment is being controlled. I realize that we are not supposed to show any text and I really did not mean to include exit signs in so many shots, but in reviewing my film I realized that they are everywhere in my building and seeing them really promotes this feeling of being trapped having to find a way to get out so I felt it was important to my story. I tried compose my slide show in a way that moved forward, such as putting the photos with exits signs closer together so that at one feels like they need to escape and then having the allerton pictures come up.

For the Allerton pictures I must admit I did not really know how to put them in order so I just tried to put different shots together so that statues might be followed by trees. I included the statue photographs because even though they are man-made, they are outside and more integrated with nature, sort of a happy balance. I do not believe altogether that people might get a strong sense of the story from my picture essay but that they might understand the general feeling of the theme. I cannot help but think that including a soundtrack might help express my story in a clearer way.