Dorothea Lange, Riverbank Gas Station, 1940

Courtesy of: www.masters-of-photography.com

Dorothea Lange,Plantation Overseer and His field hands(near Clarksdale, Mississippi), 1936 Courtesy of: www.masters-of-photography.com

Dorothea Lange,Cross Roads Store (Person County, North Carolina, 1939

Courtesy of: www.masters-of-photography.com

Dorothea Lange's documentation of life, the land and surroundings in America during the Great depression is truly inspiring stuff. These photographs whilst candid show great composition, timing and evoke many feelings.
I particularly like Lange's,Cross Roads Store. I think it tells a compelling story about American lifestyle within the 30's and shows a unity between the diverse races pictured.

Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange is another American documentary photographer that I have an abundance of admiration for. Lange is best known for her documentary style throughout the depression era showing a human side of the tragedy caused.
Lange worked for the Resettlement Agency (RA) a U.S federal government program which relocated struggling urban families to new communities planned by the federal government from 1935 to 1939. Here she was able to document the life of the poor and forgotten through a momentous period in modern day history.

Monochrome Photography

Texture

I really like photos with texture. I like the dimensional quality it gives to them. It provides a realistic view even to the most abstract of photos.

I like to work with the textures of metal, plastics and hard rubbish. In particular I like the rusted look of taking pictures of metals. It gives a sense of grittiness and at times can be seen as mechanical.
The photo I have taken here shows the texture of the metal. It looks course , rusted and sharp and is the focal point of the photo. I also see the texture of the holes within the metal, I can imagine the feel of running my hands over and in and out of the holes. Surrounded by hard rubbish this photo is in theme with my folio of decay, abandonment and destruction.
Working with texture is something I would like to further explore and have already with my previous photos.

I absolutely love this piece of graffiti. This is one of the styles of graffiti/ artwork that I like to do myself.

I was also drawn to snap this picture as I like the way her hair intertwines and wraps around the corners of the walls, it is reminiscent of Greek Mythologies Medusa. I can just imagine the hair going even further and wrapping around the whole room.

Appetite for Destruction

The Hotel Hell- California Hotel

These Photos again were taken at the same abandoned location as the one below. This is my favourite photo I took on the day.
I tweaked the saturation and fiddled around with burning effects. I wanted to do this to give the pages of the phone books a burnt out feel. This also worked well with the wheel of the bicycles, lifting the colour and creating a more rusted look. Both the rusted wheel and the burnt books work together. The burning effects also worked on the painted lines on the asphalt. All these elements give the picture a burnt out and old junk feeling.
I also like this photo due to the composition of the books bringing you into the photograph.

The above photo was an outdoor shot of the Hotel Hell location where I did a shoot. Keeping in theme with my Urban Decay Project this location fits well.
I lifted the grass here. It fits well with my style of using stauration, solarizing and over exposure. I decided to saturate the grass to a lighter green and bring out the dead brown grass to lighter levels as it is quite dark in the original. I decide to do this as the grass becomes a colour you would see graffitied on the Hotel itself.

I took this is a picture at an abandoned location. I tried to salvage the over exposed image by adjusting the exposure i.e.: brightness and contrast. The over exposure, burning effects and lack of sharp defined lines and grittiness of the photo is the aim of the concept and style of photography I like to do.