I took this photograph in response to Michelle Sank’s image of the two elderly figures. I decided that I was going to photograph my parents in a similar way, however, in a different area. An area where they both spend most of their time together. The garden was handmade, from the benches to the tables, the cooker, shelter, planting area and floor. This is another element that I really like about this image and I think that it is very powerful because it shows how things have become damaged and used. The wear and tear over the years has never been fixed and rarely nothing has refurnished. This is very important to me as it is the home that I grew up in, one which my father practically built.

The image was taken spontaneously and in my opinion, I think that it has made the image more powerful. I was arriving home with my camera as they were chatting away, they both stopped what they were doing and became distracted by the camera for a split second. The image was taken with a faster shutter speed and so it is all in clear focus. I wanted to make sure the photograph was all in focus as everything in the garden has it’s own story and builds up to my childhood. The red bags in the front of the image have wood inside them. I had just brought these bags home for my father to make us food on the grill outside while my mum used the cooker. This image made me realise that my father could potentially have built all these old fashioned styled things in order to bring our culture back into our home.

The colours in this image are very saturated and I did this to show the colour in our lives and the festive feeling of the portuguese culture. I also did this because I love the idea manipulating the colours in an image to give them a meaning. In this case, the brightst colours are red, green, blue, yellow, and white. All of these colours are in the Portuguese flag and therefore I though it would be a good idea to bring these colours out as much as possible.

I also noticed a similar pattern in Mahtab Hussain’s images and therefore wanted to ideas of my chosen photographers into one photograph.