Photoshoot 1

This photoshoot will be conducted on a day after school. I am planning to walk around the Waterfront area, including The Raddison and Castle Quay. I have chosen this area as I believe it will produce good images due to the scenery and numerous monuments and statues in the area. There is also a large construction site in the centre, however this area is fenced away from public access. My main focus for this photoshoot is to capture buildings and large objects in a similar style to my artist reference, Gabriele Basilico. I think that this will be a suitable area to photograph as it will show what effects humans have had, which aren’t always bad. Hopefully I will be able to portray what the human race has created at a cost of the planet’s natural resources.

Route Plan

Contact Sheet and Selections

Post-Selection Editing Process

Landscape

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Portrait

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Final Images, Post-Enhancement

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My editing process was conducted as follows; I chose what I thought were my best 6 images from this photoshoot, 3 landscape, 3 portrait. Using Adobe Lightroom Classic software, I gave each image a monochrome filter and decreased the exposure. I also increased the contrast of all images, as well as a few other finishing touches varying from image to image. This was done to make the sky look darker than it actually was in the original. I kept this theme throughout these edits, as well as the finals from the next photoshoot. The best examples of the effect this has from this photoshoot are images 1 and 4. I really like this visual effect as it provides a whole different atmosphere and temperature to the images. A deeper sense of mystery and “the unknown” are also seen here in my opinion.

Comparison Visual Aids

Photoshoot 2

My plan for this photoshoot will be similar to the previous. I am intending to photograph buildings again, however the places I will be visiting are exactly the opposite. I will shift my attention from one side of the Island to the other and photograph the German bunkers and watchtowers along the Island’s Western coastline, as well as a number of other implantations I find en route. I am doing the above as I feel it will provide some interesting and contrasting images to the ones previously taken from Photoshoot 1. This will hopefully show what the buildings we consider new and modern today may look in the not-so-distant future.

Route Plan

Contact Sheets and Selections

Post-Selection Editing Process

Landscape

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Portrait

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Extra Potential Idea

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These images capture how these bunkers and structures are treated nowadays. This could show what buildings that are in use today may look like in half a century’s time. I have kept these photos in colour opposed to black and white. This is because of how the colours of the spray paint contrast with the white and brown scheme of the inside of the bunker. This is linkable to Tomás Cambas’ collection of street photography.

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This style of street photography is interesting for a number of reasons. As mentioned previously, there are obvious colour contrasting techniques used throughout, particularly images on the top row. This is effective because of how distinctive they are, similar to what was captured in my photographs. There is also litter visible on the ground in most of the photos, relating to man’s effect on the planet.

Final Images, Post-Enhancement

These images were edited in a similar fashion to the previous photoshoot. I began by adding a monochrome filter to make the images black and white. I then used one of the vintage-style profiles that Lightroom Classic provides for the user. This made the photos look like they was taken in the early 20th century almost instantly. As this was the effect I was aiming for, I stuck with it. After this, I did not want to make the images look over-manipulated so only a few minor adjustments varying across the individual photos were necessary. These adjustments included decreasing the highlights, shadows and contrast over a majority of the images as the filter and profile had made the darks too dark and the lights too light. I was very pleased with the results.

Comparison Visual Aid

Best Images

These were the images I thought were the best out of the best. This is because of how much they benefit from the filter and profile layered one over the other. They are also great as they show what photographers could be capturing in 50 years time. My personal favourite is image 3, depicting Tour de Vinde with a man fishing on the rocks nearby, into a perfectly calm low tide. It creates a sense of fear as of how something so small can have such a massive effect on something so huge (human’s effect on the planet). This tower is not big. Situated on a small island, between two relatively small countries, on a huge planet which man has almost depleted of all its resources. A sense and atmosphere of scale is surrounding this image in my opinion.

Gabriele Basilico

The self-proclaimed “measurer of space” was born in Milan in 1944. He originally pursued the career of an architect, however was unsuccessful. As a photographer, he started out with landscapes, later shifting his focus to architectural photography due to his previous study of the subject. He received international fame in 1982 for his photographic report of the development of industrial areas in Milan,  “Ritratti di Fabbriche, Sugarco“. His work even helped to document events of war on the Lebanese capital of Beirut. He is regarded as one of the most famous Italian photographers ever due to his great number of locations he has worked in.

Gabriele Basilico

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Ansel Adams

Some consider him to be the grandfather of landscape photography. His work is widely known as it is some of the first of its kind. I would enjoy trying to replicate his work. He was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating “pure” photography which favoured sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He and Fred Archer developed an exacting system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a deeply technical understanding of how tonal range is recorded and developed during exposure, negative development, and printing. The resulting clarity and depth of such images characterized his photography. My only planned reference to him thus far will be to use his method of manipulating the sky. He used a technique to make the sky appear much darker than what was authentic. I like this effect as it adds a depth of mystery to the images.

Website link

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Frank Gohlke

Frank Gohlke is an American landscape photographer. His work is included in numerous permanent collections, including those of Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the Art Institute of Chicago. During a career spanning nearly five decades, Gohlke has photographed grain elevators in the American midwest; the aftermath of a 1979 tornado in his hometown of Wichita Falls, Texas; changes in the land around Mount St. Helens during the decade following its 1980 eruption; agriculture in central France; and the wild apple forests of Kazakhstan. Due to these varied areas of speciality, I believe that Gohlke is a suitable and interesting Artist reference who could help influence some of my work.

https://www.howardgreenberg.com/artists/frank-gohlke

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Tomás Cambas

Tomás Cambas was born in Buenos Aires on August 17, 1989.
He is a graduate of the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires. He studied photography at the David Beniluz School. He conducted a work clinic with Eduardo Gil, Juan Travnik, Santiago Porter and Alberto Goldenstein. He was selected for the 2014, 2015 and 2017 editions of the National Fund for the Arts “Francisco Ayerza” awards, for the “Itaú Cultural de Artes Visuales” award in 2016, and for the “Arte x Arte” award at the 2018. He was also selected in the same year for the Luz del Norte award. In 2019 he was selected for the UNNE Award for Visual Arts. Currently, he studies Plastic Arts at the University of Buenos Aires and attends a construction clinic with Walter Barrios.He lives and works in Buenos Aires. Personally, I find Cambas’ “The Square Kingdom” collection the most interesting, due to the colour variations and contrast. His use of simple, yet intriguing areas to photograph will most definitely be an influence to my imagery.

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https://www.riseart.com/artist/39938/tomas-cambas

Image Analysis

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Adams

This style of imagery has a very strong impact, a result of the strong angles and contrasting colours, even though the image is black and white. There is a visible clash between the dark sky and the white snow, a feature of photographs I will try to replicate. The scale of this image is also executed very well.

Cambas

The use of colour here is very interesting. The subtle dark maroon and black are perfectly sided by the hint of green spray paint, resulting in a powerful photograph I am hoping to include in my work.

Basilico

The wide-angled lens used to take this photograph has provided a different meaning to how I see this image overall. On the left there is what looks to be a paved road which has been moderately looked after, but on the other side there seems to e a back alley that has not been touched by humans whatsoever in years. As a result of this, the bushes are overgrown and the road now contains potholes. A contrast between two very opposite sides.

Gohlke

This image shows a small village in the middle of a desert with an open sky overhead. There are huge railroad tracks striking through the middle of the image, which is clearly where the artist wants our attention to be drawn. Other than this, the rest of the image is rather empty.

Here I am going to explore and explain what issues I believe I can tackle using a camera. I will also include my thought processes behind certain aspects of my work. This will hopefully result in me providing a clear understanding to anyone reading or admiring my project.

The issues i am attempting to explore with my project are listed as follows:

After some deep thought, I have made my decision on where I feel will provide a substantial range of images that will help me achieve my targets. My first main photoshoot will be conducted within the Waterfront area of St Helier. This is because some of the most modern-looking buildings are situated there, as well as a huge construction of another behemoth of a building is currently underway. There are also a few monuments and statues of varying shapes and sizes located around the harbour. As for the second photoshoot, contrasting the first perfectly, I will move to the other side of the island, where I will photograph some of the oldest buildings in the island that are still standing. This will include Grosnez Castle, Kempt Tower and Corbière Lighthouse, alongside the numerous and more recent German facilities along the island’s coastline.

National Geographic Definition – Period of time during which human activities have impacted the environment enough to constitute a distinct geological change.

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Humans have reached a point now where they have more of an effect on the world than all other natural forces combined. This Project is using the combined subjects of fine art photography with film and scientific research to look upon and investigate the influences that humans will have on the dynamic future of the planet. It has become a multimedia exploration of the complex and indelible human signature on the Earth.

General Ideas Mindmap

Helmer-Petersen was born and grew up in the Østerbro quarter of Copenhagen. He started taking photographs in 1938, when he received a Leica camera as a graduation present. At an early stage, he became aware of the trends in international photography; in the 1940s he subscribed to the US Camera Annual and in this period became familiar with German inter-war photography, which had developed at the Bauhaus and in the Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity) movement.

The pioneering effort with 122 Colour Photographs brought Helmer-Petersen a grant from the Denmark–America Foundation to study at the Institute of Design in Chicago (founded by László Moholy-Nagy in 1937 under the name New Bauhaus). During his stay at the school, he both taught and studied under (among others) the American photographer Harry Callahan. Helmer-Petersen began to experiment with the contrast in graphic black and white expression influenced by constructivist artists and their fascination with industry’s machines and architecture’s constructions. A selection of the photographs that Helmer-Petersen created in Chicago was published in the little book Fragments of a City (1960). This offers a portrait of the city in thirty-five tightly composed graphic images and is a radical example of Helmer-Petersen’s graphic and formal experimentation.

Helmer-Petersen’s approach to photography was by and large experimental and explorative. Again and again, he worked on the borders of what we normally consider to be photography. Among other things, throughout his career he worked with “cameraless” photography, the photogram (a darkroom technique in which objects are placed directly on light-sensitive photographic paper). His curiosity about pushing the limits of the media was expressed in several experimental short films, including Copenhagen Boogie from 1949.

From the 1970s, Helmer-Petersen was preoccupied with the figurative potential in found objects. Like Irving Penn (and at the same time), Helmer-Petersen walked sidewalks, head down, making discoveries among the windswept and downtrodden street refuse. This resulted in works such as the series Deformationer. From 1974 to 1993, he created a large series of close-up abstract colour photographs of walls, timber stacks, etc. A selection of these was published in the book Danish Beauty, in 2004.

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The New Topographics was a term coined by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers (such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar banal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape.

For “New Topographics” William Jenkins selected eight then-young American photographers: Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal,^[6]Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott,^[7]Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel, Jr. He also invited the German couple, Bernd and Hilla Becher, then teaching at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany. Since the late 1950s the Bechers had been photographing various obsolete structures, mainly post-industrial carcasses or carcasses-to-be, in Europe and America. They first exhibited them in series, as “typologies”, often shown in grids, under the title of “Anonymous Sculptures.” They were soon adopted by the Conceptual Art movement.

Rural landscape photography refers to “photography in the countryside” and covers the rural environment.

While rural landscapes often contain architecture – much the same as urban landscapes – rural landscape photography is more about capturing the life and elements found in the countryside. This can include humans in the landscape as well as elements of human influence.

Rural landscape photography can also encompass rural scenes including buildings, animals, and stunning countryside scenery.

Some popular targets for landscape photographers include:

Deadpan photography is defined as a devoid of emotion. There is no visible joy or sorrow in the photos. The only subject of focus us the object or person itself.

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Perhaps two of the most famous deadpan photographers in history, Bernd and Hilla Becher became famous through their typological deadpan photographs of water towers, coal mines, industrial landscapes, grain elevators and gas tanks. Their many different series of photographs offer a look into the industrial past of the world, and showcase landscapes and subjects that cannot be seen as readily in the world today. While many viewers may see the images as lacking substance or meaning, their work resonates with many people today as a typology of a world that no longer exists.

For my experimentation, I decided to use people instead of objects.

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Image juxtaposition is where two images are compared to find similarities and differences between them. An effective way of achieving this is by adjusting the composition of the photos. From first sight, there are already visible similarities and dissimilarities.

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There has clearly been some violent distortion and stretching to the models’ face in one case and head in the other. Both photos are in black and white, however one of them was taken almost a hundred years after the other.

Vanitas-style

Hamptonne and Jersey Heritage loaned objects

Collage-Style, also Jersey Heritage loaned objects