Blacklight photography is a series of black and white images that have quite harsh contrasts and tones.
Keld Helmer-Petersen
Born in Danish on the 23rd August 1920 and dying on 6th March 2013. He was most known for his abstract colour photographs in the 1940s and 50s. Interestingly, he became part of the US Camera Annual in the 1940s and gained interest with German Inter-war photography (New Objectivity movement).
Process
Firstly, we start by opening up the image we want to use by going to File > Open and then look for the image you want to use. For purpose of this project i will use this image:
SONY DSC
We then go to Image > Adjustments > Threshold:
As a result, this threshold window should pop up:
As you can see, there is a little arrow at the bottom; drag it along and you will be experimenting with the threshold tool. Adjust it appropriately. For example:
Once you are happy with your result, go to File > Save As and save your image.
Keld Helmer-Petersen was born on August 23, 1920 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Keld Helmer-Peterseis studied at the Institute of Design in Chicago . He received a Leica camera as a present thanks to this he started taking photographs. He prefers to take pictures of industrial areas, cityscapes and nature. He is known for his abstract colour photographs but he also likes working with black and white images.
My images :
I decided to choose old images of Paris and things we can see in our daily life that i had on my gallery . I think that they will be interesting with black lights .
with BLACK LIGHTS
We can notice that the pictures of paris looks they are drawn which indeed creates a cool effect. The black lights are embedded in the details we can see it very well in the lemons.
Keld Helmer-Petersen was one of the most influential Danish photographers in the 20th Century. He was an international pioneer for colour photography, however he also published several books of high contrast black and white images. Helmer-Petersen had a strong interest in industrial buildings and modern architecture, much of his work is centered around man-made structures. This is similar to the work of Albert Reneger-Patzsch, who inspired Helmer-Petersen greatly. His work also focuses on minimalism, using harsh tones of black and white and no mid tones.
Keld Helmer-Petersen | Black Light
What I really enjoy about Helmer-Petersen’s work is the dramatic contrast in his images. I believe it creates a sense of mystery as the high juxtaposition between black and white presents the industrial structures as silhouettes, alluding to the idea that the man-made world is dark and enigmatic. Additionally, I really like the bold straight lines in his work which repeat in each image. I think they display stillness and solitude in his work, which mixed with the shallow depth of field, create clear focal points for the observer.
My Unedited Images
I have chosen these 5 images to edit in the style of Keld Helmer-Petersen because I believe their blank backgrounds and architectural subjects reflect Helmer-Petersen’s minimalist Black Light images. Furthermore, I think these photos hold similar bold straight lines to his work and will work well when edited with high contrast. Although Helmer-Petersen’s images are focused on industrial buildings, I want to also experiment with a nature image to compare the difference between having a dark background to a light. I believe the image will still reflect his work as it will hold minimalistic qualities in its blank background and high contrast between the highlights and shadows.
Final Edited Images
I edited my final images on Photoshop using the threshold tool to overly enhance the contrast and to change the photos to black and white. I really like how abstract my images have come out, I think the bold black lines draw the observer’s attention to the uniform structures which create an animation-like effect in the images. Moreover, I believe these edited photos reflect Helmer-Petersen’s work immensely as they replicate the silhouettes and juxtaposition seen in his images. In addition, I think the experimentation with the nature image, using a dark background and having a white focal point, provides a different approach to Helmer-Petersen’s work while still reflecting his harsh contrast and sharp black & white tones. Lastly, I really like the shallow depth of field in these images, it exaggerates the negative space surrounding the geometric structures in the foreground and the static atmosphere of the photographs.
Keld Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who liked to experiment with the contrast of black and white expression influenced constructivist artists and their fascination with industry’s machines and architecture’s constructions. Keld’s approach to photography was by and large experimental and explorative. He worked on the boarders of what we consider to be photography. Throughout his career he worked with cameraless photography which was a technique in which objects are placed directly on light sensitive photographic paper. He used to walk down pavements with his head down making discoveries of damaged roads, houses or pavements which resulted in works such as the series Deformationer.
As you can see from Keld Helmer-Petersen’s work, all of his pictures where in black and white having that contrast between the black and white making the object in which he has taken the picture of, really stand out. Moreover, His pictures where flat being 2D and not 3D, meaning that in some of his pictures you don’t really know what the certain object was, having you use your imagination in what the picture could be or even taking a minute or two in realising what the image is for example, when you look at the image with the fire escapes, it could. Come across as just being thick black lines that where sketched onto a white piece of paper.
Original Photos
Edited Photos
The process I went through with making this was that I had all my photos on a separate file and edited them in order to make them have a bold contrast I achieved this by going onto image, clicking on adjustment then I went onto threshold which enabled me to adjust the threshold for my pictures, making the black and white have an intense contrast. After I done this, I opened a new file onto my photoshop and selected my images then copy and pasted them onto my new file, to have my edited pictures on the same file.
Evaluation
The evaluation that I made for my final images that I edited, was that I thought the images came out great involving the technique that Keld Helmer-Petersen uses for his photography. This is because in my images, they are flat and have bold contrasts of black and white on them having the object in any of the images stand out. Moreover, in the image of the Brewery in which I had edited, I thought this came out to be the best edit out of them all as the windows in which where bordered up and the outlines of the building highly stood out due to the building being white, the sky turning out white also made the image appealing as it seems like this could have been a sketch and not a picture.
A Danish photographer who was considered a pioneer in abstract photography in the 40s and 50s.
Keld experimented with the contrast in graphic black and white expression.
He was influenced greatly by constructivist artists and industrial machines/architecture.
Below we can see some of his compositions from his “Black Light” album where he experimented with extreme contrast to create abstract black on white compositions.
Process:
I chose 4 images that I thought would create a graphical black on white composition when edited. I opted for interesting industrial and man made elements with simplistic backgrounds.
I then added greater contrast to the image. Following this I used the threshold tool in photoshop to exaggerate the tonal range and create an abstract composition.
Keld Helmer – Petersen was a Danish photographer who received worldwide recognition for his coloured photographs. He also published several books full of black and white images where all the mid – tones had been removed.
Photographs captured by Keld Helmer – Peterson
MY RESPONSE
I firstly selected four images from my previous photoshoot inspired by Albert Renger – Patzsch’s ‘The World is Beautiful‘. I then opened Photoshop and experimented with the threshold tool in order to remove all the mid – tones and leave only black and white in the images. In my first photograph, I also experimented with the cropping tool so I could make the image smaller, and so I could get rid of parts of the image that I didn’t like. In the third picture, the threshold tool emphasised the shadows which were present in the bottom left of the image, and created a whole new area of black colour. The same happened in the second photograph, with the shadows casted by the dials on the oven being accented.
