Rural landscapes are photos with the soul purpose of showcasing nature and our natural surroundings. When photographers capture a rural essence, they usually romanticize the area shown to project their own sense of place they felt then in that location and reflect what they saw through the final photo. To the viewer, this gives them a sense of inclusion as the photographer is sharing their experience with them.

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature rejecting the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality.

Fay Godwin

Fay Godwin, born 1931 in Berlin, Germany, first became interested in photography in the mid-1960s as a result of taking pictures of her young children. Alongside early portrait work, she developed a sophisticated landscape practice, often collaborating closely with writers to produce in depth surveys of particular rural topics or regions. Her photography has sometimes been linked to a tradition of romantic representations of the British landscape, in the manner of Bill Brandt or Edwin Smith. But, as a socialist and active environmentalist, Godwin makes the land in her photographs reveal traces of its history, through mankind’s occupation and and intervention.

Photo analysis

This black and white photograph taken by Fay Godwin shows a rural setting containing a mix of fields, paths and a reservoir. The main focus of Godwin’s work was to show off the countryside which was continuously becoming privatized and hidden from the public eye, to show the hidden beauties of England. I feel as this photo is the perfect representation of how we view a countryside. In the foreground of this photo, we see path leading down to the fields, found between rough and harsh stretches of both long and short grass. To me, this is a good contrast to the smooth hills and fields seen in the mid ground as it projects two different textures of the plain that can be easily interpreted by viewers.

At first view, my eye was drawn to the smooth and clean hill found in the middle ground leading to a white patch, after more research i found that the title of the photo is ‘Path and Reservoir’, this has now made the white space clear that is it a body of water within the fields.

The fact that this photo is in black and white shows me that the colours found in a countryside fall second to all the textures seen and emphasizes the contrast to a greater scale. Also, in the photo i see that Godwin has covered the whole of Ansel Adam’s scale, going from 0 being black through to 10 being white, displaying different shades.

Considering the time frame when this photo was taken, 1977, I reckon that this photo was processed in a darkroom and replicated. When taking the photo, i seems as if Godwin stood at a high point on the plane to capture as much content as possible. there is a chance that Godwin used a Hasselblad 500C/M camera fitted with a Planar f2.8 50mm lens or a Leica M6 camera fitted with a Summicron f2 35mm lens. As both of these cameras were used to produce some of the images included in the exhibition.

My Response

i carried out my photo shoots at different locations around the island, exploring my options of both landscape and coastal environments. I timed my photoshoots to correlate with different weathers and time frames to give myself different atmospheres to work with.

Edited photos

This selection of images contain photos which I believe are the best at showing how simplistic and beautiful nature is and aiming to romanticise a different view of nature without extreme weathers or elements. I edited all my photos to black and white to exaggerate the contrasts between highlights and shadows, giving a calm and collected moment for atmosphere. I think this was successful as it has made the photos more subjected as there are two main ways to view the images, those being the stillness and calmness of the plains or the harshness and depth of the textures within the photos. Whilst editing I considered Ansel’s zones, trying to include all aspects of the scale. As I was taking the photos, I positioned myself with intentions of capturing landscapes without including as many modern buildings/alterations in the photo. However in some photos, catching a small section of a building or one being in sight very far away was unavoidable when I was trying to photograph an eye grabbing photo in terms of composition.

a photo montage is a collection of photos, overlapped and merged together to create a collage. It was first used as a technique by the dadaists in 1915 in their protests against the First World War. It was later adopted by the surrealists who exploited the possibilities photo montage offered by using free association to bring together widely disparate images, to reflect the workings of the unconscious mind.

In these photos, the artists have cut and pasted different photos and over lapped them into one. It is seen that parts of the face have been placed appropriately on the original photo, so I mimicked this style of collaging my taking parts of existing portraits and positioning them on corresponding features on the base photo.

An environmental portrait is a portrait taken of a person or people in a situation that they live in and a place that says something about who they are. It is often a place of work, rest or play.

Mood Board

This is a selection of different occupations and workers within their environment. This mood board gives an idea of what i wish my final outcomes will picture.

Arnold Newman

Arnold Newman is often credited with being the photographer who articulated and who consistently photographed the genre of environmental portraiture, in which the photographer uses a carefully framed and lit setting, and its contents, to symbolize the individual’s life and work. Newman’s career stretched over the 1940s through to 1960s.

Photo Analysis

This photo depicts a conductor Leonard Bernstein in the center of the photo. The under-exposure of the background creates a contrast between the empty chair and the focus point. The angle at which the lens is capturing the conductor from, shifts the authority of the photo, this contradicts the environment as the conductor holds the authority in this orchestral workspace.

Contact sheet

Edited Photos

When editing these photos, I edited them to black and white photos to correlate my response to environmental photos to Newman’s work.

Final Image

I chose this image as i feel it most displays the models environment of his work place. His offset positioning opens up the background to allow the eye to wonder and admire the workplace in more depth. At first look, this photo illustrates a rule of 3 composition, splitting the photo into 3 vertical sections.

A diamond cameo is a format of displaying head shots. One photographer who commonly presents their work in a diamond cameos is Henry Mullins, a Jersey photographer who photographed over 9,000 portraits of islanders from 1852 to 1873 at a time when the population was around 55.000. The record we have of his work comes through his albums, where citizens are displayed in a social hierarchy. The arrangement of Mullins’ portraits of ‘who’s who’ in 19th century Jersey are highly politicised.

My take on diamond cameos

In these head shots, I used 2 soft boxes on flash heads to give the photos a softer lighting, this also helped eliminate shadows as the large soft boxes spread out the direction of the flash. I replicated Mullins use of angles and how they’re presented in the diamond.