Keld Helmer-Petersen
Before and after edits in the style of Keld Helmer Peterson:
For my edits I was inspired by Keld Helmer Petersen’s work. I started by turning my images in black and white in Lightroom then exported them to Photoshop. I edited them by going over to “images”, then “adjustments” and clicked on the threshold tool. I then adjusted the threshold until I got something similar to Keld Helmer Petersen’s work.
Final Edits:
For this photoshoot we went on a walk from Havre des Pas, along the coast line and to the Collette. I took around 750 photographs of different buildings and my surroundings. At Havre des Pas I focused on taking images of the sea as well as the surrounding buildings. Then when we started walking, I focused on the residential area along the coastline. When we got close to the Collette my aim was to take a low and high angled industrial photographs.
Contact Sheets
Best Shots
New topographics was a term used by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers (eg. Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape. It was also an exhibition that epitomized a key moment in American landscape photography.
Lewis Baltz
Lewis Baltz was an American photographer and visual artist that was born on September 12th, 1945 in Newport Beach, California. He is famous for his black-and-white images of parking lots, office parks, industrial garage doors and the backs of anonymous warehouses that helped forge a new tradition of American landscape photography in an age of urban sprawl. He is also an important figure in the New Topographics movement of the late 1970s.
Robert Adams
Robert Adams was born in New Jersey in 1937. He moved to Southern California in 1956 to attend the University of Redlands where he chose to major in English literature and went on to earn a Ph. Adams is now a popular American photographer that focused on the changing the landscape of the American West. His work got noticed in the mid 70s through his book ‘The New West’ and his participation in the New Topographics exhibition.
For my second photoshoot I started at Waitrose and made my way into the valley behind it until I got close to B&Q which is where I stopped. I focused on taking rural landscape images of my surroundings and switched between the monochrome and colour setting to get different types of images. I also wanted to see what they would look like if I edited them in black and white. I mostly took photographs of the trees and paths because they are what interested me the most.
Contact Sheets
Best Shots
For this photoshoot I went on a walk by people’s park and the little woods next to it and took around 100-150 photographs. I mainly focused on the trees and photographing them from different angles as I liked the way they looked and thought they’d make interesting images. I changed my camera setting to monochrome because it makes everything look simpler and in my opinion the greenery looks better in black and white.
Contact Sheets
Best Images
For this project I’m gonna aim to record and create romanticised landscape photographs. I’m going to do this by taking photographs of the coastline, the sea, the woods etc. I’ll try use the rainy and foggy weather to my advantage and create a sense of atmosphere, and I’ll photograph at different times of day to get a larger selection of images. I’m also going to look for leading lines such as pathways, roads etc to help dissect my images and provide a sense of journey/discovery to them.
The Age of Romanticism
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic era) is a state of being romantic or affectionate in a sentimental way. It was also an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. This movement emphasized nature, imagination, emotion and the individual.
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. The images are very similar as they both have the river flowing through the middle and the tall trees surrounding it.
The Age of Enlightenment (1685-1815)
The Enlightenment , also known as the Great ‘Age of Reason’, is the time period in the 17th/18th century Europe. During this period, people started questioning the church and started being more interested in science. It was an intellectual movement whose three central concepts were the use of reason, the scientific method, and progress.
The Sublime
Edmund Burke created the Sublime Theory in the mid-18th century, defining Sublime art as “art that alludes to a magnificence beyond all capacity of measurement, assessment, or reproduction.” He described the Sublime as an aesthetic impact that produces the most powerful sensation the intellect is aware of experiencing.
Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams was an American photographer born in 1902, California, United States. He was a landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black and white images of the American West. Adams was a hopeless and rebellious student, so his father removed him from school at age 12. He then became interested in music and became a serious and ambitious musician who was considered to be a highly talented pianist by qualified judges (including Henry Cowell). In 1916 he received his first camera and proved to be an excellent photographer. In 1932 he helped found Group f/64 along with six other photographers who shared a common photographic style characterized by sharply focused and carefully framed images seen through a particularly Western viewpoint.
In 1940 Ansel Adams developed The Zone System along with Fred Archer. The Zone System is a system by which you understand and control every level of light and dark to your best advantage. It works in digital just as it does for sheet film. Having a system allows you to understand and be in control, instead of taking whatever you get.
Fay Godwin
Fay Godwin was a British photographer born in 1931, Belin, Germany. She was most known for her black and white landscape photographs of the British countryside and coast. In 1961 she married publisher Tony Godwin and together they had two kids. Fay Godwin’s interest in photography developed in the mid 60s as a result of taking pictures of her children. She was less active in her last years due to her health and in December 2004 she had her last interview with David Corfield for Practical Photography in which she blamed the NHS: “The NHS. They ruined my life by using some drugs with adverse affects that wrecked my heart. The result is that I haven’t the energy to walk very far.”
Eliot Porter
Eliot Porter was an American photographer born in in 1901, Illinois, United States. He is best knows for his colourful photographs of nature. Porter’s interest in nature was fostered by his family from a young age as he began photographing his family’s island property as a youth in Maine, before going on to study chemical engineering at Harvard University. After he graduated in the mid 30s, his brother (Fairfield Porter) encouraged his latent interest in photography and introduced him to Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz.
Landscape photography is a type of photography that captures the beauty of nature, bringing the viewers into the scenery, setting, and mood in these outdoor locations. Rural landscape photography refers to photographs taken in less populated areas like the countryside. They can often contain architecture (like urban landscapes) however, rural landscape photography focuses on the life and elements found in the country side. Some of these elements are: trees, mountains, animals, trees, lakes, cliffs etc.
I have decided to compare Claude Cahun and Francesca Woodman’s work because both artists usually shoot in black & white, always have a hidden message in their pictures and they both struggle with their own identity.
An obvious similarity between these images is that they are both in black and white however, Cahun’s image looks softer and has yellower tones (probably because of the cameras available during the 30s) compared to Woodman’s which has a high contrast between her white clothes and the dark background.
| Claude Cahun Differences | Both Similarities | Francesca Woodman Differences |
| no face | black and white | side profile |
| extended arms and fingers | hands | abandoned building? |
| artist on the right | outside? | artist on the left |
| 2 arms | rocks | 3 arms – 2 holding 1 |
| bracelets | shadows | white sleeves |
| 1931/1932 – France? | confusing – what is going on? why? | 1977-78 – Italy |
| “I Extend My Arms” | untitled | |
| 1 person | 2 people – 1 not visible | |
| naked? | high contrast |
