Suburban Monotony: Treehouses.

haha...interesting collage.

Dug, have you won a contract from your local estate agent?

There is a wonderful cohesion to this!! I really like it. I especially enjoy the vertical lines that the trees add. Nice!!

Clever idea, Doug.

Puzzle: which one is repeated? ;)

Nice presentation, well done.

 

 

Excellent idea, fine execution. I hope you're showing in a gallery somewhere.

Though I don't think you should have given away the 'tree in front of door concept' in the title. I'd see if people are observant enough to catch that on their own.

 

Thanks GS. I won't tell. Not yet at least.

 

Funny you should suggest that Andre, but I would turn it down if offered. This image has roots in that market, too, and I don't mean that in a good way. I worked for real estate companies in the past, the vast majority of which were the cheapest photobuyers I've ever encountered. They make thousand dollar commissions on their sales, but are unwilling to spend more than a few chincy bucks for good photography. My advice to any, any beginning photographer is to avoid real estate professionals.

 

Balaji, I didn't want to think much with the layout here. I've ruined too many opportunities by over thinking them, so the arrangement here is part random, part intuition, but mostly random as my way of letting the image be itself. The remark about one shot was a barb at the new digital manipulations guidelines.

 

All of these were taken from my car with either a 50 mm or a 35 mm lens on Tmax 100 b&w film and it was one shot each (unless I felt I had made a technical mistake) because I wanted to be as cheap and hasty as possible, considering the real-estate sentiments expressed above. Also, I wanted to make all shots from the street presenting each house as it would be seen by anyone else, a potential buyer, for example. This low angle created a lot of perspective problems, but they were corrected with the transform>distort tool. I was aware that the results would look very much like your typical real estate promotional, but whereas real estate use is designed to beautify and sell, my intention was to parody and in some ways ridicule.

 

I've been contemplating this idea for months and don't necessarily see this as the end product. In fact, I loaded it onto Photo.net as more of an afterthought than anything else. There are several houses in my neighborhood that are more beautiful because of the trees growing in front of them than anything else, two in particular that I especially like. But as I thought about it, I was impressed by how ironic it is to spend so much money on something, and then cover it up, so to speak. With that in mind I suddenly began to notice that practically every house in my neighborhood was obscured in some way, mostly by trees.

 

Placing a prominent tree in the doorway was really the only conscious choice I made, which was my way of adding to the foolishness of the original idea, but also to slap at the notion that happiness is summed up by a house in the suburbs, and all this materialistic American Dream stuff, which I think is rubbish.

Good point Mark. Thanks. I thought about it, and then decided that photo.net is more of a peer group, and so some secrets can be shared. Also, I was concerned that the low resolution and image reduction needed to load it here would make details like that undetectable. Thanks very much for the rest of your comment, too. As yet, my claim to fame is the local Starbucks, which is hanging about 20 prints.

 

here's a larger file if anyone is interested. About 850 Kb, until it gets booted. And make that two images that don't have the tree in the doorway, and one of those is used twice.

The subjects are so mind numbingly dull that as a collective it overpowered my,er, cerrebelum. Why do humans get addicted to repetitions, I wonder? See what your neighbour do, you must, too. Yes that is another X brand ad round the corner, just like the last corner, yes, sick of it, but don't mind actually buying another of that product, yes I just bought one yesterday. (yadda yadda bla bla).

 

I am not going to go anymore into this, and will just take it as a carefully arranged craft- a collection of mosaic pieces. Each piece unique, though the same when put together as a collection, when seen from a healthy distance.

 

 

An interesting ide for sure, and it probably works about as well as this sort of things can work. I unfortunately don't know how to draw any clear conclusion about the value of such montages, because I believe they work much better from far that from near - for me at least. It doesn't have much to do with your image itself. It's rather the "abstract-patchwork" genre in itself, that I perceive just like that. As a consequence of this, I just wouldn't know how to rate this image... At different distances I'd give it different ratings... Silly, I know, but I better pass then...:-) Cheers.

Thanks for pointing out the tree in front of each door. Knowing the theme actually increased my enjoyment of this already pleasing work of art!

I found a match (Row 3, Image 4) and (Row 7, Image 1). A challenging puzzle which required your larger version to win the game. You've taken up far too much of my time with this collage.

While this is in some ways clever, I don't think it's effective. This photo doesn't force the viewer to scrutinize the culture. The new topographers (such as Robert Adams) work of the late 60's and 70's really deconstructed the suburban myth. This montage here, as presented, doesn't function as social critique.

you got it, rick. Now I'll shuffle them around some so someone else can play.

 

Robert, I can accept what you're saying, but I'd sure like to know how to achieve better results. What improvements could I strive for? Maybe it's the message, that it's not really a significant issue anyway?

 

I'm all ears.

No, the suburbanization (both architecturally and in terms of values, i.e. disposable, mass produced, etc.) of American culture is significant and worthy topic for photography. But without your title, your critique of this segment of our culture isn't apparent. I don't think this collage makes the point you state in your description.

 

I'm not trying to be difficult here. I like your work, but this one isn't hitting home.

It's original but would it pass the "hanging on the wall test"? It does look like a nicely textured pattern when it's small. I agree that it looks more like a puzzle when it's bigger. There is something in common with newspaper adds when it is even bigger ;-))

i think its too much in 1 pict

Very good idea!

...you lied. You took the pictures in MY neighbourhood (West Island/Montréal). When I moved here from Germany, the first thing I did was cutting off half of the branches of that ****ing giant monster spruce growing in front of our house. It's nice to have a lot of green around, but not if there isn't a single beam of light coming through the windows anymore.

Robert, no trouble at all. Any comment offered in the spirit of improvement is welcome and appreciated, and I know your comments are never posted in any other way. I'm not dead yet, so there's still time to refine the idea. : ) Thanks

 

 

I printed a small laserjet copy of the jpg as it's loaded here, and tacked it on our wall at home. My daughter said it was great. Of course, she's only 11, so there's room to speculate on her qualifications as a critic, not to mention her bias. She's a tough one, though. Although she can't always tell why she likes one of my works, at least her appreciation indicates there's something going for it.

 

Birgit, so was that your husband or father who came out of his house and yelled at me? He wasn't using English, and he went back inside after I answered him, presumably he was calling the police, but nothing every came of it. Next time I will avoid your neighborhood altogether.

 

The concept of the thing isn't bad. But I think you might rethink your statement involving trees and doors. Pardon my engineering background but after reading that I couldn't help but notice that in a number of the photos the trees only appear to be in front of the doors because of the way you had positioned yourself. The sharper angled perspective of some of the exteriors is a dead give-away. Otherwise, it's OK.

It's true that from some vantage points some of these houses appear to be tree-free (for lack of a better term) but to fit my goals, I made sure to position a tree directly between myself and the door. That was the number one conscious decision I took into mind. On most of them it was easy, on others I had to choose an angle. My own house, not pictured, was one of the very few that wouldn't work. I really didn't have to go far to get these 47. In fact, if not for the guy who I thought was calling the cops, I would have just stayed on my street. After running into him, though, I played it safe and drove a few blocks further.

It probably would be better if it was a square-on shot with the tree just so, you're right.

*very* cool. I find this quite emotive - makes me feel desperatly unhappy. Like growing up in the burbs :) Gotta listen to some pink floyd now.

 

my first 7/7 rating.