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Porter’s work is of Great Spruce Head Island in Maine (USA), and is very vibrant and colourful, with his shadows leaning towards a dark blue over black. The image is of an island across a body of water, which has a reflection of the island’s forest. The weather is dark and foggy, creating a gloomy atmosphere. My image is of the cliffs in Jersey, with a small rocky beach towards the bottom of the image. Instead of pure black, a lot of the dark colours are close to a reddish brown, and I increased the saturation of the image to make the cliffs more vibrant as well. Like Porter’s image, there is some fog in the background and the rest of the environment is unknown.

Over half term I went on two photoshoots, one in St. Ouen’s and the other by St. Catherine’s woods. The weather those days was rather poor, filling the sky with a lot of fog, which I feel adds atmosphere. I edited them pretty experimentally, switching between wanted to add brighter, more saturated colours, and wanting to keep them in black and white to preserve the mysterious tone.

I went through all of my pictures using the P and X tools to decide which I wanted to use. I then edited them, adjusting the colours, contrasts and exposure. I colour coded my images based on how much I liked them, yellow for liking them and green for images I definitely want to use.

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Rural Landscape Photography focuses on photographing areas that are left mostly untouched by mankind, instead focusing on shapes and compositions created by nature. A lot of rural landscape photography is taken in the countryside, in large green fields, however images can be taken in almost any environment, be it woods, mountains or even seaside cliffs.

Early rural landscape images would have been taken by scientists and explorers while on expeditions. These images could be used to show the people back home what the place looked like, as well as to document animals and plants in that area.

Romanticism is an artistic movement that was most popular from the late 1700s to the mid 1800s, it consists of multiple kinds of art, like painting, literature and music, but it can also be applied to photography. A large focus of Romanticism is appreciating the beauty of nature, as well as the rejection of artistic values of the time.

Paintings that are a part of the Romantic movement tend to have a big focus on ornate landscapes, making them both beautiful and terrifying, their size swallowing the small figures placed on the canvas, known as the sublime. In Edmund Burke’s book, Philosophical Enquiry, he connects the emotions felt towards the sublime as experiences of awe, terror, and danger.

Romanticism came as a result of the Age of Enlightenment, a period of time where Western ideals began to shift from religion towards science. Romantic artists questioned the sense of order and rationalism pushed by Enlightenment, and the relationship between nature and humanity is often explored in Romantic work.

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Eliot Porter was an American landscape photographer, best known for his interesting landscape photographs. His pictures were inspired by the work of Ansel Adams, another photographer known for photographing the sublime. Porter’s style was very bright and colourful, with compositions reminiscent of old paintings from the Romantic era.

An image taken by Porter during his travels. The image is split almost perfectly with the rule of thirds, the stone arch and the brown dirt dividing it horizontally, while the two thin trees divide it vertically. It looks almost like a gateway, if the viewer was actually there, they may get swallowed by nature itself. The image is peaceful and still but still unnerving, perfectly able to capture the feeling of the sublime. The colours are bright like all of Porter’s work, the blues, greens and greys contrasting the warm dirt in the rough centre of the image, with small bits of yellow hinted throughout the picture. The shadows are deep, once again fuelling the fear of the sublime, and the trees through the arch look as if they go on infinitely. Nothing in the image is manmade, making it seem as if they are trapped in the natural world, with nowhere to go except through the arch.

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I liked the work of Dryden Goodwin and wanted to edit a portrait inspired by his style. I did it digitally by drawing on the lines in photoshop and then using an eraser tool to soften the edges. If I were to do this again I would probably do it on a physical print using a paint pen, so I can get more organic looking lines. Despite this, I still really like this image and enjoy the contrast between the monochrome and then the brighter red. I also coloured the edges to be lighter and made the inside of the red darker to make it more visually interesting.

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Here I drew over my portrait in photoshop (instead of embroidering them like I originally planned) in an attempt to recreate the style of Carolle Benitah. I traced over an image of one of my family’s saris and then placed it on top of a portrait of myself. I then coloured it gold and added a drop shadow to create some contrast in the areas where it just sits on the grey. The gold also creates some unity between this photo and others where used similar techniques. I enjoy how it looks and am glad I traced over the fabric shape as well as the actual patterns as well.

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Overall I feel like I was successful with replicating the styles of the photographers I was inspired by and learned a lot during this project. If I were to do it again I would want to be slightly more prepared by printing out my images in advance so I could have a chance to edit them physically as well as digitally.

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Gallery Mockup-

To explore what identity means to me I decided to focus on my cultural heritage. My idea is to take portraits of myself and edit them to reflect my identity and to make them more interesting to look at. I enjoy the work of photographers like Carolle Benitah, and Dryden Goodwin, and wish to incorporate their editing styles into my final pieces.

Photo shoots-

Saris-

My plan is to sew the patterns from the saris my family owns onto portraits. Saris (sometimes spelled ‘sarees’) are a traditional South Asian garment and my family own quite a lot because that is where my mum’s side of the family is originally from. They are significant to me because I would never normally get to wear one, despite it being a part of my cultural heritage. I did the photoshoot during the Christmas holidays in preparation for the project.

I did a second shoot in the studio so I could get better images, I will be using the images from that. In the studio I put them onto a white background so they can be the main focus, and just used the basic lights already on in the room.

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To edit them I mostly increased the brightness, contrast and saturation.

I most liked the patterns of the white one and the pink one, and also like how the pink one looks photographed. Pink Saris are often associated with femininity while white is often associated with purity and new beginnings, but also has connections with mourning and death. The patterns on the fabric themselves often do not have much meaning, at least, the one’s owned by my family.

Portraits-

The second shoot I am planning is some portraits which could be used to draw on or embroider into. I will take this portraits in the studio so I can use the best lighting setup I can get. These images need to be high quality as they will be used as a base for my final products.

I edited them using a variety of styles, keeping some in colour and others in black and white. I was thinking of doing another photo shoot so I had more pictures to choose from but could not find the time.

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I enjoy the work of photographers who do not just use the images themselves to communicate their identity, instead taking the photos and editing them in some way to elevate their concept. For example Carolle Benitah is a French Moroccan photographer and artist who often weaves, writes or draws onto pictures, often from childhood. By doing this she can take the concepts of the original images and edit them to fulfil her own artistic vision.

Here Benitah uses gold foil to cover the faces and background of an old looking image of a large group of people. By covering their faces the viewer feels uneasy, unable to see the eyes or expressions of those shown and making them feel less human as there is nothing to emotionally connect to. The image is titled “Jamais Je Ne t’Oublierai” which translates from French to “I’ve loved you for a long time, I will never forget you.”. One could assume that the image is of a wedding and the couple in it are growing older, it could be interpreted that even as they are growing older and their memories of the exact details are lost, they will never stop loving each other.

Claude Cahun was a French Surrealist Photographer, Writer and Sculptor, also known by the name Lucy Schwob. Their work often explored their personal relationship with gender and sexuality, and they lived in Jersey with creative and romantic partner Suzanne Malherbe, who also went by the pseudonym Marcel Moore. Their work was incredibly ahead of it’s time and they did their best to push against societal norms, even after the island was occupied by Nazi forces.

Here Cahun really leans into the surrealist art they are most known for, fulfilling their intent of confusing and surprising the viewer with the images created. They are portraying a strongman while balancing masculine and feminine aspects of their presentation. The image is in black and white due to abilities of camera’s at the time, however it creates mystery as there are parts of the image the viewer will never get to see, creating a further sense of mystery and confusion.

Identity is how a person defines and sees themselves and can be a result of several different factors including gender identity, social identity, geographical identity, political identity, loss or lack of identity, and how those around see them.

How important different factors are to identity is up to the individual as well as how and where they were raised.

I am planning on using this project to explore my cultural identity and heritage. I am from a multicultural family with my dad being from the UK and my mum being South African, but her family is originally from India. My racial identity is important to me and I do not often get a chance to properly explore it.

Sequences–

In photography, Sequences are a way of laying out images, most often in a line or grid. Doing this often causes the person looking to think about the similarities and differences between the images (similar to a juxtaposition), as well as causing them to think of a potential story or narrative as the sequence progresses. This can be used by photographers to tell stories without the need of words.

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I used a variety of my images, from several shoots, to create a set of sequences with different compositions. I think it would have been better if I did a separate shoot so all of the images so that they are all similar to create at least one unified sequence.

Multi exposure–

Multi exposure is a photography and filmmaking technique where two or more images are superimposed onto each other. They can be used to create interesting and surreal images.

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I made these using my portraits that I took earlier. It took me a while to find the right balance with the layer opacities, but I found some that I liked. If I were to do this again I’d use a wider variety of images and a range of colours and layer types to see if it can make them seem more interesting.

Photomontage-

Photomontage is the editing and layering of two or more images on top of each other to create a new image. These images could have significant to no relation to each other and the combination of them creates a new image with a completely new meaning.

Creating my own-

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