Lewis Baltz Image

My Image

In both images, the lighting used is almost identical, Lewis’s image was lighted by natural light almost directly above the building being photographed. This is shown by the dark shadows being created on the door by the top of the door frame in both images. In my image, I used an aperture of f.9. This is to allow the whole door and texture of the surrounding surfaces to be in focus and sharp. Similarly to this, Lewis’s photograph appears to have been taken at a similar aperture because the door is in focus, as well as the texture on the surrounding surface, showing a moderately high aperture was used. The shutter speed i used was fairly high because if the bright natural light at the time the image was taken. Lewis Baltz may have used a similar shutter speed if the intensity of the light was similar to when i took my image. Also, the ISO is fairly low in both images, creating minimal grain within the image, making them more clear and crisp.

Both images use black and white to emphesise contrast. Lewis’s photograph was taken on a black and white camera with no post editing, where as i took my photo on a coloured DSLR camera, and edited it in post to appear in black and white. Both images have a large tonal range, with bright highlights on the walls and dark shadows at the top of the doors. The framing and shapes within both images are almost identical, the camera is facing directly towards the building at head hight, the floor takes up a very similar amount of space in each image and the right-angled shape of the door is in the direct centre of the frame. In my image, The texture of the surrounding wall is emphasised by being in focus through the use of a high aperture, aswel as increased contrast and shadows. In Lewis Baltz’s image, there is less texture on the building, but it can still be seen because of the large tonal range and high contrast of the image. Lewis’s image is very symetrical because of the plain surfaces and central framing of the doorway. Where as my image is less symetrical because off the added details/objects such as the door handle, circular light and sign.

Alltogether, both images are rather similar, using high contrast and tonal ranges, along with flat angles and geometyric shapes to create a good representation of the urban side of New Topographic Photography.

Contact Sheets

Favorite Images

These are my favorite images because i think they best show the New Topographic and urban photography style. This is by framing the photographs directly towards a building/object looking flat towards the surface. As well as this, one of these photos is taken at a slight angle to show the dark shadows being created by the objects in the image, much like some of Lewis Blatz’s images.

Inspirations

Many of Lewis Baltz’s photography incluse industrial/mechanical objects/buildings, such as pipes, electrical boxes, air conditioning etc. I used this information to respond to one of his images of the side of a building containing lots of el;ectrical appliances and boxes:

My Final Outcome

Here I took a photograph of some air conditioning units and wires on the side of a building. The angle the image is taken at is much like Lewis Baltz because the camera is facing flat towards the wall, showing the shapes and right angles created by the objects in the frame. A difference between my image and Lewis Baltz’s image is that the background of my image (the wall of the building) is darker than the objects in the main focus of the image, whereas in his image the objects in the foreground are darker than the background. Although these light and dark tones are ‘inverted’ in each image, the same effect is achieved, making the focus of the image stand out more through the use of contrast between the tones used.

Contact Sheets

Favorite Images

These are my favorite images because i think they best display the New Topographic style of photography and urban photography through the strong tonal ranges, along with the ‘dirty’ and ‘raw’ feel to the images created through increased contrast.

Inspirations

As you can see, Lewis Baltz directly inspired many of these images, for example, the ones I took of the dark double doors against the lighter white all the building.

This is similar to some of Lewis Baltz work such as:

My Final Outcome

Here I darkened the darks of the image to create greater contrast between the door and building wall. This also emphasises the dirt and texture on the wall, much like in the top left of Baltz’s image above. My image is less exposed than Baltz’s image because i feel like it gives the image a more ‘real’ feeling as you can see the textures and dirt on the wall more clearly.

First Photo Shoot – Highlands College area and buildings.

Second Photo Shoot – Grainville College and surrounding buildings.

Eugene Atget was a French commercial photographer who specialized in photographing the architecture and associated arts of Paris and its surroundings at the turn of the 20th century. In  the late 1880’s, when Atget was in his early 30’s, he became interested in photography. The earliest known photographs by him seem to be made in the north of France. These works portray rural scenes, plants, and farming technology and they were presumably made as studies for painters and illustrators. It was his fortitude to document the entire architectural landscape and street views of Paris prior to its transformation to modernism. By the early 1890’s, Atget was working in Paris, but it was not until later into that decade that Atget changed the focus of his photographic business to concentrate on the city of Paris—a subject that proved of limitless interest, and one that continued to enrich his work for the remaining 30 years of his life.

I did my urban landscapes photoshoot based off Eugene Atget and photographed cobbles lanes around Jersey.

Shoot plan:

My shoot:

My selected images:

My final edited images:

analysis

I like the final outcome of my images as I feel they represent Eugene Atget photos well. I created an ‘old’ look to my images by putting my images into black and white and then adjusting the hue/saturation according to how I wanted the final outcome of the images to look. I am really happy with the outcome of the edited images as I feel they relate well to what I was trying to represent. My images captured cobbled lanes throughout Jersey and old buildings.

Lewis Baltz was born in Newport Beach, California, he studied at the San Francisco Art Institute. He worked as a freelance photographer in California and taught photography at various institutions, including the California Institute of the Arts, Yale and more. Baltz was a visual artist and photographer who became an important figure in the New Topographics movement of the late 1970s. His work is focused on searching for beauty in desolation (emptiness) and destruction. Baltz was one of a group of photographers (New topographics) who shared aesthetic – minimalist and detached, traditional landscape photography.  Baltz images describe the architecture of the human landscape, offices, factories, and parking lots. In the late 1980’s, Baltz switched from modestly scaled black-and-white photos to larger-scaled color prints, in order to capture the massive spaces of in France and Japan.

Image analysis

Lewis Baltz took this image of a car park at the south wall in Costa Mesa. There is a high contrast of black and white in this image. The use of the high contrast of the thin black trees against the white negative space of the warehouse, gives a haunting and lifeless feeling to this image despite being simply a photograph of a warehouse. The lighting looks as if it is taken during the day as you can see the shadows from the trees and ladder, however the image is transferred into black and white. Their is a strong tonal range of the white building and the car-park floor. Baltz uses the lines from the parking spaces as leading lines to draw in the viewer as it it directly in the eye line and looks inviting.

Baltz liked to photography his work in a ‘grid’ format with straight and geometrical lines and most his work is created using two tones to add to the meaning of his work. He focuses closely on lines and space to create a minimal looking image which still has meaning behind it. In this image Baltz took the image face on to make the most of the parking space lines and so that the viewer can clearly see the strong black and white contrast. Baltz wished to find beauty in his everyday surrounds rather than the new industrial world being created at the time, he has demonstrated this in this image as he has turned something so basic as a simple car park into a image with a meaning.