1 This is the first edit I did because I like the Idea of having a more natural background with industrial bits showing. I used the ‘lasso tool’ on the images of scaffoldings to get those shapes then I just pasted them on to my original image. 3 Here I did the same thing as in my 2nd try, but instead of hiding the layers I kept them and hid the scaffoldings because I wanted to see if it looked better without them. I like this one because of the black lines which I think make the image less boring. however, there is not much going on an looks plain so I won’t use it.
2 This one is very similar to the previous edit because it’s the same idea. However, this one has black space behind the scaffoldings making it look more like Talmor’s work. I got the dark space by using the ‘lasso tool’ on my original layer, right clicking and selecting ‘layer via cut’. Then I hid the new layers and put the scaffolding ones on top.4 This one’s is the same as the last one. The only difference is that I added a bit of the scaffolding on the left under one of my other layers.
Experiment 2:
For this edit I used the same technique with the lasso tool and just slightly moved my layers from where the used to be. I like the way it turned out because it looks like a broken mirror which I think is quite interesting.
Experiment 3:
I had the same idea in mind for this edit but instead of using the lasso tool and getting more organic shapes, I used the ‘rectangular marquee tool’ and ‘elliptical marquee tool’ to get the shapes. I like the way it turned out because it looks quite abstract.
After I selected my images, I used Lightroom to edit them slightly by changing some of the settings.
Edit 1:
Final Edit
AfterI selected the sky using the ‘adjustment brush’ (shortcut = K) because I wanted to make the clouds more visible without messing with the whole image. I turned the whites all the way down which helped me achieve this look. Then I just turned the exposure down a little.
BeforeFor this edit I just turned up the vibrance and saturation to make the colours pop more.
Edit 2:
Final Edit
Before
After
I started by turning the image black and white to make it look slightly older, and cropped it. I then turned down the highlights and played with the other setting until I got something that I liked. I also messed with the texture and clarity to make the details stand out more in the image.
Edit 3:
Final Edit
After
I like this edit because I think the colours are nice and vibrant. I also like the angle I took the photo from. I turned the highlights all the way down to make it slightly lighter and make the sky/clouds more visible. I then played with the shadows and whites/blacks to do the same thing. At the end I turned up the vibrance to make the colours stand out more.
For my second photoshoot, I went on a walk in Gorey and took pictures of some of the houses (so I can compare the housing from Gorey and town) and the beach. My aim was to take pictures of the green areas around there, however it started raining/getting dark and I was only able to take pictures of the trees by the beach. I also looked for trash to photograph on my way there.
Contact Sheet:
I took around 195 images
73 images left after flagging
20 images left after coding
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)
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)
For my first photoshoot, I’m going to try and take pictures of different building sites, scaffoldings and actual buildings to show how humans change their environment.
2ndPhotoshoot:
For my second photoshoot, I’m going to focus on taking pictures of more rural areas and edit them next to my industrial ones to show contrast of the damage made.
3rd Photoshoot:
For my third photoshoot, I want to focus on taking photographs of abandoned and overgrown buildings. This is because it shows humans have done to nature and it fighting back.
“I have come to think of my preoccupation with the Anthropocene — the indelible marks left by humankind on the geological face of our planet — as a conceptual extension of my first and most fundamental interests as a photographer. I have always been concerned to show how we affect the Earth in a big way. To this end, I seek out and photograph large-scale systems that leave lasting marks.” – Edward Burtynsky
Flood Damaged Cars, Royal Purple Raceway, Baytown, Texas, USA, 2017
This is a photograph taken by Edward Burtynsky in 2017 of damaged cars in the Royal Purple Raceway, Texas. This image is part of a series of photographs from his ‘Anthropocene’ project/book published in 2018.
In this photograph you can see hundreds or even thousands of cars that were damaged by a flood and are no longer in use. There are around 12 visible blocks of land full of rows of different coloured cars. The only thing separating these blocks are some dirt roads (it makes the image look like a grid). Burtynsky took this image from a very high angle to show the amount of cars there are and destroyed land that could’ve been used for something more useful. It doesn’t capture the whole area, but it does look like it goes on forever.
This shows the amount of waste people create and their impact. We mass produce objects and when they are no longer usable we gather them together and leave them. This leads to the environment and ecosystems being destroyed in order to make space for more and more garbage.
Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer known for his large scale photographs of industrial landscapes. His works portray from around the world that represent the increasing development of industrialization and its impacts on nature and the human existence. Burtynsky was born in 1955 of Ukrainian heritage in St. Catharines, Ontario. He received his BAA in Photography/ Media Studies from Ryerson University in 1982, and in 1985 founded Toronto Image Works, a darkroom rental facility, custom photo laboratory, digital imaging and new media computer-training centre catering to all levels of Toronto’s art community.
Edward Burtynsky is regarded as one of the world’s most accomplished contemporary photographers. His remarkable photographic depictions of global industrial landscapes represent over 40 years of his dedication to bearing witness to the impact of humans on the planet.
moodboard of his work
Dafna Talmor
Untitled (1112-3) From the Constructed Landscapes series, 2012-13
Dafna Talmor is an artist and lecturer based in London whose practice encompasses photography, curation and collaborations. Her photographs are included in public collections such as Deutsche Bank, Hiscox and private collections internationally.
more of her work
‘Constructed Landscapes’ transforms colour negatives of landscapes initially taken as mere keepsakes through the act of slicing and splicing. The resulting photographs allude to an imaginary place, idealised spaces or as Foucault states, “a virtual space that opens up behind the surface”.
Talmor’s practice is based on an obsessive preoccupation with home. As a result of this obsession and despite her ambivalence, whenever she travelled, she found herself taking pictures of landscapes. These photographs were taken out of a purely personal need and desire to ‘take’ a piece of that land or place with her.
“I have always found limitations inspiring and so what was initially a cause of frustration and disappointment, led to the idea of merging different places of personal meaning to create idealised and utopian landscapes, of giving meaning and function to these seemingly defunct negatives. As a result, photographs taken over several years in my country of birth (Israel), where I was raised (Venezuela), across the UK (where I currently live) and the US (where my sister resides) have formed the basis of this ongoing project. The act of physically merging landscapes from different parts of the world refers to the transitional aspect of our contemporary world in a metaphorical way. Following on from my previous work, Constructed Landscapes is interested in creating a space that defies specificity, refers to the transient and to the blurring of space, memory and time.” – Dafna Talmor
Anastasia Savinova
Anastasia Savinova is a Russian multi-disciplinary artist that lives in Sweden. Her practice spans photography, collage, drawing, text, video, sound, and performance. With her architectural background, she holds affection for constructing and building. Her work is constantly circling around juxtapositions; the house and nature, walking to find new landscapes and digital rendering to create the images, the documented photographs processed together to make something unnatural.
“My practice revolves mainly around spirit and memory of the place and ecology and the relationship with more-than-human world. The first theme is rooted in my background as an architect. This part of my practice explores authenticity of the place. Through building imaginative surreal spaces, I tell a story of the real ones. So this work is a documentary and a fiction at the same time. My other focus is on ecologies and the relationship of the human with the more-than-human world. In several projects I explore the relationship between human and mountain, human and forest, human and water, human and proximate and distant others. I’m interested in how everything is intertwined and how we always are a part of something greater. I’m inspired by being on a journey, by seeing, smelling and touching the world. It’s not necessarily a far-away journey, it can be the same river bank over and over, and it’s a new journey every time.” – Anastasia Savinova, during an interview.
Camilo Jose Vergara
Camilo Jose Vergara is a New York based photographer that is usually compared to Jacob Riis due to his photographs of American slums and decaying urban environments.
“For more than four decades I have devoted myself to photographing and documenting the poorest and most segregated communities in urban America. I feel that a people’s past, including their accomplishments, aspirations and failures, are reflected less in the faces of those who live in these neighbourhoods than in the material, built environment in which they move and modify over time.” – Camilo Jose Vergara
The word Anthropocene comes from the Greek terms for human (anthropo) and new (cene). The Anthropocene epoch is used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history and how human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.
epochs we have already experienced
“The Holocene epoch started 11,700 years ago as the glaciers of the last ice age receded. Geologists and other scientists from the Anthropocene Working Group believe that we have left the Holocene and entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. Their argument is that humans have become the single most defining force on the planet and that the evidence for this is overwhelming. Terraforming of the earth through mining, urbanization, industrialization and agriculture; the proliferation of dams and diverting of waterways; CO2 and acidification of oceans due to climate change; the pervasive presence around the globe of plastics, concrete, and other technofossils; unprecedented rates of deforestation and extinction: these human incursions, they argue, are so massive in scope that they have already entered, and will endure in, geological time.” – https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/the-anthropocene-project
