ROMANTICISM & RURAL LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY

Introduction to Landscape Photography – 2 week project

Go to

M:DepartmentsPhotographyStudentsPlanners Y12 JACUnit 3 Sept-Dec Landscapes

for resource pack

We will be looking at Romanticism and The Sublime as a starting point and if you click here you will have a better understanding of some of the roots of landscape as a genre in contemporary photography….

The focus of your study and research is natural landscapes and the impact of ROMANTICISM and The Sublime in Landscape painting and then later, photography.

Working Title/Artist: Stormy Coast Scene after a Shipwreck
Department: European Paintings
Working Date: (1830)

TIME PERIOD AND CONTEXT

The Age of The Enlightenment (1700-1800ish)

The Age of Romanticism (1800-1900ish)

“Writers and artists rejected the notion of the Enlightenment, which had sucked emotion from writing, politics, art, etc. Writers and artists in the Romantic period favored depicting emotions such as trepidation, horror, and wild untamed nature.”

“The ideals of these two intellectual movements were very different from one another. The Enlightenment thinkers believed very strongly in rationality and science. … By contrast, the Romantics rejected the whole idea of reason and science. They felt that a scientific worldview was cold and sterile.”

JMW Turner- Hannibal Crossing The Alps 1835

PAINTING VS PHOTOGRAPHY

Roger Fenton, inspired by nature and romanticism revisited a spot in Wales where previously the painter Samuel Palmer had been inspired by the natural beauty of this river valley.

Valley of the Shadow of Death is also a photograph by Roger Fenton, taken on April 23, 1855, during the Crimean War. It is one of the most well-known images of war…most likely staged too and is in stark contrast to the example above. Exaggerating and exploiting the surroundings are a key part of creating dramatic imagery…

Carelton E. Watkins (1829–1916)

“…it is hard to consider the birth of the environmental movement without mentioning Watkins and the rippling, far-reaching influence of his 1861 images of Yosemite. All that came after – Lincoln’s signing of the Yosemite grant, Muir’s nature writing, the founding of conservation groups such as the Sierra Club – can be traced back to the intake of breath when his images were seen for the first time.”

20th Century 1900 —

Ansel Adams

Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating “pure” photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph…even creating a Zonal System to ensure that all tonal values are represented in the images. Ansel Adams was an advocate of environmental protection, national parks and creating an enduring legacy of responses to the power of nature and sublime conditions…

RURAL LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHERS

Wynn Bullock

Fay Godwin

Edward Weston

Minor White

Don McCullin

Eliot Porter

Jem Southam

BLOG POSTS to complete…

An introduction to rural landscape photography, including a definition and mood-board of influential images
Create an in-depth case study that analyses and interprets the work of a key landscape photographer…EG: Ansel Adams or Edward Weston or Fay Godwin or Don McCullin (or similar)

3. Create a blog post that defines and explains what Romanticism is in Landscape Photography…include examples and make reference to Romanticism in other art-forms eg painting. Discuss the notion of the sublime and the picturesque.

4. Create a mind-map / mood-board of potential locations around Jersey that you could record and create romanticized landscape photographs of….look for extremes (either calm or wild, derelict, desolate, abandoned or stormy, battered and at the mercy of nature)

AIM to photograph the coastline, the sea, the fields, the valleys, the woods, the sand dunes etc.
USE the wild and dynamic weather and elements to help create a sense of atmosphere, and evoke an emotional response within your photo assignment.
PHOTOGRAPH before dark, at sunset or during sunrise…and include rain, fog, mist, ice, wind etc in your work
LOOK for LEADING LINES such as pathways, roads etc to help dissect your images and provide a sense of journey / discovery to them.

5. Take 150-200 photos of romanticised rural landscapes. . Add your edited selective contact sheets / select your best 3-5 images / include edits and screen shots to show this process. |Ensure you include both monochrome and colour examples.

6. Produce comparative analysis between one of your images and a landscape photographer – discuss similarities and differences.

REMEMBER you MUST use TECHNICAL / VISUAL / CONTEXTUAL / CONCEPTUAL to analyse effectively.

Ensure that you include the following key terms in your blog posts…

Composition (rule of thirds, balance, symmetry)
Perspective (linear and atmospheric, vanishing points)
Depth (refer to aperture settings and focus points, foreground, mid-ground and back-ground)
Scale (refer to proportion, but also detail influenced by medium / large format cameras)
Light ( intensity, temperature, direction)
Colour (colour harmonies / warm / cold colours and their effects)
Shadow (strength, lack of…)
Texture and surface quality
Tonal values ( contrast created by highlights, low-lights and mid-tones)

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is landscape-photography_using-lines-effectively-while-shooting-landscapes.jpg — Leading Lines

Image result for rule of thirds landscape photography — Composition : The Rule of Thirds Grid

Image result for fibonacci sequence landscape photography — *Composition : Fibonacci Curve / Golden ratio*

https://petapixel.com/2016/09/14/20-composition-techniques-will-improve-photos/

Camera Handling Skills

EXPOSURE BRACKETING

Exposure bracketing means that you take two more pictures: one slightly under-exposed (usually by dialing in a negative exposure compensation, say -1/3EV), and the second one slightly over-exposed (usually by dialing in a positive exposure compensation, say +1/3EV), again according to your camera’s light meter.

TASK : try a few variation of exposure bracketing to create the exposures that you want…you may already have pre-sets on your phone or camera to help you do this, but experimenting manually will help your understanding!

Many digital cameras include an Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) option. When AEB is selected, the camera automatically takes three or more shots, each at a different exposure. Auto Exposure Bracketing is very useful for capturing high contrast scenes for HDR like this…

…by taking the same photograph with a range of different exposure settings