Assignment three: buildings in use (set 4)

For the fourth set of images I focused on a fairground in Coney Island whilst on a trip to New York. This location is quite a loose interpretation of ‘building’, being a collection of temporary structures in use and of course mostly outdoors. However I thought it would be an interesting and challenging place to photograph, and could make for some great images. I chose to shoot at night with 120 colour negative film loaded into my Rolleiflex. I thought shooting long exposures would be an engaging approach in showing how the space and structures are used. Colour negative film is very good for long exposures due to its wide latitude and natural colour reproduction. I had to time my shutter speeds carefully to compensate for reciprocity failure, therefore I checked the Kodak Portra 400 reciprocity charts and made a note of the data before going out to shoot.

The first image shows a busy area of the fairground and some of the temporary structures. The long exposure works well here as the group of people walking past the stall on the left is blurred out enough to remove focus away from the people. Instead the viewer is left to observe the structures in the frame. The bright lights, garish decor and temporary structures show us the nature of the space and its use.

The second image shows the entrance to the fairground. I chose a slightly faster shutter speed here to capture some of the people in the frame. The structure on the right is quite obviously a ticket office and I thought retaining sharpness in the human subjects would be useful in showing the function of the building.

The image above shows a ferris wheel. I chose a much longer shutter speed for this subject as I wanted to capture the flow and movement of the structure. Whilst the resulting image is quite busy with a lot of elements I liked the addition of the family on the left who remained still long enough to appear sharp in the final image. I was quite pleased with the final images and although it was an experimental approach, I thought the results were effective in showing the use of the temporary structures within the fairground.