Landscape photography: Capturing large scale photos of ‘beautiful’ areas of nature such as mountains, rivers, sea-scapes. Can also be focused on man made areas or disturbed landscapes but the main interest is in the sublime especially for romanticism.
These are a mix of photos by Ansel Adams, Fay Godwin and Don McCullin. These photographers are renowned for their outstanding landscape photography.
Romanticism
Romanticism is a mindset not a movement that became popular in the 1800’s. The artists, photographers and musicians all had the same objective of conveying emotion in their work and provoking emotional responses in the audience. They focus on Nature being more powerful than man and the powers of the sublime.
Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement from the late 18th
and early 19th century in Europe. It is strongly emotional, and includes
aspects of vivid imagination.
Romanticism has long since been associated with landscape. It can describe the romantic sense of a landscapes features, displaying its sensual and quiet beauty. But also presents it dark and stormy, with a mysterious spirit. The most definable feature in a landscape image of romantic quality is one that portrays emotion and inspiration to the viewer.
Romantic artists work closely with the observation of a landscape as
well as the sky and atmosphere displayed, to create an emotional and dramatic
scene, but other artists use romanticism to emphasise the human link with
nature, and the comparison of their power and impact.
Due to the start of the Industrial revolution, the era of
romanticism was triggered, allowing photographers to focus on the power of
nature and places that still had little human impact.
Landscape photography – typically used in order to capture a single moment/ presence of nature. Throughout landscape photography there are many different approaches/ types for example, large, vast and seemingly unending images in contrast to those which only portray a microscopic area or piece of landscape.
Growing in popularity during the 18th century, landscape art, in particular, nature, began to enthrall and intriuge artists increasingly more. In addition to this, during this period of time photography was also growing in popularity and as an art consequently, leading to the well-known landscape photography we know today.
In my opinion, landscape photography is a technique used my numerous photographers in order to capture the viewer; bringing them into that single scene. In addition to this, landscape photography can also be used in order to portray many different things, depending on its ‘style’/ ‘theme’. For example, Romanticism related landscape photography would convey quite a dramatic feeling whereas abstract landscape photography tends to expose the more symmetrical/ ‘underrated’ areas of a landscape.
Landscape Photoshoot –
Photoshoot – St Catherine’s
New Topographics –
Photoshoot
In order to edit these images, I first used the cropping tool in order to cut out any moder technologies which I though distracted from the new topography theme as it because popular during the 70’s. Once I had used the cropping tool and the spot healing brush tool to remove any veichles, I leveled the image so that the darker aspects of the imag were under exposed. I then converted the image to black and white, making sure that the clouds were emphasized and the open door was mostly black.
Ansel Adams was a landscape photographer and environmentalist. He is best known for his black and white images of the american west.
Adams was born February 20th 1902 in San Francisco California. He grew up in a house amid the sand dunes of the golden gate. As a boy, Ansel Adams was not very successful at school, leading to his Father and aunt tutoring him at home.
The main way in which Adams found joy, was in nature. He would go on long walks nearly everyday, hiking to the dunes, Lobos Creek, Baker Beach and even out to the very edge of the american continent.
1927 was an important year of Adams’ life. This was when he made his first fully visualized photograph, Monolith the Face of Half Dome. Adams began to persue ‘straight photography’, where he emphasized the clarity of the lens. This meant the final print gave no appearance of being manipulated in the camera or the dark room.
In 1928 Adams married his wife Virginia Best. The couple went on to have two children.
Majority of Adams work as a photographer was completed by 1950. During his later life he spent most his time reinterpreting his earlier work and editing his books.
I originally started with one of my favorite photos from my bunker shoots as part of my summer task. The photo has a lot of potential thus creating many ideas for me to experiment with.
Firstly, I used the quick selection tool on Photoshop to quickly select the foreground with the bunker, and remove the background, mostly made up of sky. Then I added a layer underneath the bunker image with Nazi propaganda as seen above. The subtle yellow contrasts really well with the black and white foreground, and the positioning of the photo with Hitler’s eyes just peaking above the bunker adds a sense of style that makes the image seem “living” and thus come alive, bringing out this comedic effect.
Then, I started to try a different technique, trying to paste an image off the internet and “skewing” the image on Photoshop in order to make it look realistic and as part of the wall, sloping with the angle at which it comes across on the camera.
Here, I improved on the last photo and tried to create this abstract and unique design, using images of Nazi propaganda posters off the internet, pasting them onto this image and skewing them, trying to compliment the angles of the walls in order make them look as part of the bunker while trying my best to keep the original shape of the bunker and cover every visible wall/angle possible.
PHOTO TWO
I now chose a new photo to experiment with and ended up with this rendition after much experimentation. I like it as it has that typical photo montage style as well as incorporating many different themes all in one. The graffiti on the side of the bunker wall took a while to edit, especially considering that I had to “skew” it on Photoshop to best match the angle of the wall, (the same process used in “photo one”). Additionally, I duplicated the original layer and added a new colour to it, and then removed the other side with the quick selection to create a sense of time gone by and a contrast as seen in the image, highlighting the differences between the past and present.
After that, I tried a new style of photo montage with a the same image as “photo two”, where I copy and pasted the same image and try to create a new image out of it. I experimented by rotating duplicated layers of the same image in different ways until I ended up with this photo, that is rather confusing yet pleasing to look at, a bit like an optical illusion… it’s quite hard to make sense of, and that was the aim.
A bit of altering later I ended up with a slightly different image.
Lastly, I flipped the photo and changed it ever so slightly just to maximize the amount of concrete visible on screen, however keeping some of the bunkers unique and original features such as the observation and bullet holes meanwhile keeping the photo as aesthetically pleasing as possible as I had very little to work with.
Overall, I enjoyed this new element of photography, conducting some photo shoots, new styles of editing and researching the history and evolution of the photo montage style. Throughout the task, I think I have successfully experimented with different processes of editing, using lot of trial a error to end up with the final images I have ended up posting on this blog. Personally, bias aside, I think my photo montages successfully capture a sense of “remembrance” and the war-themed genre as a whole, imitating the work of Hannah Hock, Raoul Hausmann and other influential Dada and photo montage artists. The theme of these photo montages that we researched and imitated often related to pre and post war ideas, which was the theme of the topic and a good foundation for me to build up on as I already had plenty photos from previous photo shoots for similar themed tasks such as my AS Summer Task.
“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.”
