To start, I opened my photo in Photoshop and cropped the photo to my desired size.
Go to image ~ adjustments ~ threshold. The picture should adjust to black and white and a window with adjustments should pop up. Using these levels I played around to achieve the effect I wanted, which was the majority of the picture being made up of negative space.
I find negative space can add an eerie, obscure manner to the photograph. Normally we associate a busy, noisy picture with being the best image out there, but we never really stop and pause to appreciate minimalism in all its content glory.
I used the steps above with all the photographs to create my final works.
Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925–1972) lived in Lexington, Kentucky, where he made his living as an optician while creating an impressive and enigmatic body of photographs. Meatyard’s creative circle included mystics and poets, such as Thomas Merton and Guy Davenport, as well as the photographers Cranston Ritchie and Van Deren Coke, who were mentors and fellow members of the Lexington Camera Club. Meatyard’s work spanned many genres and experimented with new means of expression, from dreamlike portraits—often set in abandoned places—to multiple exposures, motion-blur, and other methods of photographic abstraction. He also collaborated with his friend Wendell Berry on the 1971 book The Unforeseen Wilderness, for which Meatyard contributed photographs of Kentucky’s Red River Gorge. Meatyard’s final series, The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater, are cryptic double portraits of friends and family members wearing masks and enacting symbolic dramas.
Keld Helmer Petersen was a Danish abstract colour photographer. In the 1940’s and 50’s he captured an array of images which were purely in black and white, without any mid tones. Two books, Black Noise and Black Light, would then be published featuring these images.
I have tried to capture the essence of Petersen’s images by editing my images in Photoshop and primarily using the ”Threshold” image adjustment tool.
To Convert the image into black and white, I would first use the ‘black and white’ colour altering tool (this would still keep mid-tones). Afterwards I would use the ‘Threshold’ tool to remove mid-tones.
A couple other images I have altered in the same way are:
White balance is the process of removing unrealistic color casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the “color temperature” of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light. For my experiments I simply edited the lighting so that neither of my images were too dark or too light. By doing this some of the colours have been enhanced due to the how bright the background colour is. However the temperature of the photo has also been changed therefore has caused the image to be more dim.
This is the original image:
Depth Of Field
The depth of field of the image is the zone where the sharpness and focus is based on one area of the image. Weather this means the background is blurred or simply toned down the focus will only be on a specific area. Again by simply adjusting the light and darks on the image i managed to focus it on one area.
Keld Helmer-Peterson is a Danish photographer born in 1920 and died in 2013. He was famous for his photography due to the structure of his images and the different types of pattern he used. His photos tended to be based in more industrial areas, city spaces and nature. Keld started photograph in the late 1930s in his late teens and first made his name with his a book ‘122 colour photographs’ in 1948.
Whilst in the 1950s and 1960s he began to focus more on the idea of architecture and design photography, his work began to lean to be present in a more abstract way. This happened as he began to look at other artist and began to get inspiration. He looked at German and American photography as well as other international abstract art that he liked. As well as many other artist Keld Helmer-Peterson was very much inspired by Albert Reneger-Patzsch, a German artis
For these edits i have used Photoshop and the setting in images called Threshold. Above is an example of how I interpreted Keld Helmer Petersons work.
Keld Helmer-Peterson is a Danish Modernist photographer born in 1920 and died in 2013. he was famous for his photography sue the structure of his images and the different types of pattern he used. His photos tended to be based in more industrial areas, city spaces and nature. Keld started photograph in the late 1930s in his late teens and first made his name with his a book ‘122 colour photographs’ in 1948. This particular book is extremely well known due its innovative use of colour patterned throughout in the landscape and building. Whilst in 1950s and 1960s he began to focus more on the idea of architecture and design photography, and his work began to lean to be present in a more abstract way. This happened as he began to look at other artist and began to get inspiration. He looked at German and American photography as well as other international abstract art that he liked. As well as many other artist Keld Helmer-Peterson was very much inspired by Albert Reneger-Patzsch, a German artist (previously spoken about).
From the 1970s, Keld Helmer-Peterson was busy working with figures found with objects using shadows and contrasts. Much like photographer Irving Penn (also famous at the time) Helmer-Peterson would walk along pavements, looking in different angles of different objects. This resulted in works such as the series Deformationer that was produced. Then from 1974 to1993 Keld Helmer-Peterson produced a large series of close-up abstract colour photographers of walls, timber socks etc. A few of these pieces were chosen and were published in the book ‘Danish beauty’, in 2004.
After closely looking at Keld Helmer-Peterson, it was clear that he wanted to focus on the idea of black and white images and taking advantages of the negative space in photographs.
Experimenting with threshold and negative background
Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925–1972) lived in Lexington, Kentucky, where he made his living as an optician while creating an impressive and enigmatic body of photographs. Meatyard’s creative circle included mystics and poets, such as Thomas Merton and Guy Davenport, as well as the photographers Cranston Ritchie and Van Deren Coke, who were mentors and fellow members of the Lexington Camera Club. Meatyard’s work spanned many genres and experimented with new means of expression, from dreamlike portraits—often set in abandoned places—to multiple exposures, motion-blur, and other methods of photographic abstraction. He also collaborated with his friend Wendell Berry on the 1971 book The Unforeseen Wilderness, for which Meatyard contributed photographs of Kentucky’s Red River Gorge. Meatyard’s final series, The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater, are cryptic double portraits of friends and family members wearing masks and enacting symbolic dramas.
WORK ANALYSIS:
Meatyard stated in a lecture to the Louisville Photographic Society, he was involved in working on no fewer than 12 “methods, series, subjects.” Among them were what he called “photographs made under the influence of Zen,” shown here with the title “Zen Twigs.” While the images are very minimalist, they deal with growth and decay, is impressive, they are familiar enough to be looked over lightly. A particularly beautiful one (untitled, like much of Meatyard’s work) shows a young trunk sprouting — or seeming to sprout — a branch that curls around it in a wiry loop, the whole almost a visual haiku. The simplistic tonal range of the image is effective in portraying the theme of deterioration and degeneration. Meatyard has clearly used a very narrow field o view, with a singular branch being in focus and the rest of the backdrop is extremely blurry. The images are in a mid-range of exposure, not too overexposed or underexposed. The light grey tones from the backdrop of the photo, highlight they unsophisticated, dead branch. The upwards growth of the branches, have strong and dark lines which cut through the sea of blurriness. The image also contains various shades of white, black, and grey, all working together to create a harmonious image. The contrast between the blurry backdrop and the foreground give the image a real sense of depth and space.
MY OWN WORK:
During this photo shoot, I focused mostly of the formal elements which i had to include but also capturing the Gothic nature of Meatyard’s work: dark, still, and simplistic. A dark evening, used in conjunction with editing resulted in a grey dark grey tonal range of the images.
six of my most successful photos
MY WORK ANALYSIS:
For this photo shoot I attempted as much as possible to recreate Meatyard’s “zen sticks” series. I particularly focused on exposure settings, focus control, and depth of field. The photograph below was taken of a dead tree, of the branches facing upwards towards the sky. Meatyard’s images are all very dark and dramatic therefore I chose to do my photo shoot during the evening, on a stormy, grey day. I increased the exposure to 800 in order to capture the branches in a dark setting yet still have some highlights and shadows. The dark night, and mid-range ISO setting meant that the image contracted a lot of motion blur, the effect which i was aiming to get. It resembles the work of Meatyard in many ways. The dark evening also meant that the resolution of the images decreased and became more grainy. The branches of the tree were also quite far up meaning i had to decrease the depth of field and zoom in, again compromising the quality of the image. The grainy texture of the image I feel adds to the overall aesthetic of Meatyard’s work: old and worn. The differences in motion blur also create a focal point in the image, with the central branch being less blurred than the outermost parts of the image. The image is also quite underexposed which further adds to the dramatic and intense tone, giving it almost a Gothic aura. There is a very apparent sense of space in the photo as the lack of branches in the top left hand corner of the image freeing up space. There is also a lack of light in this image due to both the time of day the image was taken and the lack of exposure adjustments made on the image during editing as i wanted to retain the dark theme.
Keld Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who achieved widespread recognition for his abstract photographs. He gained recognition through his coloured photographs but also published black and white photographs exploring the contrasts of the tones. He was inspired by Albert Renger-Patzsch, the experiments at The Bauhuas in Germany and by Henry Callahan and Aron Siskind at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Keld Helmer-Petersen
My Own Experiments
Example of editing processexample of editing process
For all four of my experiments I took my photograph into Photoshop and I edited and experimented with the threshold of the image which adjusted the contrast of the black and white tones within my photographs. From taking inspiration from Keld Helmer-Petersen my aim was to extenuate the dark’s and the lights of the photograph and editing and experimenting with the threshold of the photograph.
Final Four Photographs
Final Four
These are the final four photographs I produced from experimenting with the thresholds of the images being inspired by Keld Helmer-Petersen. I feel my outcomes were quite successful as some are showing the geometric lines which Helmer-Petersen also produced and using the thresholds I have extenuated the contrasts of the black and whites.
In this blog post I am trying to mimic the style of Keld Helmer-Petersen. Helmer-Petersen is most famous for his dramatic use of black and white features, where he explored dramatic contrast of tones.
Keld Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who achieved widespread international recognition in the 1940s and 1950s for his abstract colour photographs. He was born in Denmark on 20th August 1920, and died 6th March 2013
Here is some of his work.
As you can see there is a massive contrast between the extreme white, and dark black within the colours.
I have tried to recreate his take on photography by using the change on threshold within Photoshop, I feel I did really well with this task, I did two different sheets for this, each with 4 photos. My first attempt was an all natural version, with a Flamingo, some wood, a Lemur and a Whippet. I feel this went really well
My second attempt was more of a man made version, with a Climbing frame for Orangutans, the side of a building, a glass bottle within a wall, and an old hook for a large gate.
Personally I felt this was even better than my natural one as I found the perfect threshold for the contrasting tone, much like Helmer-Petersen.
As you can see there is a massive contrast between the extreme white, and dark black within the colours.
