This week we will be looking more closely at the concept of altered landscapes.
You will be developing a set, sequence or group of final images to print and display
You can choose from natural, romanticised, urban and altered landscapes for your final outcomes
You may choose to employ a range of creative techniques (digital and traditional) to create your environments…
Photographing changed, changing or altered landscapes
Creating altered landscapes by combining a range of images in Adobe Photoshop
Explore panoramic landscapes
Using cut-n-paste techniques and printed matter (from photos, magazines, print-outs, newspapers etc)
You may already have a range of suitable images to start your designs…but will need to conduct a range of photo-shoots to ensure that you have enough high quality images to work from:
Here are some examples to help inspire your ideas…
Tanja Deman
“Tiny Planets”
David Hockney inspired “joiner” photographs
3-d / dioramas
Dafna Talmor’s Constructed Landscapes
Felicity Hammond
“Joiners”
Beomsik Won
Surrealist approaches
Jesse Treece
Sammy Slabink
Geo-political observations and comments
Krista Svalbonas
Paint directly onto photographs, as in these works by Gerhard Richter:
Gerhard Richter has painted over 500 of his own photographs (with many more works discarded): commercially printed images that are overpainted with spontaneous gestural smears, using leftover oil paint applied with palette knives, squeegees or doctors’ blades. In the examples above, the thick painted lines divide the composition and inject colour into what is otherwise a rather drab interior scene. The paint disturbs the viewer – shatters the illusion that we are quietly observing a scene – pulling our attention to the tactile surface and smear of texture in front of our eyes.
Combine paint and photographs digitally, like Fabienne Rivory‘s LaBokoff project:
This project by Fabienne Rivory explores interactions between imagination and reality. Selecting photographs that represent a memory, Fabienne digitally overlays a gouache or ink painting, introducing an intense vibrant colour to the work. Students might like to experiment with this idea by creating a photocopy of a work and applying ink or watercolours directly (watery mediums will not ‘adhere’ to an ordinary photography surface).
Overlay multiple photos from slightly different angles, like these experimental photographs by Stephanie Jung:
Stephanie Jung creates stunning urban landscapes, overlaying near-identical city scenes that have been taken from slightly different angles, at different transparencies and colour intensities. The repeated forms (buildings / vehicles / street signs) suggest echoed memories, vibrations of life; the ebb and flow of time.
Cut out shapes and insert coloured paper, as in these photographs by Micah Danges:
These landscape photographs by contemporary photographer Micah Danges have separate photographic layers and incorporate stylised abstract elements. The simple strategy of cutting pieces out of a photograph and adding layers of different paper can be a great technique for high school photography students.
Make an photography collage using masking tape, like Iosif Kiraly:
Whereas the previous photomontage montages involve precise trimming and arrangement of forms, this collage has an informal aesthetic, with visible pieces of masking tape holding it together. This can be a great method for shifting and moving pieces until the work is well balanced and cohesive. Iosif Kiraly’s work explores the relationship between perception, time and memory.
Photograph a single scene over time and join the pieces in sequence, like these composite photographs by Fong Qi Wei:
These photographs are from Fong Qi Wei’s ‘Time is a Dimension’ series, and show digital slices of photographs taken over several hours at one location. The shots above show a seaside in sunrise, with the images organised together in a way that shows the changing light conditions.
Inset scenes within other scenes, as in these photographs by Richard Koenig:
Richard Koenig hangs a print and rephotographs this in its new location, creating intriguing illusions of space within space. Perspective lines within the two images are aligned to create optical confusion, so the viewer is disconcerted and unsure about the separation of the two spaces. His work often features intimate, private moments inset within generic, impersonal, public environment.
Take close-up, tightly cropped scenes, creating abstract photography from surfaces and pattern, like these works by Frank Hallam Day:
Frank Hallam Day carefully selects pieces of hulls from wrecked ships in West African harbours. Peeling paint, eroding metal and horizontal water lines take on the linear and textural qualities of an abstract painting: a commentary about the influence of time upon humanity’s technical achievement.
Experiment with slow shutter speeds at night, blurring lights, as in the abstract ‘Sightseeing Tunnel’ series by Jakob Wagner:
Photographer Jakob Wagner took a five minute tunnel ride in an automated car through a tunnel in China, creating vibrant, abstracted, long exposure, night photography that conveys the motion and changing light conditions along the journey.
Essential Blog Posts This Week…
Research Altered Landscapes…
Develop a Case Study about a chosen photographer (plus analysis of a key image)…show how this has inspired your final ideas and process
Your images, process, editing, selection, final outcomes and evaluation
Psycho-geography is a hybrid of photography and geography that emphasizes playfulness and “drifting” around urban environments. It has links to the Situationist 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… just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape
The originator of what became known as unitary urbanism, psychogeography, and the dérive was Ivan Chtcheglov, in his highly influential 1953 essay “Formulaire pour un urbanisme nouveau” (“Formulary for a New Urbanism”).
The idea of urban wandering relates to the older concept of the flâneur, theorized by Charles Baudelaire…and is similar to STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
PETAPIXEL definition of PsychoGeography CLICK HERE
What will you see on your journey…and how will you respond and adapt to it ???
Koyaanisqati : Drawing its title from the Hopi word meaning “life out of balance,” this renowned documentary reveals how humanity has grown apart from nature. Featuring extensive footage of natural landscapes and elemental forces, the film gives way to many scenes of modern civilization and technology.
Superflux : explore over-surveillance and the prospect of intrusion in our everyday lives…has the concept of psycho-geographies evolved into something dystopian-like and Orwellian (1984- “Big brother”)…governments, town planners and the authorities design how we live, where we live and essentially control popluations of towns and cities.
Marcus Desieno creates de-humanised landscape photography by hacking surveillance camera networks…but avoids privacy problems normally associated with urban and residential areas…
What you need to do…(3-5 blog posts)
Research thenDefine, describe and explain what Psycho-Geography is…
Choose an (urban) area of Jersey that you are interested in exploring
Find the area on google maps and zoom in so that you can make a screen shot to add to your blog post.
Add the “street view” too if you can
Find as much information and images online as you can about the street / area you are exploring and include these in your blog post
Add any archival information that you can too (see below)
Then go to the area and explore on foot…photographing everything you can, and all that appears of interest to you at that time. Photograph up, down and across…creating a film or time-lapse is good too as is drone footage / imagery…
Record the time, date and place of your journey in your blog post
Add any thoughts, feelings or emotions you can about the place your are exploring…and as you develop a connection and familiarity with the place/ people / buildings etc.
Refer to Mishka Henner and Edward Burtynsky (aerial photographs) and The Boyle Family in your blog post…and discuss how they interact with an area and create art / photography inspired directly by the location and its uses / functions.
Analyse and evaluate your process…show your selection, editing and presentation of final images.
Using Photo-Archives
In the course of daily life, individuals and organizations create and keep information about their personal and business activities. Archivists identify and preserve these documents of lasting value.
These records — and the places they are kept — are called “archives.” Archival records take many forms, including correspondence, diaries, financial and legal documents, photographs, and moving image and sound recordings. All state governments as well as many local governments, schools, businesses, libraries, and historical societies, maintain archives.
Your task
The images above are Archival Images from iconic areas of Jersey…and these areas have changed over time.
Find archival images that correspond to your own landscape photography and contrast and compare. Include any info you can find about the image itself / photographer / time period etc
OR…you may find that you are intrigued by a particular landscape image and want to respond to it and create a comparison / composite image. For this you must conduct a photo-shoot aiming to document the area from a similar viewpoint and edit your images accordingly
OR…you may want to explore the concept of JUXTAPOSING Old and new buildings / parts of Jersey…either by photographing them in situ, or creating a composite image using photoshop
Public archives in Jersey
Jersey Archives: Since 1993 Jersey Archive has collected over 300,000 archival records and it is the island’s national repository holding archival material from public institutions as well as private businesses and individuals. To visit click here
Jersey Archive can offer guidance, information and documents that relate to all aspects of the Island’s History. It also holds the collections of the Channel Islands Family History Society.
Societe Jersiaise: Photographic archive of 80,000 images dating from the mid-1840s to the present day. 35,000 historical images in the Photographic Archive are searchable online here.
Societe Jersiaise also have an extensive library with access to may publications and records relating to the island’s history, identity and geography. Click here
Archisle:The Jersey Contemporary Photography Programme, hosted by the Société Jersiaise aims to promote contemporary photography through an ongoing programme of exhibitions, education and commissions.
The Archisle project connects photographic archives, contemporary practice and experiences of island cultures and geographies through the development of a space for creative discourse between Jersey and international practitioners.
Research and explore how Lewis Bush engages with and photographs the city and its development / over-development.
Click here to check out an interview as he explains how he uses aerial / satellite imagery to home in on secret data stations used in the Cold War and produce abstract imagery influenced by the radio waves of secret information being mysteriously broad-casted.
APERTURE refers to the opening of a lens’s diaphragm, which allows light to pass through the camera. It is calibrated in f/stops and is generally written as numbers like 1.4, 2, 2.8 etc. The higher the f/stop, the less light is allowed to pass through the camera.
DEPTH OF FIELD refers to the distance between the nearest and the farthest objects that are in acceptably sharp focus in an image. The depth of field can be calculated based on focal length, distance to subject, the acceptable circle of confusion size, and aperture. The more depth of field, the more focused the camera is to the foreground and the more blurred the background is.
I felt that this image could be very successful if I edited out the buildings, as they do not fit with the theme of romantic photography, and if the colours of the sky behind the clouds were increased in saturation to make them pop.
I chose this image because I liked the reflection of the sky on the ground and felt that, in black and white, this could be emphasised further. I also liked the cloud formations as I felt they added some change to an image mainly comprised of lines, and also that they mirrored the clumps of seaweed on the ground in shape and pattern.
I liked this image in particular due to the leaves hanging down from above in the foreground and the foggy sky. I felt that if I make the green and blue in the image more prominent, it would have a better result.
Simultaneously, the human eye can detect and process a larger range of light than any camera could at a single exposure. Longer/shorter exposures and the combination of multiple frames can bring cameras, and the images they produce, up to the similar complexity of the human eye and in some cases, can even have an advantage over human eyesight.
Definition:
Bracketing is the process of photographing a group of the same image, changing a single setting (such as exposure) for each shot. This can result in a range of images like the ones below
Why?:
This process can prove to be extremely useful in photography as the range of images provides the option to choose which exposure worked the best in the image or to even combine them together, creating a photograph with ‘high dynamic range’, otherwise known as HDR images that typically have a large tonal range.
How?:
(manually)
Exposure bracketing is typically carried out by adjusting the shutter speed of the camera, which in turn allows more or less light through the lens when taking the image. Manually, exposure bracketing is best achieved with the use of a tripod due to the risk of camera shake when using a slower shutter speed, which can result in blurry images. Tripod also make sure the camera’s view is static, preventing trouble later if you want to combine frames
HDR:
HDR can be done in using various software, such as Lightroom, Photoshop or other third-party software. A benefit of using HDR is that it’s a fast process, allowing for the completion of bulk work at a fast rate. It also involves the technique of ‘tone mapping’, which allows you to control the range of shadows and highlights. Landscape photographers often rely on and benefit from HDR. However, if HDR is done incorrectly it can result in images that look harsh with garish colours. The finished product may also be lower quality than images produced through compositing.
Compositing:
Compositing produces images that are much more realistic, high quality and provides more control over the range of tones within the image. A downside is that it’s extremely time consuming and requires a basic understanding of layers and layer masks.
The Tetons and the Snake River (1942) Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
TECHNICAL
Adams uses grayish colours ranging from deep, dark blacks to more forgiving natural whites as was created with help of his own light grading system in order to implement a grey-scale image. He uses natural lighting extensively, accompanied by a high tonal range to present a highly contrasted image that highlights the darker areas with use of low exposure, however still retaining detail throughout the image, even in the dark shadows as a result of the dull, overcast skies above.
This contrast/tonal range as perceived in the photo helps add an intense, fierce tone, adding to the idea of the mountains seeming rather formidable which in turn gives the landscapes an austere and intimidating perception, helping demonstrate its size and beauty to the observer effectively. The high tonal range additionally causes the sunlight reflecting off the river to stand out due to its bright grayish colour, as well as the abrupt increase the shadows in the dark rock on the mountains and the darker trees in the foreground which create this extraordinary contrast.
To achieve this, he has most likely used a tripod to help keep his photos stable in order to avoid blur and loss of focus in his images, which we can see has worked wonders. As well as this, he probably used a slow shutter speed in order to capture the significant detail and to be able to focus the entire image with both the foreground and background being of high resolution, creating the high tonal range that can be distinguished here.
VISUAL
This image has a plethora of different textures as can be observed from the bright, glimmering water in the river to the dark, rugged, hard rock mountain range in the background as well as the trees and scrub-land which subtly break up the contrast. Furthermore, the overcast skies made up of grey clouds, just like the trees, create a balance of colour and shades throughout the image and is a perfect example of the theme of nature and its beauty which is what Adams as well as many other romanticist photographers strove to photograph.
CONCEPTUAL
The ideals of Romanticism in art and photography are that nature is powerful, beautiful and unpredictable. This is highlighted by the sky with occasional breaks where sunlight pierces through as well as the angelic light coming from behind the mountain, which imposes over the whole scene and creates a sense of superiority, emphasizing it’s bold and striking appearance.
CONTEXTUAL
In context, Adams himself spent a large portion of his life taking photographs in the West of America, especially in Yosemite and other parts of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. This was the core to what inspired him to excel in his photography, representing the untouched landscapes and the power of nature found in these places through his unique photography and his desire to show others, as best he could, the true essence and awe he felt when in such areas by capturing what he saw through his very own eyes.
Adams was also the co-founder of Group f/64 for which he invented the Zone System, (a technique of translating light into specific densities onto negatives and paper), giving photographers better control over their finished photographs. Adams is also known for promoting the idea of ‘visualization’, in which the photographer ‘sees’ in their mind’s eye the final photo before it is taken. This helped the photographer to achieve all of their desired aesthetic and mechanical effects in his photography as outlined previously.
For this image i just extremely edited the vibrance and contrast, and i like the strong colour of the ocean and sky, with the coast separating the two
I like the dark contrast of this image, with the very darkened statue against the block white sky, with the sharp lines and soft grey of the church
I used an exposure bracket to stitch together 10 images at different contrast pictures, and i like this image specifically because the exposure bracket resulted in the clouds repeating making them look slightly angelic, and they gave a bright glow around grave stones which i really liked
For this image i mainly just changed the contrast and vibrance, but i like the focus on the rock stack against the bright blue sea, and that in the background there is like 4 layers of colour – the rocks,sand,sea and skyI liked this image because of the black lines of the spiky plant against the soft yellows and blue of the sky at sunsetThis was a unique exposure bracket of 7 images, that were aslo strongly edited to create this glare of the sun as it sets with almost a holographic look in the center and along the sun rays
I will be taking the photos, however with no human focal point, or any human make infrastructures, since landscape photography uses primarily nature only. As this is my approach to Romanticism, I will try to create focus on nature and exaggerate its beauty.
WHAT
I will be taking photos of the headlands of Plemont, including the waves of the coastline as they will be rough and strong, as well as the rocks and harsh cliff faces of the headland. This will also uncle some shrubbery and other plants surviving along the coast.
WHERE
My photoshoot will take place at plemont beach in St Ouen, primarily the cliffs to the right of the headland. I will also walk to the end of the headland in order to gain perspective of as many angles of the cliffs as possible.
WHEN
The photoshoot will take place on Sunday October 6th, from 4pm until around 6pm. The weather forecast is due to be sunny with some clouds, which should help exaggerate the colours of the landscape and give emotion and drama to the images.
WHY
I have chosen this time and place as the cliffs can be very powerful and I believe represent a very natural, beautiful landscape. Due to the weather conditions and time of day, the golden hour lighting and clouds will provide a good variety of natural lighting.
HOW
It may be windy so I will take a tripod in order to stabilise the camera when taking photos. I will further use a quick shutter speed, around 1/500 to make sure objects such as waves are not blurry. (this may mea I will need a lighter iso to brighten the image.) I may take photos with different ISO levels, so keeping the camera still will create a smooth combination of different photos to a HDR photo.
WHAT IS HDR AND HOW I WILL USE IT IN MY PHOTOSHOOT:
Bracketing refers to the changes in exposure between multiple image captures. This means taking frames at different light levels.
This can be done by changing the ISO on the camera settings. By changing the ISO number you can modify the brightness of the photo. By increasing the ISO, the image will become brighter, and by decreasing the ISO the image will become darker.
In the image to the left, a range of identical photographs are taken, however some are over exposed and some are under exposed, due to a change in ISO.
An ISO of 100 would create a darker image compared to an ISO of 1600.
By taking photos at different exposures, a method called HDR can be used to increase the dynamic range in photographs, hence the name High Dynamic Range. Many applications such as Photoshop can be used to automate photos to HDR. When layering identical photos taken at different ISO’s it alters the ratio of light to dark, exaggerating highlights and shadows. This allows the viewer to experience a wider range or tones and colours when looking at a photo.
