From the User's Viewpoint

I found that the concept of taking a location, in this case a building or space and mirroring the viewpoint of the user to be very interesting. This was because I suppose I had been experimenting with this in the previous part to People and Place, although this had all been from a low viewpoint. I also found it easier to imagine distinctive user viewpoints as being low down for example at a bowling alley or at a yoga class.

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   Eventually I settled, for the low user viewpoint, to photograph a bowling green space as the location, with a few people playing bowls to emphasise that they clearly had to get down really low when placing their shots. I used the flip-out screen of my camera to get down to the desired level easily and took a variety of shots that I thought showed effectively how the space was being used. The reason I concluded this was the lower viewpoint made the viewer more involved like you were there. I knew this was a common term in photography but I experienced this to be true with the low viewpoint.

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   Logically (for me at least) the next viewpoint to photograph from would be from high up looking down and so this is what I did. There was only one kind of scene I could imagine after thinking of ideas and that was of a performance with the user being one of the audience in the crowd looking down. There were a few options for this like a play, a musical or a ballet but I settled on a lecture hall.

   I was pleased with the results of the high viewpoint as well. To some extent there was a feeling of the user (or the viewer) being present in the room. Also there were no people present in the room but I found the space showed many human traces like the empty chairs, lecturer's desk and the projection screen; ready to be used.