project 4 photo montage

 

I chose the location of a downtown building because its history intrigues me. I’ve driven past this building many times, as I work across the road in the evenings. I never really knew what was inside until about a year ago, when a family friend told me it was actually a thrift/old office building with five floors packed with random things old TVs, vacuums, newspapers, and even a white ceramic kiln on the very top level.

I’ve only been inside once, since the owners rarely open it, and when they do, they don’t announce it aside from a small “open” sign by the entryway. The one time I managed to get inside, I stayed for about two hours. The floors seem endless, and the building is much bigger than it looks from the outside. I actually spoke with the owners, who said the building has been passed down many times and was even a factory at one point (which explains why one floor is entirely filled with old vacuum parts). Ever since that visit, I’ve viewed the building as even more mysterious, and I keep waiting for it to open again so I can explore the parts I missed.

I wanted to capture the building from the street view to show how it stands alone, and I find the point perspective more interesting. I played around with the stop sign, building sign, and speed sign by creating their own layer and placing them on top. If I were to go back, I’d experiment more with the opacities. I forgot during editing and ended up using the images at full value. As I was writing about the inspiration behind choosing this building, I thought it would be interesting to see it at dusk to add a bit more mystery to the image. I could possibly achieve that by adjusting the exposure and color of the final montage.