Over the past few weeks I’ve done about four seperate shoots. The first two shoots focussed on capturing aspects of Brunswick’s grit at night, the third focussed on capturing aspects of Brunswick’s gentrification during the day and the fourth focussed on capturing both grit and gentrification at night. I’ll give you a taste of each seperate shoot by providing five photos from each shoot below, then I’ll go into detail about each shoot.

The First Shoot – Brunswick’s ‘Grit’ at Night

Shot 1: Carpark

Shot 2: Abandoned Taxi

Shot 3: Pedestrian Overpass

Shot 4: Windows

Shot 5: Brunswick Bath’s

Shoot 1: I went out on my first shoot the night before we were presenting our compendium ideas because I really wanted to have some actual shoots to present to the class and the panel so I could get some solid feedback. For this shoot (and the rest of my shoots) I rented out a Canon 50mm prime lens with a low aperture so I could get some awesome low light shots. The prime lens was amazing, because not only does it allow you to capture images you otherwise may be unable to capture but it’s got amazing optics which just seem to make the image look BETTER. I really loved all the photos from this shoot, a: because I felt inspired but b: the sky was super bright that night and the sky had turned a kind of purple-y colour, which looked awesome in some of the shots and gave the street scenes a really interesting colour palette. In this first shoot I was just trying to photograph anything ‘gritty’ that I came across, I wasn’t particularly looking for a certain thing. So it acted as a kind of ‘appraisal’ of the entire area.

 

The Second Shoot – Brunswick’s ‘Grit’ at Night

Shot 1: Railway Tracks

Shot 2: Warehouse Window

Shot 3: Bike Path

Shot 4: Alleyway

Shot 5: Delivery Trucks

Shoot 2: On the second shoot I already received feedback about my first set of photos, i’d already viewed the first set of photos I’d shot and I’d also done some post-processing to them to see how they look. So I spent much of the second shoot trying to ‘recreate’ or at least mirror the images in the first shoot I did. One major thing I noticed in my first series of shots is that a lot of the images has this yellow caste to them because of the yellow streetlights they were situated near. So I purposely captured images that had these particular colour tones so they would look cohesive with other things i’d shot. I also tried to get more images of the backstreets, hence the alleyway shot and images of the industrial food warehouses around Brunswick, hence the shot of the truck. I do like these images but they felt slightly less inspired to me.

The Third Shot: Brunswick’s Gentrification at Daytime

Shot 1: Recycle Boutique

Shot 2: Cafe

Shot 3: Sunday Clothing Store

Shot 4:

Shot 5: Real Estate Development

Shoot 3: For the third shoot (after receiving feedback about how to capture the ‘gentrified’ aspects of Brunswick) I went out during the day to capture gentrified aspects of Brunswick. This shoot was particularly hard for me because it felt extremely uninspired. When I shot the gritty images I loved everything I was looking at, I thought all of it was beautiful. The process of walking around Brunswick’s backstreets and visually searching for something that you ‘particularly’ liked or something that ‘touched’ you and photographing it felt super creative. Walking around Brunswick looking for new buildings, cafe’s and bar’s and then trying to photograph them felt dry and stale. Essentially this just involved me walking around Brunswick trying to find creative ways to shoot various ‘products of gentrification’. This was quite hard as people don’t really like you taking random photos of their cafes and bars etc. and it’s hard to make a photo of a gentrified cafe or a bank look visually interesting and still be intellectually valid. I wasn’t sure how I felt about these shots and I wasn’t sure how i’d blend them in with my ‘gritty’ shots. I tried creating a collection set on Lightroom and blending them in together, but something felt non-cohesive about it, and not in a good way.

 

The Fourth Shoot: Brunswick’s Grit & Gentrification at Night

Shot 1: Parking Sign

Shot 2: Godfather’s Pizza

Shot 3: Apartment Construction

Shot 4: Chemist Warehouse

Shot 5: Restricted

Shoot 4: After receiving feedback from Bella I felt a lot more confident about what to shoot this time round. Essentially I showed Bella my ‘gentrified’ shots and she said that rather than focus on taking photographs of the products of gentrification such as banks, cafes, etc. that I should shoot the division caused by gentrification. Such as my last shot in the previous series of the real estate development sign and the second photo from my compendium ideas presentation of sidewalk construction. She said she really liked both of these images and that I should shoot more of this stuff, she also suggested I shoot the gentrified photos also at night time so the photobook looks more cohesive. So for this shoot rather than focussing on taking photos of grit or gentrification I decided to take pictures that spoke of both. The first photo features a parking sign covered in various artistic stickers with a construction crane looming in the background, the second photo shows the cultural background and history of the area, the third features apartment buildings being completed, the fourth showcasing mass consumerism and artistic protest and the fifth showing attempted governmental/council restrictions being placed upon the area. I really loved this shoot because I felt I could explore my original topic more deeply and it shows the way that grit and gentrification blend, often seamlessly to the eye, but very inharmoniously.  This shoot provided a number of images that really helped round off my photobook so that it not only makes more sense but it has more intellectual depth and validity.

 

Until next time,

Louise Alice Wilson