Overall Process & Concept
I started out just taking pictures of trash all around Lowell MA, because I noticed there is a lot of litter on the streets. When I went back and looked at my photographs, I noticed that the majority of them were cigarette butts. Then I did a google search: “What is the number one littered item on earth?” Immediately I read that cigarette butts are actually the number one littered item in the world. This made so much sense to me as to why the cigarette butts were everywhere on the ground, and why they stuck out like a sore thumb wherever I walked outside. Then, I decided to go on another walk in Lowell MA, and take pictures of every cigarette butt I saw littered on the ground. There were countless of them, and after I took the pictures I narrowed them down by choosing ones that looked different, and looked like they were in different environments in Lowell to further show that cigarette butts are littered EVERYWHERE. I also decided to edit each photo with high contrast, and I made the background environment black and white and kept the cigarette butt in each photo in color to demonstrate how this littered item really stands out when you are walking outside, and it’s very hard to not notice them on the ground, because it’s the number one littered item everywhere.
