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Night in the Liberties
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I can’t deny having aspirations of documentary photography, of telling a story and communicating with imagery. Creating a piece of work that says something about a place is a deceptively ambitious task. It’s not enough to merely present a location, even walking around a place can leave you bereft of any particular insight if you are distracted enough, there’s just too much information.
Telling a story, for me, is about finding the lines that connect the many, many dots, the details, and above all, making it beautiful.
After a string of recent shootings i decided to take on a personal project of photographing one of Dublin cities most notorious neighbourhoods, the Liberties. These are a few photos from my first visit, i might post more later.
All critiques are more than welcome! Thanks!
“after a string of recent shootings”…..it seems like you mean actual gun shots Desmond, rather than photo shots…..
Anyway, fair play to you for getting stuck in.
First point….are these night shots? They seem more like ‘Dusk shots’, which I suppose has relevance for how one takes the photos. Were they taken from Tripod or Hand? I am guessing Tripod…..which leads to the next question…..did you get any grief? I’d love to go down to O’Devaney Gardens at night time and take some shots of all the clothes lines in the courtyards between the flats..its quite atmospheric..but I’d be a bit worried about who I might meet there and what they’d think of me taking photos of the place. To be fair, if I spotted some punter taking photos on my road at night time I probably wouldn’t be to impressed….or definitely the neighbours wouldn’t be.
By way of critique I think the third works best, angle of the cars is good and the angular shapes on the building are framed well. They all work well….only small critique is that in number 4 the roof is not quite parallel with the frame of the photo (or maybe its a ‘trompe l’oeil’….)
I like the colours in 2 and 3 and the vignetting(?) gives a great feel. For me 1 and 4 are a bit dark where I’d like to make out more detail. Were all your pictures taken from outside the flats, I’d like to feel what it’s like to look out from the balconies/roof/windows?
Look forward to seeing how this develops…
Sean
Thanks for the replies!
They are indeed dusk shots to be more accurate! The reason for which is i didn’t want to use a tripod but really wanted some shots of the flats lit up as they are. I have a good setup for taking night shots at the moment with my 20mm f2.8 and D90, which handles low light like a dream but i didnt really want to be taking pictures of peoples houses so obviously.
Also i’d love to go up the stairwells and take pictures but i don’t know anybody who lives around the area, if anyone has any contacts that would be great :D im hugely interested in the area
Don’t know how I missed these Desmond,
I was brought up in the Liberties in the sixties, and whilst there were no shootings, and not a lot
of drugs, there was a lot of poverty, and also crime!In addition to these shots having some serious photographic technical merit, they really capture the atmosphere
I associate with this part of Dublin; the second and third ones are particularly vivid.GREAT JOB!
Cheers Ken! It’s really great to hear that from somebody who knows the area, I really do appreciate the opinion.
You have to wonder whether your own view of a place is affecting your pictures, which can definitely be a bad thing. Luckily i had a good few
days wandering about, chatted to a few locals and got a good feel for the place, it’s really getting to be one of the more multi cultural
areas of the city and its chock full of kids during the days, great community feel.bit of a shame about the roaming groups of teenagers later though, i was only
given some bad attention once and i suppose it was to be expected going around a residential area with a camera but i was quick to make for thomas
street after! Not discouraged, i was back the next day and i think i had enough good encounters to forget about the few bad applesLovely shots and second strikes me as the best.
Night time shooting in and around built up areas is a risky game and you pulled it off in good style.
Dee
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