Group F/64 was a group founded in 1932 by seven San Francisco photographers who all shared a similar photographic style – sharp-focused and carefully framed images. The pictorialist photographic style had been dominating for most of the early 20th century, however, the group wanted to offer an alternative with a new modernist aesthetic.

The Original Group f/64 consisted of –

• Ansel Adams
• Imogen Cunningham
• John Paul Edwards
• Sonya Noskowiak
• Henry Swift
• Willard Van Dyke
• Edward Weston

The first exhibition consisted of 80 photographs, including 10 by Adams, 9 each by Cunningham, Edwards, Noskowiak, Swift, Van Dyke and Edward Weston, and 4 each by Holder, Kanaga, Levenson and Brett Weston. Edward Weston’s prints were priced at $15 each; all of the others were $10 each. The show ran for six weeks.

Image Analysis

This image was taken using natural daylight with clouds blocking out lots of sunlight, which has created a dramatic backdrop in the sky. A wide angle lens was used to take this photograph as this is what was typically used by the romantics to capture landscape photographs. A large depth of field was most likely used as the whole of the image is sharp and in focus. A shutter speed of 1/60 – 1/150 was possibly used for this photograph due to no motion blurs being in the photograph. A medium ISO appears to have been used as the photograph is not grainy and is quite dark wit areas that are quite light. There is lots of texture in the photograph, from the trees in the foreground of the image to the running river.

The image has been taken in black and white which allows the audience to focus on the range of tones, textures and shapes in the image. There is a wide tonal range in the photograph ranging from the dark silhouettes of the mountains to the reflection of the river. There is no rule of thirds used in this photograph.

Romanticism 

In the late 1700s, numerous advances in the sciences led to new ideas about how the Earth was formed. A generation of landscape painters came to meet the demand, but also to create landscape art for its own sake. During the first half of the 1800s, landscape art became more realistic, even reaching levels of hyper-realism. In the second half of the century, photography began to have an impact on landscape painting and changed it forever.The movement was used in order to capture a specific purity of imagination of nature and spontaneity. Deep feeling and emotion are the establishments of the movement itself. Throughout the movement, there was a large expansion of the exotic and heroic ideas of the art where you could envision and escape.

Mood Board 

Links about Romanticism 

http://patricksmithphotography.com/blog/romanticism-and-realism-1800-1890-2/

https://www.photo-mark.com/notes/defense-romanticism/

Landscape photography shows spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic.

Landscape photographs typically capture the presence of nature but can also focus on man-made features or disturbances of landscapes.

Landscape photographs can vary in the way they are taken throughout different times of the day. Typically, they are taken in daylight however some photographers use long shutter speeds at night to get some interesting  shots.

Landscape photography typically requires relatively simple photographic equipment, though more sophisticated equipment can give a wider range of possibilities to the art. An artist’s eye for the subject can produce attractive and impressive results even with modest equipment.

Many Landscape photographs are used commercially to promote certain destinations or businesses. These are often edited in such way to make the places more appealing then they actually are.