Beneath The Sheets

T

his is Linsay, she lives with a girl that is in my class and I shot her a while back for a series of bedroom portraits I’ve been doing. I must say sometimes it can be quite strange photographing someone you don’t know in their own space, you can’t help but feel like you’re invading and it’s even worse when you’ve got a big old camera and are pointing it in their faces.

Linsay was nice though she had a really small attic room, so small in fact I had to squish myself up against the wall to frame the shot. Discomfort aside I always find peoples bedrooms rather fascinating especially the ones of student’s. There’s just something about the bedroom of a student living in rented accommodation that is always full of personality, maybe I’m just bias because I fall under the category of ’student living in rented accommodation’ but I love the way nearly every students room I’ve seen has been crammed full of their personality, maybe it’s because the space isn’t theirs that they have to make it feel like their own. Or possibly because they share their home with so many other people they need to have a room they can just let their personality take over. Either way I always find them interesting it’s good to have a reason to have a good look around a persons room as well, and having a camera and wanting to take a photograph is a pretty good reason - it makes it feel less like you’re snooping when you’re eying up their posters and record collection.

I’ve spent most of this weekend editing the two images that will be going into the final exhibition show that our class are having, I can’t say I’m totally happy with the images but I never really am. It is taking longer than it should really but I must admit after a while editing pictures turns from enjoyable into tedious and then I have to have a break, which usually ends up with me procrastinating a fair few hours away. Hopefully they’ll both be done and I’ll be happy with them by the time they need printing. After that though it will be the end of college for summer which I am sort of disappointed about though I never thought I’d hear myself say that, summer is exciting of course the hope for the warm weather we never get and trips to the park, but the prospect of being without all of the photographic equipment I am so used to at college is a one I find depressing, no studio, no high quality scanner. I’ve been trying slowly to buy as much of my own equipment as possible but in no way can I afford a set of studio lights right now, so It’ll just be me and my bronica, my metz, copious rolls of unused 120 film I seem to have been collecting and my last pack of polaroid SX-70 blend and possibly a holga thrown in for good measure. Actually it sort of sounds exciting.