Photographic Sketchbook: Sense of Place, Part One

glimpse-of-ys-part-one
The first tangible assignment I have been tasked with in my documentary photography/oral history class is to put together a slideshow of images that evoke a sense of place. The sights should be bolstered and made real with the sounds and the smells of the scene.

I wanted to get shots that represent the uniqueness of Yellow Springs.

We are a bit quirky, our parks and facilities are anything but new and modern; our sidewalks are often interrupted by the roots and stumps of large trees. You don’t see our bicycles in Beavercreek.

From time to time in the Yellow Springs News, a narrative erupts in the Letters to the Editor, often in response to an increase in taxes, or the proposal of a development or public works project: “Do you want to end up like Oakwood?”

Oakwood is a town on the edge of the City of Dayton, an upscale, more polished and conservative version of the Ohio small town (if an upscale appendage of the city fits in that category). Their parks are neat and well maintained, their grocer sports fingerprint verification member cards and shiny gold lettering. Their sidewalks are navigable, their bikes are new.

We, Yellow Springs, are not Oakwood. Largely (and in more ways than one), we do not even aspire to be like Oakwood (although I have had moments of secret longing for a quality or two). I have attempted to get some shots that show Yellow Springs in all of it’s quirky glory, rusted edges and all. I am reworking the photos into smaller, thematic galleries for the homepage (and/or Quicktime movies with captured audio), but I post this original slideshow in order to document the rough beginnings of the process.

It begins large and unfocused, with pictures that didn’t really pan out. The pictures are presented in the order in which I took them on my bike, and they end when my kids lost patience watching me practice my new-found interest in photographing something other than they, themselves.

The shots were taken at mid-day in full sun with a Fuji FinePix s7000 (consumer grade digital SLR) on automatic setting (except when on partial manual- which is hit or miss considering my lack of photography knowledge). They were then edited in iPhoto (color bolded, edges blurred) and exported at 640 x 480 to a folder, then dropped into Keynote- good and humble shots alike.