Final Project - William Lytle

Conservation and awareness of our natural recourses has become a ubiquitous topic in the social and political dialog in our country. Living in the heart of the Sonoran desert this dialog has incredible impact on us, however our conservation needs are weighted heavily toward water. Because of this, I chose to explore how our desert culture interacts with and uses water on a daily basis. This project is done in an adaptation of the New Topographics movement, rather than showing man altered landscapes I show, man manipulated resources. I drew inspiration from John Pfahl’s work Waterfalls. In this work Pfahl photographs the various roles waterfalls play in the United States, be it as an Aesthetic icon for the nation or as a source of energy generation. My Project mimics the aspect of Pfahl’s work in that I show the ways in which humans manipulate and utilize water to serve their own purposes; however I do not show the ways in which water, in its natural state, is used as an aesthetic resource by our society. The first and sixth photos of my project show how water is used to serve some measurable purpose in our culture through cooling and cleaning; the second and third photos show how water is manipulated for ornamental purposes.

-William Lytle

 This is a photo of misters that are situated over an outdoor seating area at a restaurant. It shows how water is wastefully applied to make our lives more comfortable.

 This image shows how water is put to use as an item of decoration, the intensity of the sun is intended to highlight how much of this resource is being lost to evaporation.

 This is another image of how water is often put to use by our society for solely aesthetic purposes.

 This image shows a flood caused by a broken water pipe. It demonstrates how our culture thinks so little of water that extra care is rarely taken to protect what little we have.

 This image shows a discarded water battle in a large dry river bed. The discarded bottle shows how little respect is held for water, the location of the bottle in a dry river bed serves also to show how our natural water sources are currently being, and have historically been consumed.

Finally this photo shows how water is exploited for the beautification such petty things as our sidewalks.

Unity

I attempted to create unity in my photos through the use of repetitive images and patterns. Mostly I attempted to do this by photographing repetitive structures that trended away from the camera. I feel that the repetitive shapes were able to help draw the background and foreground together, helping to unify the photo.

Texture

I noticed several juxtapositions of texture throughout my car and thought exploring these photographically would be interesting. Mostly I was able to showcase instances of texture by taking closeup photos of two different substances (i.e. dirt on a tire) thus showing the contrast in texture of the two substances. I believe this worked well by showing small changes in the topography and surface structure of the objects.

Line

I chose to explore the concept of line and how focusing on certain linear features can draw the eye in a particular direction. In addition to drawing the eye I noticed the tendency for lines to frame aspects of a photo. While searching for for ways to incorporate linear features in my photos I was drawn to new perspectives of my object I had previously not thought of.

Lighting

In order to experiment with lighting I decided I wanted to play with the way the car effected the light of the setting sun. I did this by taking pictures that generated distinct shadows and reflections. I believe this approached helped me create strong images by inducing silhouettes and lending a unique color to my object from the setting sun.

Perspectives