For this piece I looked at Laura Romero and Emily Allchurch’s work, to cover the development of urban areas, as well as the identity of them. I used photos from Jersey as well as Brighton.

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Laura Roemero

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Image analysis

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From looking through her work and reading her bio’s I can see how she uses her photography to study the identity of the world around her and in doing so she also finds her. She also uses it to document and interoperate how things change around her such as the buildings. This is something I think I can also show, through the use of abstract, constructed landscapes such as city’s. In this image she has edited together a collection of photos of buildings from her city, as well as changing the colours of them to make them black and white to contrast the brightly coloured buildings to keep it interesting- and also keeping it geometrical / symmetrical.

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Emily Allchurch

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Series Analysis

Emily’s series ‘Towers of Babel’ is a project in which she attempts to portray city’s in a single photo, showcasing the different history, development and viewpoints within. While not a photographer, Emily creates her work based off of a collection of images which she recreates as one. Her work features old and new architectural styles, which is something I am attempting to include in my final piece too. Throughout this series she really highlights how how the scenery around us is becoming a constructed landscape, a concrete jungle.

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The Myth of The Tower of Babel

Emily’s title for her series “Towers of Babel” isn’t just a random name she thought was fitting- it actually refers to ‘The Myth of Babel’ which theorises the origins of multiple languages. It mentions how blasphemed by building the tower of babel to avoid a second flood, and so God created multiple languages so that humans were bound to different linguistic groups and couldn’t understand each other. I think that this is almost a metaphor for how some of the worlds richest people live high up in expensive skyscrapers above the normal people and are so different that we could almost speak different languages- in the form of our lifestyles. This is something Emily captures very well in her series as she includes various different types of buildings from different “classes” of life

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Contact Sheet

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Idea

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Final Piece & Process

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Evaluation & Comparison

I feel like this piece definitely displays various different architectural styles from different time periods, such as the Chinese/gothic/indo-saracenic style of the Royal Pavillion pictured in the centre, as well as the ultra modern skyscrapers of the London skyline– and some brutalist styled flat blocks. In this piece I have combined Laura Romero’s style of stitching together different building styles as well as Emily Allchurch’s theme of combining buildings from different times in history- all to create a sense of how an areas identity can develop over time.

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Once I had a group of edits that I felt content with, I decided to bring them into photoshop and experiment on them by using the ‘patch’ tool and the ‘polygonal lasso’ tool in order to create constructive landscapes out of my 4 different images. I was inspired by Dafna Talmor’s work and decided that I wanted to do something similar with my own images which led to me using a lot of straight/jagged lines to try and create constructive landscapes with unrecognisable origins, similar as to what Talmor does with her work.

Experiment 1: ‘Patch tool’

I found working with the patch tool interesting as it would bring out new colours from within each image, giving the new edit a new life due to how different it was from the original. However, I also found that it was difficult to control as it would lighten and darken certain aspects of the edit when I didn’t want it to, sometimes making the edit seem messy or blotchy. Despite this, some of the results I achieved were still satisfactory as the lack of control made room for some interesting edits in terms of composition and tones, however, they weren’t what I was aiming to create.

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Experiment 2: ‘Jigsaw’

Although this process was much more time consuming compared to using the patch tool, I found that it was worth the time as I thought the results looked more complete and professional compared to my first experiment as I had more control over what I was doing. I find the jagged edges bring the different parts of the image together in order to create an interesting composition/layout and the colours [or lack thereof] compliment each other well, drawing attention towards the lighter and darker areas in the images rather than allowing all the colours to fuse together like my first experiment did.

Overall, I found that my second experiment looked best and I decided that I was going to use those edits for my final piece and scrap my first experiment.

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For my first final piece, I have created an image that is very similar to Hilla Bechers work by presenting my images in the same way. I chose to do work inspired by Hilla Becher because I really like the way she lays out her images and presents them on a plain sheet of paper with multiple angles/ different structures because it gives a full response towards the idea of Anthropocene. My image was done slightly different by each photo being taken further away from the main focus (being the water tank).

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Process of creating image:

To begin with this image process I started by arranging all my 9 images I need and placed them all in a blank photoshop document and made sure I had the right images so I can complete this piece successfully.

After that, I needed to line the images up in 3×3 square/rectangle and change all the images to black and white to create a nice contrast between the images and background.

I was going to keep this as a final image but then experimented to see if a borderline around each image looked better. However, Hilla Becher doesn’t use an outline on her images, so I tried to see if it would be more effective. Also, Hilla usually colours her background either grey or white so I thought to be different and try out black and in my opinion it looks better.

Personally, I believe the use of the ‘Strokes’ (outlines) make the image look more quality. This is because of the contrast between the images and the black background give off a great effect.

After finishing this piece I thought to experiment different colour backgrounds to see if it improves the piece. I changed the background to grey and white to see if it would make the images stand out more but I don’t think it looked any better.

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Image comparison:

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As you can see, my images are taken in landscape and have distance between each, however Hilla Bechers images are taken in portrait and are taken of the same structure from different angles. The use of the white background on Hillas image contrasts a nice effect towards the structure. Also, Hillas image has 15 images within it, with mine only having 9 creating a 3×3 rectangle. My main focus in my image are the water tanks, which as you go down the image the closer you get to them. However, Hillas are all taken from the same distance away from the main focus but from different sides and angles.

PHOTOSHOOT #1

For this photoshoot i experimented with my images one by one because I wanted to present these ones as a whole to really bring the focus on the architecture. I also put all of them in black and white to replicate my artist reference Hilla and Bernd Becher’s work.

EXPERIMENTATION #1

For this photo i not only lowered the saturation but also the exposure. The black and white effect creates a dark atmosphere which i think highlights the harm mankind are doing to the environment.

EXPERIMENTATION #2

I did the same for this image except added highlights to capture the clouds in the sky as it heightens the tower making it appear as if it is looming over the camera.

EXPERIMENTATION #3

For my last photo, I turned down the exposure and saturation to create a chaotic atmosphere and show that power stations essentially symbolize destruction. I lowered the highlights to make the sky one colour and blend in with the gradient of the tower.

PHOTOSHOOT #2

Unlike my first photoshoot ideas, for this one I wanted to showcase mine in three different layouts, presenting a different emotion in each collection.

EXPERIMENTATION #1

I found four of my photos that had distinctive square or rectangle shapes and grouped them together to create an abstract display in reference to one of my case studies, Paul Talling, who presents some of his works in layouts according to shape on his website. I had to edit and adjust some of the photos so that they weren’t off balance, for example the one above which was slightly tilted.

I also experimented with the same set of photos in black and white, but preferred the original layout as it had more bold and defined shapes plus the black and white made the images look devoid of emotion when that is the opposite of my goal for this theme.

EXPERIMENTATION #2

For my second experimentation, i took photos of parts of the hotel i felt were in the worst state which to me were the most interesting photos because they told a story. On Lightroom i edited them by turning down the saturation and lowering the temperature to give the images a faded blue undertone.

EXPERIMENTATION #3

For my last experimentation of this photoshoot i took photos of vandalism and graffiti to try and replicate Paul Talling’s work as he has many projects centered around street art & graffiti. I experimented with a few different sets of images before choosing the one I felt looked the best. These photos were originally in colour but i switched them to black and white because I felt in colour they clashed and looked messy.

I decided to make a zine in order to display my final images from my Anthropocene project. I used Adobe InDesign software to create the layout and sizes for my images. My zine will have 16 pages that will display my photos which will in turn show a story of Anthropocene in jersey.

I began with a blank template with 16 pages where i went on to place my best images from both of my La Collette photoshoots.

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My Zine first attempt

This was my first attempt of creating my zine in Adobe InDesign. During this zine i have selected all my best images from both my La Collette photoshoots. However I felt that the sequence of the images were not very good. this is because i would have the same page layout multiple times in a row as well as using poor images for the front and back cover of the Zine. For these reasons I rearranged the images and pages into a way where the pictures compliment each other better and the covers look more professional.

Final Zine

I feel that this zine is a lot better than my first attempt. This is because firstly I have added a more bold prominent title that can be seen better on the black and white background. Additionally the new black and white front and back covers give the zine more more aesthetic. The variety of page layouts throughout the book have made the zine much nicer to view rather than having loads of full page images all together.

Introduction

Below I have included some screenshots and descriptions of how I have edited my images in Lightroom Classic, I have also created a ‘before and after’ gallery below for the monochromatic and colour editing. This makes it easier, along with the explanations, to understand the editing process and how it makes the photographs more aesthetic.

Monochromatic Editing

Process: I have edited this range of images below in order to link back to my Frank Gohlke and this helps me link to his industrial work. During the editing process I firstly altered the photographs so that they had no saturation and vibrancy, then to add definition to the images I created increased the texture, clarity and dehaze. The final part of the editing process was to change the exposure and contrast so features such as the clouds in the sky and other lines within the images would be more present.

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Intentions: In addition to changing these features, the whites and blacks setting came in very helpful as it meant the engravings in the metals became as more prominent part of the edited images. I didn’t think any of these images needed cropping as I think keeping in some of the surroundings means that the photographs look more like some of my selected artists work, making the next comparing and contrasting part of my project easier.

Colour Editing

Explanation/ process: Despite a large part of my project being centred around monochromatic work, I have still included some examples of editing in colour. The process of editing these photos included more adjustments such as cropping, realignment and exposure rather than features such as exposure. Some of these images only needed subtle changes, such as a change in saturation, but including evidence they have been edited means they have a higher chance of being used as some of my final images.

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Outcomes: Above I have just slightly edited these images to enhance them, some of these images don’t look drastically changed, however I think this is a positive as it means me original work was good. For example, I have only changed the exposure, clarity and saturation for most of these images. For the last two images I only changed the tone of the image so that it might now appear to have been taken earlier on in the evening when the sun was higher in the sky. Alternatively, I’ve found that putting down the exposure on some of these photographs meant that they became too saturated, so to fix this issue I had to make some of the images more dull.

Best Edits

Here are some of my best edited images, this process was made easier as these original images were of a high quality compared to the rest of edits, meaning the angles at which they were taken and the lighting (exposure) didn’t need greatly changed.

This photograph is one of my strongest throughout both of my photoshoots, it only required little editing with the exposure being increased by a small amount and the saturation being increased as well. I think that this original image is strong because of the composition and lighting so not many adjustments were required. Having the camera on manual meant that I could change the lighting as the sun was setting, considering this was taken as dusk.

I think this is one of my most successful edits as it very drastic, with the first photograph being full of saturation and the second being full of contrast, both of these images are strong, However, the second links to the work of Frank Gohlke and therefore integrates into my project more, the main changes with this example is the vibrancy, exposure and clarity, as I’ve found the clarity greatly affects monochromatic photos.

I have chosen to edit this photograph in a monochromatic way as aspects of the image such as the glass of the incinerator have been extenuated and now appear more noticeable. This is important as it makes the image more aesthetic and less dull, altering the contrast makes the image more dramatic and links to the topic of romanticism and Ansel Adams.

This image is one filled with buildings and structures which are part of Jersey’s reclaimed land. Making this photograph monochromatic meant that the structures have more contrast between them, as the exposure and shadows settings helped to distinguish between each building, I have tried to create as much contrast within the sky so that this part of the image isn’t lost, as its important when juxtaposing natural and manmade features of the image.

This photograph wasn’t noticeably edited as I thought just changing the image from more of a blue tone to more of a yellow gave the image more vibrancy and a better and different kind of saturation. Furthermore, I altered the exposure by decreasing it so that the focal point of the photograph, the incinerator, would be more recognised.

My Edits:

Although these aren’t my final edits, I still want to evaluate what I’ve done up to this point before I change these photos further and end up with a completely different set of images.

Comparing My Work to Felicity Hammond:

Hammond’s work is carefully made in order to portray how fascinated she is by “political contradictions within the urban landscape“. She tends to tint the shadows and highlights in her work, in this photo in particular she tints them blue and a greenish-yellow, which makes her work seem more dramatic, building a post-apocalyptic-esque scene which further emphasising how she feels about the environment. This is similar to what I did to my images as I used different tints in order to emphasize certain aspects of each image. In this image, I tinted the shadows a strong blue to draw more attention towards the ocean and used some green highlights to create an almost dusty visual as I attempted to depict a polluted scene.

Our work also shares some differences such as how Hammond built her photo, giving her full control of everything in her image which is well presented due to her experience as both a photographer and an installation artist. This helps give her photo a unique and rare touch as it looks like a dystopian environment but still includes aspects of urban environments. My image on the other hand, was a photo that I carefully took when outside, unlike Hammond, I didn’t collage my photo or add anything to it in order to create my own world, instead I decided to keep the image the way it was.

After looking through all my Felicity Hammonds inspired experiments, I chose some images that I wanted to use and further edit as I liked the way they turned out and wanted to group them together. Whilst Editing, I kept referencing Felicity Hammond’s work as I knew I wanted my edits to look similar to hers in terms of the use of colour and in terms of representing the environment.

My Edits:

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In order to create this edit, I decreased the saturation of everything other than the blue as I wanted the ocean to be the main focus of the image. Then, I decided that I actually wanted to create a more polluted environment which led me to tinting the midtones blue, to emphasize the water aspect of the image, and tint the highlights a pale green which made the path in the image look older and slightly decayed.

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When editing this image, I decided I wanted the foliage in the foreground to stand out which led to me lowering the saturation of every colour in the image other than green and yellow. Next, I decided to try tinting the highlights of the image a pale yellow which gave off the impression that there was a lot of pollution in the air which I decided I liked the look of as it expressed how humanity has taken over rural areas in order to equate for human life.

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The editing process for this image was similar to the previous edit. I started off by lowering the saturation for every colour except for the orange as I wanted the building to be the main focus of the image. However, for this image, I decided to crop out some parts of the image I deemed unnecessary [i.e.: the blank space in the sky and part of the building on the left]. After that, I tinted the highlights a pale orange, once again making the image seem polluted, and increased the sharpness. This allowed the cracks/scratches in the building to be visible, representing how there are flaws in how humans behave in regards to the environment and how things need to change.

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For this edit, I began by lowering the saturation of every colour other than blue, instead increasing the saturation of the blue in order to make the waterslide stand out more and ensuring it’s the main focus of the image. Next, I decided to tint the shadows a deep blue whilst leaving the highlights white, making the image seem more intense compared to the other images as I wanted the blank space to represent the lack of nature due to humanities effect on the planet.

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For this piece my idea was to make something similar to the work of Ingrid Weyland, an Argentinian photographer who expresses the fragility of the natural environment through her work.

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Image analysis

For this image analysis I looked at this photo from Ingrid, showing a road through a forest/ jungle, however Ingrid has added scrunched up print of the photo. This was most likely done to show humans effect on the land. The picture was taken on a misty day, and has the road centred most likely to emphasise the effect it has had on the forest as it breaks right through it. The rough texture of the paper ball gives a good contrast to the softness of the background image.

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Contact sheet

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Final Piece & Process

To make this piece I started by printing out the original image, and then a section of the original image to then crease and layer over it.

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Once I printed out the cut out I played with it, making it look creased and distorted.

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Overall I think these two both came out well, so i decided to try on another landscape photo by repeating the same process with a different shape

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Evaluation & Comparison

Overall I think that these pieces came out very good and mostly how I planned, they are similar to the work of Ingrid Weyland, not only in the process used to create but also in the way that they represent “the fragility of the natural environment” with the distorted paper patches representing the impact humans have on the earth because paper is a “fragile” material- so it shows the “fragility” of these topographics”

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PHOTOSHOOT #1

The photos labeled red are ones that turned out blurry, had bad lighting or poor location. Since the majority of my first photoshoot was taken on my phone, some photos turned out blurry/shaky because of the camera quality.

The yellow labeled photos show the ones I liked, but wasn’t sure if they fitted my theme, for example no.13 – the photo is clear and in a good location, but wasn’t relevant to my theme as there was too much sea and not enough material to show that it was representative of industrial buildings.

The green photos are the ones I liked the best – although i will not being using all of these in my final photos, after editing i will be able to determine which ones showcase my theme the best. My favourites or no.8 or no.11, as I think they represent my artist reference the best.

GREEN PHOTOS (UNEDITED)

PHOTOSHOOT #2

Like photoshoot #1, I chose to label the red photos based off quality location or lighting – parts of this photoshoot included images with people in, which I chose to label red because i want to showcase the hotel as empty to give an eerie atmosphere.

For my yellow labelled, some I really like but they were just a bit blurry or slightly off angle and I wanted the photos, especially in this shoot, to be as near to my chosen aesthetic as possible and I felt these photos weren’t good enough.

My green labelled photos showcase a number of different rooms, materials and all were taken in places with different lighting, which is why I chose them e.g no.10, which was taken with the flash on in a dark room, compared to no.3, which was taken without flash using natural lighting. Like photoshoot #1, I won’t be using all these but will pick the few that really stand out to me.

GREEN PHOTOS (UNEDITED)