Final Image.
Alternative image.
The transitional space project challenged us to understand composition and space through a purely structural lens as well as a temporal one. It also provided an exercise in our jurisdiction as a photographer, challenging us to choose a single, “best” image out of many. For my transitional space, I chose the staircase in the UC that connects the entry floor to all of the upper levels of the building. I thought it would be an ideal fit for the project due to its close proximity, and the way it acts as a bottleneck that one must pass through in the UC (making it universally and exclusively transitional).
As the space connects two levels and bends ninety degrees, I was challenged to find a way to capture or at least imply the existence of both floors it connects. After deconstructing the pieces of the space via drawing, and realizing one can see it in its entirety from certain angles, I found the best way to represent the spaces was looking down from the top floor, with the bottom area of the staircase in view. The lines in the image from the angle I chose first follow the bottom level upward on a diagonal, and then a closer, opposite-facing diagonal comes upward from that one and exits the frame, implying existence outside of it and upward motion throughout. Both sides and levels of the “corner” that the staircase inhabits are thus captured. It also shows the floor that leads into the transitional space below, and implies the existence of the floor above it.
The UC staircase is nothing without the many, many people that inhabit it (albeit fleetingly), so I knew I wanted to capture them somehow. I used a motion blur to convey the swiftness with which they come and go and are thus in sight.
These moving figures combined with the composition and framing of the photo suggest their movement and rightly imply to the viewer that these figures have moved through the space, having inhabited what we see behind them and about to inhabit what lays ahead.
I chose my final image because the composition showed what I intended, the figures (which I found crucial) inhabited so much of the space while still leaving its structure intact, and because I thought the primary colors worked together nicely.
