Connecting Essay - Dylan Kasson

Here is one of my images from my fifth shoot. This is a HDR processed image, created from three different image. I set my camera to auto bracketing mode, and set the main exposure to 1/160 to avoid camera shake and any motion blur in case any people were visible in the shot. I took three image, with one being under exposed, one being over exposed and one being correctly exposed. The HDR processing used in Photoshop combined the three images to create this final image. It has a wide tonal range, due the HDR processing and the fact I shot the base images in a RAW format. There are some dark tones shown the wall to the left of the image and the path that leads along the bottom of the image. There are also some light tones shown in the building that takes up a large part of the background of the image. There are a lot rough and worn textures shown throughout the image, particularly along the path in the foreground. These textures create connotations of the rough side of urban lifestyles, like the constant presence of crime and frequent graffiti and vandalism. The railings at either side of the path create leading lines, leading the viewer to the background where the large office building stands.

Here is an image by documentary photographer Dylan Kasson. The image depicts a shopping trolley left in the middle of a storm drain, and it has been taken from the top of the storm drain at a low angle looking down on the trolley. It's in colour but the colours have been desaturated, giving the image a bleak mood. It appears that a slight purple filter has also been applied to the image, which adds some warmness to the harshness of the mostly grey colour pallete. The image has been taken in portrait orientation rather than landscape, which means that attention is drawn more to the punctum of the image, which is the trolley being left there, rather than the vastness of the storm drain. The presence of the trolley and the fact that the photo has been taken from so far away from it could suggest that the area it's taken in is deprived or abandoned; the trolley is a symbol of consumerism and it being abandoned could suggest that consumerism has died out in the area due to deprivation.

My image has some links to Kasson's image, particularly in location. Kasson's image depicts an area that is clearly urban, yet appears to be old and worn out, which is similar to the location used in my image. I also took influence from his use of texture; I tried to capture a lot of rough textures to portray the gritty side of urban life, which is the presence of old structures from the brutalist era of the 1980s being present within modern urban towns.