Mouldy mattress or abandoned drug den?

New technical assignment.....a mix of all other past ones! We have to take photographs of an object we pass nearly every day, for five days. Firstly we have to take a light meter reading and take a photo using this accurate setting, then bracket up and down. We have to change the F stop then the shutter speed.....but that's boring so I won't go on. It's a bit complicated, and I took the first lot today and forgot to do most of the things. Mainly because I was just concentrating on taking a good night photograph, and these are the best two that came out:

I wasn't sure which would be better to use; the old mattress/skip above, or the house below that used to be inhabited by drug dealers. My sister told me the story behind it... Something about how the guy who lived there got people to beat up the person who snitched on him to the police, who got admitted to hospital and then paid someone to 'repay the favour'. They smashed all of his windows in, which is why they're all bordered up. I'd like to find out the complete story.

I've been spending all evening trying to convert them from RAW to JPEGs so I can upload them on here, but unfortunately they've come out with the converter company's name printed on it because I'm just on a free trial. It's a bit annoying, but at least it's only small so you can still see the image. I'm quite proud of them, even if I haven't followed the brief correctly! Which one should I keep photographing? Hmm, I'm a bit worried the skip may disappear before the project ends, so I'll probably keep taking both just incase, and then I'll have a choice at the end.

Fairytalesque

Whilst looking for more photographers for my sketchbook, I came across Jacqueline Roberts, and this image:

The Rag Doll
It's delightful, even if the emphasis is more on the girl than the doll. It does show how close young girls are to their dolls, which is what my work is based on. I like how the background is darker in certain areas, which is something my teacher would probably complain about, but as I've said many times, I like photographs that bend the rules slightly.

Merry Go Round
This one is great too, with the reflection in the window. I wonder how much of the image is real though, as they are obviously digital images and it looks like she changes the colour slightly. Is the carousel really there or has she put it there herself? Not that it matters, it's a lovely picture, I just like to try and work out these things.

The Red Bird
Like this one for example, you can immediately see it has been worked on. But it compliments her style. It's sort of fairytalesque, which needs to be bright, quirky and magical.

I then had a look at Doll Photos on Flickr, but most of them were taken to look 'pretty'. I wanted examples of ones that looked a bit odd, or unusual but there were very few like this. The ones I did find tended to have quite a lot of digital enhancement done to them. Here's a couple I liked though:

Untitled, by Elisa Savignano
I'm not sure if this one was meant to be scary, but it has something strange about it. It may be that it's shot in black and white, or perhaps it's the dolls glare, but it is somewhat disturbing.


Blonde Ambition Massacre, by SammyDoe

I'm not too keen on the general idea of this one but I like the composition, the nails sticking out give it an interesting shape. The short depth of field gives the impression that it goes on forever too, that the pile of doll heads is huge, because only the foreground is in focus.