1. Research a photo-book and describe the story it is communicating  with reference to subject-matter, genre and approach to image-making.

This photobook is expressing the beauty within nature and the connections between physical human body features and the natural world in a simple, soft and humble way.

2. Who is the photographer? Why did he/she make it? (intentions/ reasons) Who is it for? (audience) How was it received? (any press, reviews, awards, legacy etc.)

Anna Eligabeth, hautlieu student.

3. Deconstruct the narrative, concept and design of the book and apply theory above when considering

The book itself feels smooth and clean. The colour of ink is written in a dull peach colour that matches the same colour as the front cover. Paper white if not filled whole with image. The paper feels thick and seems to have a shiny smooth texture. One page seems to be a little bit smaller than an A4 piece of paper. The book is presented portrait. Binding is hard.

The story behind this book is that this girl seems that she wants to express her passion between nature and man kind. She presents the beauty found within nature softly with one main theme of colour for each image and page. Colour is an important aspect in her book.

The bright, shiny sun fills the front page and fades from the top left corner to the bottom right corner. This image covers the whole outside of the book. She has a variety of different sized images, some fill a double page.

The editing process within this photo-book seems to be extreme with colour using high levels of saturation.

As researched earlier, Gustave used a method of combining two negatives of images that allowed Le Gray to achieve tonal balance between sea and sky on a final print. It gives a more truthful sense of how the eye, rather than the camera, perceives nature. I will be taking my own images and pasting them together to reconstruct Gustave’s method. Here is a double page spread from the current topic I am working on making a newspaper.

These images I chose to print out A5 size to reconstruct together with using Gustave’s old method of physically combining different skies and sea horizons together…

Firstly I printed out my 4 chosen images. I chose these images to use as they mostly all have the same levels of whites and darks within the seas and skies. This makes it easier to combined different parts of images together without them looking unnatural.

Next I cut out the skies from the top images and moved them around to fit the right photo. Clearly the two cut outs on the top right would not fit together as they are both two very different exposures.

Using the best two cut outs that went well together, I pasted them together with glue and made the horizon line blend as much as it could to look natural and as if it was an original photo. In my opinion this image relates to Gustave’s method and style the best. The sky has a great moody cloud that softens the brightness from the lower clouds.

With the remaining cut outs I played around until finding another combination that works…

This images would have had a better outcome if photo-shopped on adobe as for the continuous white line around the rocks. Apart from that both exposure levels work well together. The cliffy rocks have been placed in the foreground creating a background being the sea.

Gustave Le Gray

a French photographer that lived between 1829-1884. Gustave studied painting in the studio of Paul Delaroche and shortly after in 1847 made his first daguerreotypes. Gustave did similar work to William Henry Fox, a process involving paper negatives to be waxed out prior to sensitization, therefore creating a crisper image. Gustave decided to stick to portraiture in his studio in France for the majority of his early photographer stages. Family and financial issues occurred and Gustave ended up in debt. In 1857, Gustave started to produce seascape photography. A series of dramatic and poetic seascapes that bought international acclaim.

When photographing the sea in such early stages of photography, Gustave likes to capture how the eye would perceive the image rather than change it. Gustave would do this by creating two negatives of an image physically, (one half the sea, one half the sky.) Then he would use these two parts of images and paste them together as well as creating two different exposure levels in each negative. This would create a contrast between the darkness within the clouds and natural light that beams down on the sea.

Joe Cornish

Cornish is a British photographer, born in 1958. Cornish, inspired by the sea and natural  landscapes, captures quality images from the surroundings of the UK and abroad. Currently Cornish is working and living in North Yorkshire taking photographs of the North York Moors and coastal areas. Joe uses the quality of light in every aspect of his photography and even plans for different light use every time before going for a photo-shoot. Joe states that light is the most important aspect of his images. Here are some examples of images taken within Joes best time of light being used;

Joes images seem to have a chosen colour theme to each one. Joe finds himself positioned with a camera to always have something set within the foreground and a wide background. When photographing the sea, Joe seems to capture the water always so still and travelling at smooth and slow way. Here we can see that Joe wants to capture the beauty and tranquillity within the world. Whether it be a cold scene of wintery sea or a summer day with the sun setting, Joes images all link and would not be mistaken for someone else’s work. in my opinion, linking these images together is the theme of intriguing colours and the smoothness found within the sea and sky.