warmer than here: January 2016

I have received my tutor's feedback, attached below for formal submission records:

General comments I can extract from Mike's feedback are:

I need to get more personal. There is a two fold reason here on why I am so detached; first I am and have been for the last ten years an engineer, always interested in arts but not really involved. I'm more a factual, down to earth person... and really really struggle to find meaning and emotions in things, or express the emotions art could make me feel. Will work harder on that! Second reason could be, I think, language. But in reality I think I can also find it difficult to describe, express these emotional, involved perspective of my own (or others) photography in Spanish...
Editing - I need to work and experiment more with edition. Probably just going for a walk and shooting and then trying to edit and select a coherent set of pictures and presenting them together should be a good exercise. Beginning tomorrow!

I have therefore, based on the feedback, reflected on the exercise and re-edited the images. I have taken out some which were not fitting in the new story, based on my memories and personal experience rather than visual aspect of the images (cats, girl behind the fence, nature vs city). This decision has been tough, as I did liked the images (visually) but it is true that when you create a story and identify what is your personal link with them, some of the images fall out of the context.
Discarded images:

New set

My childhood neighbourhood

To do the assignment of the square mile I have chosen my parents neighbourhood. I moved into this area of Madrid when I was eleven years old. I was coming from an area of Madrid, which is the one I consider as the place I grew up, in the outskirts of the city. In this new neighbourhood I went to school one year, and to high school four more years. It is in this area also where the swimming pool in which I have spent most of my adolescence (I was a synchronise swimmer and practised for three hours every day) is located, so I chose this as the place to re-explore and photograph in this assignment.

I moved from my parents’ home in 2005, and then I moved from Madrid to Cardiff in 2011. It was only a couple of months ago that I came back, so found the opportunity to photograph some of my memories really enthralling.

The photographers I have looked for inspiration were Stephen Shore and Eggleston. Their images of the conventional daily life and the colour of their film photographs is engrossing. Also influenced by them I have researched Alec Soth. I particularly like the façades in his Niagara series.

I also enjoyed Keith Arnett's series of his neighbours, and how captivating are Tom Hunter and Venetia Darden's portraits. However, I found difficult to approach people and asking them for a picture. Also there were not many people in the city as it was a bank holiday this weekend.

While taking the images for the Square Mile I had the photographers mentioned above in mind. In some aspects a couple of the photos taken would have a reminiscence of their work.

This is a retake of the assignment, after receiving feedback from my tutor I realised that my first feeling that the set was not sticking together was right. This set of photos have less visual quality in my opinion, and technically are not good enough yet, but they certainly tell a bit of myself and the area I grew up.

All images are edited with a film filter in Lightroom software (VSCO cam package) so the feel and colour is similar to Eggleston's colour images. This gives them some consistency and continuity.

I have realised I tend to shoot with wide lengths, though I have a couple of prime lens that I love, not particularly wide.

Compared with the first attempt of the assignment, I have included more people, and a mix of architectural and people photos. I tend to find every photo more interesting if it has a person in it. I guess it is a personal take.