Through the Window

Through the Window

Although college has finished there is still a group of us who stay in touch via Flickr and Facebook.  To stop us from putting our cameras away and to push our creativity we set a photographic theme each month.  For June 2012 we are shooting to the title 'Through the Window'.  

If you saw my first post on this blog you would have seen me gazing in amazement through my dining room window into an underwater world.  Having put my Photoshop tools to one side I set about looking at the theme more seriously.  

I would love to be considered as a documentary photographer and so I looked at the theme from that viewpoint.  I have driven through many small towns and villages and seen row after row of boarded up shops that have failed to make it through the economic recession.  I started to investigate what is left of the shops once the business inside has sold off everything and moved out.  It was very easy to find these abandoned premises as the 'for let/lease' signs mark them out clearly.

Walking around the county town of Shrewsbury in Shropshire I was surprised at how well this town is handling the recession and how strong the businesses seemed.  Moving only a short distance away from the busy town centre showed a different story and there were entire rows of shops that now lay empty.  

Pressing my camera up against the glass to reduce reflections and light flare I took a series images at around twenty locations.  Some had clearly been long abandoned whilst others still had remnants of the previous business still showing. 

The image shown above is my favourite from the series.  The doorway acts as an immediate focal point but then the viewer should start to notice more details.  The grimy and buckled walls and the badly stained carpets make the space feel cheap and dingy.  The floating ceiling panels serves to act as a counterbalance for the heavy darkness of the carpet and the leading lines in the image all point at the dark void of the doorway.

If you would like to see more images from this set you can find them on my portfolio HERE