What is Landscape Photography?

Landscape photography shows spaces in the world, potentially vast and empty, but other times microscopic. Landscape photographs capture the presence of nature but can also show man-made features engrossing on nature.

What is Rural Photography?

Rural Photography is similar to landscape photography but it captures life in the countryside and life living in a rural environment compared to an urban area.

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist. Adams was born on February 20th 1902 and died on April 22nd 1984. Some of Adams most influential and well known work was his black and white photos of the American West. Adams was one of the founders of a group known as Group f/64 which is an association of photographers who were responsible for photography that utilized sharp focus and the full tonal range.

Adams developed an exact system of image making known as the Zone System with his friend, Fred Archer. Archer was another aspiring photographer who was interested in portrait photography and before his death in 1963 took portrait photography of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars of the time.

The zone system was a method of understanding what tonal range was going to be captured when taking the photo. He knew what parts of the image would be the lightest and which would be the darkest. This helped him work out what the final image’s contrast would be like.

Ansel Adams Zone System

As you can see above, Ansel Adams used his Zone System to work out what tones would be represented in the different parts of the image and which would be darker or lighter. By doing this he made sure the images would all have a distinguishable contrast with dark and light and would create drama that would make his images so much better than other images taken at the time. The reason Ansel Adam’s images were so much better than others taken at the time is all to do with his reasoning behind taking the images. At first he took them without thinking about what he was actually taking and then he saw the image he wanted to take in his mind’s eye. He then experimented with exposures and used his zone system to see what his image would be like after he developed the image.

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and musical movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and was most commonly found from 1800 to 1850.

Photo-shoot plan

To take the photos for landscape, rural and romanticism I will photograph a beach in Jersey. I will photograph the waves, beach and rocks from different angles. I want to take photos like Ansel Adams and photograph water in motion and maybe in black and white to show the real tonal contrast between the brightest and darkest tones in the image.

Photo-shoot

Ansel Adams inspired edits

To get the images above, I went through my photos from the contact sheets and found the best ones. I then used Adobe Light room to edit the images in mass so that they all represented Ansel Adams’ work.

My Final Image

The reason I chose the image above as my best/ favourite image is that it reflects Ansel Adams ideas about the tonal system and how the contrast between dark and light brings power to the image. The image is of a rocky outcrop and I made it black and white and edited it so that the clouds to the left are darker and bring tonal contrast.