Monthly Archives: January 2018

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Urban Landscapes | The New Topographics

January 26, 2018 Nicholas G Leave a comment

The “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” was an exhibition held by William Jenkins in 1975 that epitomized a key moment in American landscape photography.

It featured ten photographers whose pictures had a similar banal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape. Many of the photographers associated with new topographics including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Nicholas Nixon and Bernd and Hiller Becher, were inspired by the man-made landscapes with some of their works featuring parking lots, suburban housing and warehouses. These were all depicted with a beautiful stark austerity, almost in the way early photographers documented the natural landscape. The exhibition revealed the growing unease about how the natural landscape was being eroded by industrial development. This contradicted the previous movement of Romanticism.

Homework Assignment

Romanticism Photography Response

January 26, 2018 Nicholas G Leave a comment

My Edits

When editing this image, I set the brightness to -68 and the contrast to 30. The contrast adds dramatic effect to the darker clouds behind the tree. The trees in the background have a slight blur but the foreground is more focused showing a narrow depth of field.

For this image, I quick selected the sky and set the contrast to 100 and the brightness to -82, giving the overall sky a romanticized style. I then added further contrast setting the whole image to a contrast of 46 to make the whole image more natural looking.

For the above image, I set the brightness to -102 and the contrast to 100 to create the more gloomy romantic style.

I quick selected the sky and increased contrast. I then decreased brightness to give the clouds dramatic effect.

For this image, I converted this image to black and white by reducing saturation and increased the contrast to 100. The image of a large cliff felt similar to Ansel Adams’ work of mountain scenes.

I adjusted the levels of dark to light and increased contrast to amplify the sun emerging from the clouds.

Knowledge and Understanding

HDR Experimentation

January 26, 2018 Nicholas G 1 Comment

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. Instead of just taking one photo, HDR uses three photos, taken at different exposures. You can then use image editing software to put those three images together and highlight the best parts of each photo. In the case of HDR on smartphones, your phone does all the work for you. The result is something that should look more like what your eyes see, rather than what your camera sees.

Using HDR depends on the situation where it is better to use in certain lighting.

HDR will improve many outdoor and landscapes scenes. Because these settings often have both dark and light areas, you will often lose details. Turn on HDR to compensate.
HDR is great for making the most of dim lighting. Just make sure you turn off the flash. It won’t work well with the longer exposure.
Because it is taking several different images, HDR is slower. So if you are capturing a moving object, or you are taking several photos in quick succession, you should probably turn HDR off.
HDR will eliminate shadowy or washed out areas. So if you are trying to create a certain mood, or photograph a silhouette, you should turn HDR off.

No HDR

HDR

Case Study

Fay Godwin Case Study

January 26, 2018 Nicholas G Leave a comment

Fay Godwin

Fay Godwin, born in Berlin on February 17 1931, was a British photographer known for her black-and-white romantic landscapes of the British countryside and coast. She was compared to other famous photographers like the Great American photographer Ansel Adams.

Her photographs captured the differing moods and textures of moors, forests and country trails with a remarkable sensitivity and lack of sentimentality. Her pictures also drew attention to environmental campaigns (an abiding interest), and her critique Our Forbidden Land won the first Green Book of the Year award.

Her love of walking inspired her to pursue landscape photography, often photographing isolated and remote areas of the British landscape and producing many beautiful pastoral scenes as well as contrasting urban landscapes.

She died on May 27, 2005, aged 74.

Fay Godwin begun taking pictures only in the early 1960s, when she discovered that her husband was not much good at family snaps. “I discovered I loved doing it,” she said. “Eventually I taught myself to print, and it really went on from there.”

Image Analysis

Godwin captures a cloudy day in a dramatic mood by using natural light behind the paler clouds. This gives a comparison to the darker clouds, showing a range of tones from black to white.

The image is composed with a pathway running down the centre that creates a sense of curiosity into the nature of the image.

The trees and clouds are contrasted to give the intense presence that nature has over us as humans.

Fay would have used a faster shutter speed hence the stillness of the clouds and the balance of light exposure.

The image was taken on the rural Roman road in Ceirieg, Drovers Roads, Wales where she created other works in the ‘The Drovers’ Roads of Wales and Other Photographs’ exhibition.

Like Godwin’s other photos, This image heavily shows influences from the Romanticism movement from which an ambient mood is created from the tones and contrast of the nature in the image, that can be presented to people who may not usually have the chance to see nature in that way.

Coursework

Ansel Adams Response

January 25, 2018 Charlie Craig Leave a comment

MY RESPONSE TO ADAMS

As a response to the work of the landscape photographer Ansel Adams here are some of my landscape photographs in response to his. These photographs are part of a rather large amount of photographs which will be put into a ‘Romanticism Landscape’ post.

Coursework

ANSEL ADAMS

January 25, 2018 Charlie Craig Leave a comment

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist who was born in 1902. His black and white photographs of the United States’ Incredible landscapes are some of the most iconic romanticised photographs all over the world, especially those of National Parks and incredible Mountains-scapes, which are widely seen all over the globe on calendars, poster prints, t-shirts, desktop backgrounds and of course all over the internet.

He was notorious for using the aperture setting f/64 in most of his work as it gave him the aesthetic exposure that he desired. This is evident in fact that he, alongside fellow photographers Edward Weston and Williard Van Dyke were the founders of the photography group named ‘ Group f/64 ‘ . The name of course represented their love for the f/64 aperture.

Here are some of my favourite photographs produced by Adams…

And here is a video which goes into depth about Ansel Adam’s life as a landscape photographer…

Coursework

Romanticism

January 25, 2018 Charlie Craig Leave a comment

WHAT IS ROMANTICISM?

Romanticism as an art form, is originated from when a new generation of painters came together in order to create landscape artistic paintings for the sake of visual beauty, causing the form of art in the 1800s to become more and more realistic. This first movement was known as Romanticism, it emphasized emotions such as grief or love, leading to a deeper discovery of human emotion caused and effected by our natural surroundings. Romanticism usually creates the perfect visual landscape which the viewer could associate their emotions with or the artist/photographer can create through their emotions.

Here are some examples of Romanticism in photography…

Here is a video that helps to further understanding of Romanticism in Photography and Art…

Uncategorized

Altered Landscapes

January 25, 2018 Thomas Webster Leave a comment

As it’s commonly understood, landscape photography is representation of untouched beauty of nature through an image. For example a pristine mountain range shrouded in early morning fog, or a peaceful lake without a human being in sight.

In Altered Landscapes we sometimes see meadows and mountains, but they’re not presented to us only as images of beauty. Instead, they reflect how the environment has been changed by humans—often for the worse. In the altered landscaped genre humans rarely appear in the photographs yet their presence is undeniable.

Rondal Partridge, "Pave it and Paint it Green, Yosemite National Park"

Not only are altered realities/landscape photos a reference to human destruction in our world and a juxtaposition of the standardized landscape photographs but, they could also be standard landscape photo that has been altered within Photoshop or another equivalent. I believe this style can produce some very interesting and unique photographs which are highly influential in allowing an appreciation for the editing skills as well as conveying messages and telling stories.

Image result for witchoria

Uncategorized

Hannah Hoch

January 25, 2018 Thomas Webster Leave a comment

Hannah Höch was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photo montage. Photo montage, is a type of collage in which the pasted items are actual photographs, or photographic reproductions pulled from the press and other widely produced media. T

he key themes associated within her work are androgyny, political discourse and shifting gender roles. These themes all interacted to create a feminist discourse surrounding Höch’s works, which encouraged the liberation and agency of women in Weimar Germany and today. I believe that the concept of Hoch’s work is an interesting way to portray the ideas of equality. The use of overlaying helps to give a unique and eye catching appearance to her work.

Image result for Hannah Hoch

Uncategorized

Psycho-geography

January 25, 2018 Oscar V Leave a comment

What is Psycho-geography?

Psycho-geography is an exploration of urban environments that emphasises a playful movement. It has links to the situation international. Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. Another definition is “a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities. It is just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape.