Stephen Shore is an American photographer who was born October 8, 1947. He is known for his images of bland and somewhat boring scenes and objects in the United States, and also for his pioneering use of colour in art photography. His books include Uncommon Places (1982) and American Surfaces (1999). These photos were taken on road-trips during the 1970’s. They show juxtaposition and capture the beauty in the boring landscapes. Stephen Shore was instrumental in the ‘New topographic movement’. This movement was about showing the contrast between man and nature and the blandness of some of the American towns.

Visual: Looking at this image I can see that the photo is quite flat and dull in colour. However there is accidents of colour especially in red, white and blue. This photo in a lot of ways is quite boring and uninteresting but it is the subtle things that make it interesting.

Contextual: This photo is part of the new topographic’s movement which was a group of photographers including the likes of Stephen Shore, Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz. This image helps to represent the impact of man on the landscape and shows the contrast. At the time of this photo being taken, the idea of the ‘America Dream’ was a big thing that a lot of people

Conceptual: This image is dull other than the accents of red white and blue, which I think Stephen Shore has used to represent the nation of there United States as the USA flag is red, white and blue. This could be linking to the theme of ‘Man altered landscapes’ as the red, white and blue may be representing the people of the United States that have in a sense created this image.

Technical: Because this photo was taken in the 70’s it was likely to be taken on film because it has quite a flat look however digital photography had been invented and was growing in popularity. But the principles are still the same. The shutter speed would have been quite high because the photo is very sharp, but there is not much detail in the shadows and highlights.

Keld Helmer-Petersen is a  Danish photographer, who was born August 20 1920. He accomplished a huge global recognition during the 1940’s for his incredible abstract art. His most well-know works include a series of pure black and white images that show the contrast between the shadows and highlights. The images he produces have no grey or shades other than solid black and solid white. This helps to show the contrast he is capturing.

These images I though really showed the contrast best and they came out well. For some of the edits, I used the threshold adjustment on photoshop first to make the images black and white like these. However I didn’t like the way some of them looked as they were too black or too white. So I copied the layer, made one photo more black and one more white then rubbed out the parts I didn’t want to get a balanced level in the images. Overall, I am happy with all of these outcomes.

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