To briefly summarise how the work went: Swimmingly. The weather was ideal and there was just enough of a vibe in the town centre that it added quite a bit of charm to some of the images.
Throughout most of the shoot on the day, I utilised my 16-35mm wide angle lens to capture these buildings in full frame. It captured the locations very well without blowing them out of proportion through lens magnification. However, during the later stage of the shoot when I moved into the Queensgate Markets, did divvy between shooting on the 16-35mm lens and the NIKKOR 70-300mm lens for better close ups of the interiors roof. Whilst I stated that I most likely wouldn't stick to looser and more abstract imagery so as to not alienate the audience, finally looking up and acknowledging the beauty of the markets Brutalist form was too much to not shoot. As well as this, I think that from a personal standpoint, the observation and documentation of brutalist structures applies plenty of context and character to Huddersfield as a town, that showcases the beauty in its 60's architecture.
Ample lighting made for even interior shots to be very well lit, and the defusal of the light entering the buildings painted the images in a much softer lighting that I think paints the images in a more calming manner that might actually work in the projects favour when being presented on the socials as well as the website.
One of the issues that I did face whilst taking photos was that a lot of the buildings on New Street and the connecting roads is that due to their Victorian and Edwardian designs, I have always found them to try and attain a certain level of verticality to them, making them much harder to fix in Lightroom. I try to correct t
he images and better display the buildings s
cale by altering the perspective of them by applying Guided Upright to correct the depth and angling of the shots. Some of the images needed Content Aware Fill to correct the empty parts of the images
One of the things that I noticed during the shoot, that may actually be helpful for later stages of the project if it were to succeed, was the amount of the vacant shops and buildings in the town's main streets. Whilst from a current standpoint, a lack of business and
enterprise definitely is not something that Huddersfield is a big fan of, but from a project standpoint, it does mean that there is the potential of growing the Growth Project into other parts of Huddersfield by occupying these vacant lots. By assimilating these spaces into our work, there is the potential of diversifying the projects potential by using these new found locations to create new sensory experiences, as well as new hub spots for for cultural and artistic exchange. By opening it up to the rest of the town and making it something that is more along the lines of it being something that everyone across Huddersfield can contribute to rather than it being fixed to one spot gives the idea something that could reach higher levels of potential. The only downside to occupying more areas across Huddersfield is that by using these shops, and depriving the centre of new shops that benefit the local economy, the project could actually become very hypocritical as a result, as the project was born out of the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the financial wrath that it wrought. So it could be a case of using these spaces sparingly so as to not defeat our own messaging.