I have been to ronez quarry and took photos from sorel point which I will use in my exam. I think these photos show the industrial impact of humans on the Jersey coastline. There was also a lookout point that had been graffitied. I photographed this because I think this shows the impact of humans on historical buildings. Around this area I also went to a farm. I think the photos I took link to my artist reference, Ed Burtynsky. This is because there was tires that had been dumped on the farm, something that Edward photographed a lot in his career.
Photoshoot 2 – Holme Grown greenhouses
I will photograph the greenhouses near my house as they have been abandoned and are not being used anymore. I think these photos will show the impact of humans on the agriculture environment. I will also photograph the abandoned store which used to be Holme Living. It is now overgrown with plants. There is also building work going on behind Holme grown which I will also take photos of. The origins of Holme Grown was some successful tomato growers opening a store and eventually having a lot of land to grow on. However, in recent years these greenhouses have become unused and the owners are looking to sell the land so that urban buildings can be built. I think these photos will show the area of time between agricultural growers and urbanisation.
Laura Romero, Madrid (Spain) 1976. Bachelor in Fine Arts. Laura is a multidisciplinary artist who works in painting, photography, performance, installation, and recently started with ceramic sculpture.
Her international participation has been outstanding, appearing in art fairs from Hamburg to Istanbul and Paris. Both her individual and her collective work have been exhibited around the world.
“I consider my work to be quite intimate. Under the scope of my own experiences, I elaborate a story about everyday life, I expose situations we all face day to day. My intention is to bait the audience into taking a second, closer, look; it is an invitation to reflect on everything that goes by in our journey unnoticed.” – Laura Romero
Examples of her work:
Laura Romero has a specific style of work ‘Intervals’ where she takes photos of buildings and photoshops them together in a creative way. I have chosen this artist because of how her photos are presented through the way of combing multiple buildings to create one artistic image.
“I have been working with the city for several years. Questioning the territory in which I live and building a new identity, my identity.”
Laura also has a different style of photography named ‘Confinement Diaries’ which is a pretty similar styles as her ‘Intervals’ but instead each image involves some sort of nature such as, leaves, a tree, and branches.
Examples of Confinement Diaries by Laura Romero
In my opinion, I prefer the Intervals topic rather than the Confinement Diaries because it helps understand the topic of Anthropocene through the presentation of such structures and buildings. For my mock exam I am going to try and create images inspired by Laura Romeros intervals work through photoshop.
Image analysis:
This image by Laura Romero is very interesting to me. The main focus of the image is the multiple buildings combined to make one mysterious structure. As you can see, most of the buildings involved throughout the image are presented in black and white with only 2 or 3 buildings displaying colour. The use of a tiny bit of colour makes the image more attractive and vibrant to impress the viewers which represents the idea of Anthropocene. Also, the buildings on the top are not positioned upside down, however there is one building on the bottom half that is positioned upside down to create a peculiar view.
I edited this image on lightroom by increasing the saturation, contrast and some other settings.
I then took the image into photoshop because I wasn’t satisfied with the result. I duplicated the layer and turned my main one in to monochrome. I used the magnetic lasso tool (on the second layer) to select the star on the can and the bird on the bottle (one at a time) and then I left clicked and chose ‘layer via copy’. I hid my second layer and was left with a black and white image with red accents. At the end, I used the sharpen tool on the can and bottle to make them stand out more.
I did this because I didn’t like the original colours of the image and because black and white was too plain.
Before and After LightroomEdited in Photoshop
I imported all of my images into lightroom and put them in a new collection that I named ‘Anthropocene’. After doing my selections, I used the develop section to edit some of them. I mostly turned them black and white and played with the settings. (contrast, exposure, highlights etc.)
2nd Edit:
final edit
Before and After
I didn’t do much to this image as it was already black and white and I liked the way it looked because of the composition. I just played around with the contrast and some other settings to make the details stand out more. I also straightened the image. Overall, I like this image because of the scaffolding, it makes the image look way more interesting because of all the lines.
Settings
3rd Edit
final edit
Before and After
I didn’t like the colour of this image and thought it wasn’t vibrant enough so I lowered the temperature and tint to get this blue colour. I liked it this way as it looked more like glass. I then turned the contrast all the way up to accentuate the the lines and inside of the building. At the end, I turned the shadows all the way down to make it even darker. I like the way it turned out because it kind of reminds me of Keld Helmer Petersen’s work.
Settings
4th Edit:
final edit
Settings
Before and After
I liked the overall look of this image so I didn’t change it too much. I turned it in black and white because I thought it looked better and simpler that way. Then I played around with the settings to make the lines of the scaffolding stand out more. Turning up the dehaze gave the sky some texture which I liked because it made it look more interesting that just having a plain white background.
For my first photoshoot, I went on a walk around town and focused on taking pictures of scaffoldings and buildings in order to create a collage inspired by Anastasia Savinova. I thought the scaffoldings would be good for the Anthropocene theme as they show how humans change the environment around them. I also tried taking my images from different angles to get a more interesting perspective. Halfway through, I switched to monochrome as I thought the colours were too distracting from the subject, it also just made the images look better.
Contact Sheets
I took around 320 photographs during my walk
after flagging I was left with 92 images
after coding I was left with around 20 usable images
Here I went through all of my photographs and flagged them using P (images to keep) and X (images I wouldn’t use). Then I went through them again and colour coded them in order to get my final selection. (red-no, yellow-maybe, green-yes)
These are some of my main ideas for the photoshoots for the Anthropocene project. I think this allows me to show a wide range of how humans have had an impact on our planet, which helps me to put more creativity into the project. I plan on focussing more on the bright coloured LEDs to show plastic bags and rubbish. I also think I want to make some sequences on old-to-new photos as I think they show how the island had developed over many years and has become more modernised. I like how these ideas are different but can also be paired together as it shows how we have developed and have adapted to the place we live but also the consequences that have happened to the island while it has changed and the population has increased.
Mood-Board
I have based my mood-board off on the photographers that I have been inspired by and will base my photos on. These photographers are Steven Gallagher, Naomi White and Troy Paiva.
Earth’s history is divided into a hierarchical series of smaller chunks of time, referred to as the geologic time scale. These divisions, in descending length of time, are called eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages.
The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when the human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems. Anthropocene is derived from the Greek words anthropo, for “man,” and cene for “new,” coined and made famous by biologist Eugene Stormer and chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000.
The Anthropocene is a new, present-day epoch, in which scientists say we have significantly altered the Earth through human activity. These changes include global warming, habitat loss, changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere, oceans and soil, and animal extinctions.
The new Anthropocene Epoch suggests that humans have had such a significant impact on Earth and its inhabitants that we will have a lasting and potentially irreversible influence on its systems, environment, processes, and biodiversity. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and modern humans have been around for an estimated 200,000 years. Yet in that time we have fundamentally altered the physical, chemical and biological systems of the planet on which we and all other organisms depend. But not everyone agrees that these changes represent enough evidence to declare a new formal geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Scientists are still researching and debating this.
The Anthropocene Project: Edward Burtynsky
The Anthropocene is a collaboration with Nicholas de Pencier, Edward Burtynsky, and Jennifer Baichwal and is a multidisciplinary body of work combining fine art photography, film, virtual reality, augmented reality, and scientific research to investigate the human influence on the state, dynamic, and future of the Earth. It was originally conceived as a photographic essay and the third in a trilogy of films including Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013), the project quickly evolved to include film installations, large-scale Burtynsky High-Resolution Murals enhanced by film extensions, 360° VR short films, and augmented reality installations. The trio embraced and developed their innovative techniques and started a journey around the work to capture evidence of human influence on the world. the final collection is pieces that will show viewers the new world of the Anthropocene epoch.
Edward Burtynsky is regarded as one of the world’s most accomplished contemporary photographers. He has photographic depictions of global industrial landscapes which represent over 40 years of his dedication to bearing witness to the impact of humans on the planet. His imagery explores the collective impact we as a species are having on the surface of the planet; an inspection of the human systems we’ve imposed onto natural landscapes. Some of his exhibitions include Anthropocene (2018), Water (2013), Oil (2009), Manufactured Landscapes and Breaking Ground.
I wanted to take two shoots so thought of places that could provide interesting material, both for standalone images as well as images that could be used for photo montaging.
For my first shoot I decided to go to Samares Manor, a site in Jersey with a large manor and botanical gardens that can be visited. These gardens feature a large variety of plants, and take inspiration from Japanese gardens. This provides a nice amount of both natural and manmade subjects for me to photograph.
I ended up going during the afternoon on a sunny day, these were not the best conditions since a lot of my images were very bright but I still like how they look.
For my second shoot, I decided to go into the local town and take pictures of construction sites I could find. They were relatively easy to find, and stopped at each as I went through town.
“New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” was an exhibition that epitomized a key moment in American landscape photography. New Topographics was a turning point in the history of photography, the 1975 exhibition New Topographics signaled a radical shift away from traditional depictions of landscape. New Topographics represented a radical shift by redefining the subject of landscape photography as the built (as opposed to the natural) environment.
Hilla Becher and Bernd Becher
Hilla Becher was a German conceptual photographer. Becher was well known for her industrial photographs, or typologies, with longtime collaborator and husband, Bernd Becher. The Bechers went out with a large 8 x 10-inch view camera and photographed these buildings from a number of different angles, but always with a straightforward “objective” point of view. They shot only on overcast days, so as to avoid shadows, and early in the morning during the seasons of spring and fall.
These images below are taken by Hilla Becher:
I have chosen to study this artsits because of the way she displays her images. I really like the way Hilla has taken a range of photos from different angles around the buildings and presents them in a black and white display and placed on a white border. I think the way that they display their images shows the idea of Anthropocene because it presents the man made and industrial areas having an effect towards the natural landscape.
Her husband Bernd Becher has a very similar way of taking photographs and editing by displaying his images in the same way.
These images below are taken by Bernd Becher:
Image analysis:
Images taken by Hilla Becher
These photos taken with a large 8 x 10 inch view camera displays these images in black and white which makes the image seem dark and eerie. These images portray the idea of Anthropocene by presenting the effect of pollution and humans towards nature. Some of the photos displayed are from the same building meaning Hilla and Bernd would photograph industrial buildings from different angles to try and present the full effect. The lighting used creates an effect towards the buildings by making them stand out and making them more dark than usual. The buildings shown give off a bad vibe due to the lighting and positioning of the camera which could of been foreshadowing the future where these types of buildings destroy natural landscape and produce pollution.
used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.
why should we tackle this subject through photography?
Photography can depict the effects of time weather its through climate change or how man made buildings and products have taken an effect on our environment hopefully raising an awareness to how what the human civilisation have done through time has effected our current surroundings.
mind map
mood board
I’m going to attempt to portray greed in society through portraiture and add elements of fashion for one of my shoots I will take portraits of models wrapped in fabrics and plastics to show the effects these materials have on wildlife and the environment we live in to bring light to how fashion as an industry has drastic effects on ocean pollution and even in agriculture because even if we don’t see the actual effects now people in other countries suffer the consequences of landfill and deal with harsh chemically polluted water daily. I’ve selected these images for my mood board as I feel like they fit under the topic of greed the portraits have this essence of chemically damaged through the textures shown.
