Week 2’s class allowed me to learn about ‘Plato’s Cave’. An allegory presented by Greek philosopher, Plato, in his work of ‘The Republic’, in which a group of people are chained inside a cave, forced to face a blank wall for their entire lives. These people are made to watch shadows projected on the wall of things passing in front of a fire behind them, and with this, they begin to appoint names to each shadow. This is then described to readers as a false sense of reality that many people believe in, yet the shadows are just mere representations of what is real.

We were then asked to go out and take fifty frames of anything we liked and with whatever theme we had in mind. The first idea that popped into my head were to take photos of buildings and architecture, because of my love for these things. I knew I wanted to showcase all the amazing buildings, designs and mostly, all the Victorian style architecture that Melbourne had to offer, yet most of the time go unnoticed by the busy, daily traveller.

I decided to go take my photos in the afternoon when the weather was overcast; the best time to take photographs because the sun isn’t glaring and ruining the image. I needed good lighting and not too much sun because I did not want anything creating a distraction from my main photographic aims: to focus on the design, the lines and the architecture.

What I decided to capture and what I decided to leave out of the frame can be brought back to the idea from ‘Plato’s Cave’, where the “maker” has the power in what the viewer gets to see or not see.

 I tried not to capture buildings that would be categorised as “popular” or “tourist attractions” like Flinders Street Station or Federation Square. I was going for the more… “unconventional” looks of Melbourne.

I also aimed to use the rule of thirds in many of the frames, making certain lines of buildings align and straight to make the photos easier to look at.