Laundrette - Come Clean

Another one day assignment, similar to last weeks, Sale and Return.

I thought about the photographs I captured last week. I was really pleased with how they came out and enjoyed taking them. I tried to think of an interesting business to go to this week where I could get such interesting photos from.

I was lacking inspiration. We had to use a lighting kit as part of the brief and I know it can be quite difficult to work quickly with lighting on your own, it always helps to have an assistant and so we were advised to work in a pair.

Instantly I find this harder if there are no boundaries set down as to who is doing what. I feel that when I work with another photographer on the same shoot I don't photograph like I normally do. I seem to rush and not experiment as much. When I work on my own I find I build a stronger connection with the people I'm photographing and therefor slow down and see different things, I seem to gain there trust easier. Even though I made the first contact and explained everything to the staff I didn't feel like I was totally in control.

However I set up the lighting and we began to photograph. We were photographing in a laundrette, which always seem to be an interesting location.

It was a small laundrette and once the lighting kit and tripod were up, there was very little room to move around.

I took a couple of shots but my mind was soon onto how to make a portrait work. It was obvious that the woman we were talking too was a little shy about me taking her photo. I was thinking about the washer draws and wanted to try a shot through the open doors. I huddled up in the corner of the room, squashed between a dusty fire extinguisher and set up a shot so that the time she had to sit in front of the camera would be to a minimal.

I positioned the lighting, just to fill in the photograph as the natural light was good.

I envisioned a member of staff sat behind the washer draws looking straight through the door at the camera.

Like I said, Rosaline was a little nervous about having her photo taken and was even more unsure when I asked her to face the camera. From now on I'm going to show models how I want them to position themselves. If someone agrees to have there photo taken it is likely they will be happy to position themselves in the way I show them.

This was my favourite photograph of the day. Unfortunately I don't think that the portrait works as well as I was imagining it. The photo above is what I was picturing in my head.

The remaining part of the brief was to take photographs with the intention of being published in a design magazine.

I feel that these 2 photographs above would be suitable for a design magazine but I was looking for a photograph that would take away from the obvious laundrette photos that I was getting. This is when I started to not look at the washers or the objects in the room but more about the other components that made up the room. The floor pattern is what caught my eye.