Back in 2014 I started... not so much a "project", let's call it a "theme" called "Little Shops". The intent was to document places in the local area in case (or before) they disappeared. I changed the theme from "shops" to "places" because it doesn't have to be a "shop", and they don't have to be little. For the most part they're places that I don't expect to be there forever.

This is one such place that I documented 2 years and a few days before writing this, but as we know my photo publishing is woefully in arrears. No Chintz is a textiles and interior decoration business.

Between at least November 2007 and December 2013 the building was home to "Supaya Furnishings Warehouse", an outfit that sold terracotta pots, hand crafted furniture, wood carvings and the like, and which was only open on weekends. I can find no trace of or reference to them now.

No Chintz moved in some time in either 2014 or early 2015. They were well established by August 2015 at the latest.

In their own words...
"...we specialise in superior quality textiles and fabrics which we source from a large range of Australian and international suppliers. We also have a range of cushions, trims, lampshades, rugs, curtains, blinds and furniture in store and online in a variety of designs to complement your home decor and style. At Thirroul we also offer end of designer lines and clearance products at reduced prices. We also offer interior decorating and bespoke services, including the making of curtains and blinds,...

Somewhere in this gallery (right next to it if you're reading this just after I posted it) you'll see the image 240727_062542_0069_0066 Thirroul Garage, Old School Survivor (Sat 27 Jul 24). That was the place that I set out to shoot as part of this series this morning.

No Chintz is just down the road from the garage; in fact I can see it from where I was shooting this morning. I noticed that the lights were out. "That's odd", thinks I, "They always leave them on at night." So after I finish shooting the garage, I go for a run up there to take a look.

"Ah, cr@p", I think. Granted, I had not needed their services to date, but never say never. (OK, maybe now you can.) However their stylishly neat store elevated the tone of the area, which makes it depressing when you see a notice like this fixed to the door of such a business:

STORE CLOSURE
After much consideration we have decided to close the doors of our Thirroul store due to the end of our lease and the departure of some beloved staff members.

Thirroul's last day of trade will be Friday 19th July 2024."

The 19th, you say? I just missed it. The business itself isn't closing down; it still has stores operating in Mosman, Willoughby and Woollahra (the first and third being decidedly hoity-toity areas of Sydney and hellish to get to from down south, and don't get me started on parking), so it's good to know that there hasn't been a huge loss of jobs.

So many of the places that I've shot for this series have gone to the wall that I do wonder if people might start paying me to keep my camera off their building. In reality, I know that the reasons that they're gone are the reasons that I started the project in the first place. It was going to happen with or without me, but with me at least there is some evidence and memory of them once existing.

The problem with images like this is the dynamic range between the lit interior and the darker building exterior. I therefore did several bracketed shots of this, intending to punch them through HDR in Photoshop. Instead I used a single image with an EV of -1 to capture the details of the shop interior, selected and inverted the windows to effectively mask them out, converted the layer to a Smart Object, then used a Camera Raw adjustment layer to boost the exposure value of the outside of the building.

Who doesn't love RAW format?

(I took a slightly different approach with the Thirroul Garage image, but I'll discuss that over there.)