I suppose I need to declare my stance on photography before it can be judged correctly. After all, there are many different standards by which to judge photography. So, to issue a bit of a disclaimer - I've decided that on this blog, I'll post all photos that are worth exposure for whatever reason, regardless of whether they are good or bad photos artistically. I prefer to set the scene of my photo shoot and give a fuller impression of the experience, rather than create a showcase of my photography. After all, this is a personal blog, meaning its purpose is to tell my story, not to be of artistic value. I'm no professional or commercial photographer - I'm an amateur and a student with a casual interest in art.
To me, 90% of the success criteria for artistic photography is artistic vision, and the remaining percentage is technical skill. If a photograph succeeds in expressing what you want to express, it's a success. Even if your message is simply 'Look at how beautiful this is'. I'm no expert on photography technology, I'm no expert on cameras.
I'm an opportunist - I take my little, handbag-size digital camera everywhere I go so that when I see something worthy of immortalisation, I'm always ready to capture it on camera. Photos I post on this blog are no indication of where my interest in photography lies, i.e. I'm by no means a nature photographer. I felt the need to specify that, haha. Artistically, I find urban life much more interesting than rural life. In Europe, anyway. Outside Europe, that changes. However, due to the fact that I live in the suburbs, I suspect a lot of photos posted on this blog will be of a suburban environment. I also find suburbia artistically interesting...Thank you, Arcade Fire, for popularising that sentiment.
I feel there's a certain electricity to suburban scenes, if depicted well...they have an air of imminence and tension. I mean, in the wider scale of things, what is the significance of suburbia in art, cinema, literature? What does it stand for? The image of a suburban street epitomises mundanity. A lot of art over the past few decades has dictated that small town environments are never an end, they're the means to the end, the place that needs to be escaped from, the transitional area - suburbia is nowhere, neither here nor there. To me, suburbia can never mean more than a cage. It's the middle class, it's ennui, it's the machine, it's millions of lives spent in a rut, going nowhere. I'm aware that I sound very conspicuously teenage.
I feel suburban scenes have a significance something akin to 'something is about to happen, something is about to break free from this, because nothing can survive here for long'. It's bittersweet. Perhaps I'm a tad pessimistic. Maybe when I'm older I'll have a more positive view of the suburbs.
Anyway, that applies to a lot of the photographs I take. Not so much these ones, as the focus of the photos isn't on the artificial, man-made structures in them, it's on the natural ones. However, even despite that, the details of the photos make the suburban nature of the setting inescapable. The narrow street, the houses, the pylons.
Also, all these photos are unedited. They were taken in Brookmans Park, a village next to Potters Bar, in Hertfordshire. I was photographing the sunset on the walk to a friend's house. I'm inclined to say I think a few of these pictures are really pretty.
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