1. Are the images repeating themselves? Are there three versions of the same picture for example? Can you take two out?
2. Does each image give a different point of view or emphasise a point you want to make?
3. Do the images sit well together visually?
4. Have you given the viewer enough information? Would another picture help?

I became interested in the poet Rupert Brooke, a few years ago when I picked up a leaflet about him in a local tea shop. It was his life that interested me more than his poetry, at the time, and as such, I thought one of his poems might be a good subject for the exercise.

Fig. 1 Rupert Chawner Brooke English war poet 3 August 1887 (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

BY RUPERT BROOKE
I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-night
Under a cloudy moonless sky; and peeped
In at the windows, watched my friends at table,
Or playing cards, or standing in the doorway,
Or coming out into the darkness. Still
No one could see me.

I would have thought of them
—Heedless, within a week of battle—in pity,
Pride in their strength and in the weight and firmness
And link’d beauty of bodies, and pity that
This gay machine of splendour ’ld soon be broken,
Thought little of, pashed, scattered. …

Only, always,
I could but see them—against the lamplight—pass
Like coloured shadows, thinner than filmy glass,
Slight bubbles, fainter than the wave’s faint light,
That broke to phosphorus out in the night,
Perishing things and strange ghosts—soon to die
To other ghosts—this one, or that, or I.

This poem i reminded me of the melancholy feeling of Christopher Doyle’s cinematography and Nishi-ikebukuro’s images of  Tokyo in 2006, which I looked at in a previous unit for an exercise on artificial light. I marked in bold the parts of the poem that resonated with this style. I tried not to think of the words in the poem and match them with objects but rather feelings and atmosphere.

Initially, instead of taking new shots, I decided to look at these images and try to determine why they had come to mind. The poem made me feel quite melancholy, lonely, it had an “empty rainy street” atmosphere about it.  I pulled a selection of the images into photoshop (Img 1-3) as layers, turned some of them black and white, and brought them together as a single image to try and reflect those feelings. (Img. 4)

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig 4. Shiba, Minato Ward, Tokyo 2004

Fig. 5 Nishi-ikebukuro, Toshima Ward, Tokyo 2006

Img. 1

It didn’t occur to me until after I had saved the image that it is made up of fragments of an exercise, brought together in response to a poem called “Fragment”

I often find myself using the word “atmosphere” when trying to describe something that can’t be described easily in relation to feelings or how I feel in a particular place or situation. I suspect it might be my way of describing something that other people might describe as being left with a strange (not always bad) feeling – usually something that may take time to dissipate. Perhaps after a dream or a happy or sad event. It’s not one particular part of it,  but an atmosphere that is left. (pretty hard to describe -sorry). I find this happens with memories too, particularily ones from a long time ago. They don’t always have distinct parts to them,  just an “atmosphere”. The poem had a particular atmosphere that reminded me of the images. I’m not sure my image has completely captured it but it’s a start.

I am now left pondering on how difficult it might be to capture an “atmosphere” in an image(s)?

My “Atmosphere’s may have:

1. Colours
2. Light
3. dark
4. Tones
5. Shapes
6. Textures