Frank Gohlke 
Suzhou Jie, Daoxiangyuan, Haidian District, Beijing, 2004 
Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher 
Joel Sternfeld
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The New Topographics
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
The photographer were inspired by the man-made, selecting subject matter that was matter-of-fact. Parking lots, suburban housing and warehouses were all depicted with a beautiful stark austerity, almost in the way early photographers documented the natural landscape.
What was the topographics a reaction to?
Topographics are a reaction to the tyranny of idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental.
Examples of the new topographic
Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher 
Robert Adams 
Robert Adams 
Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher 
Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher
Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher 
Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher
Urban photography
What is urban photography?
Urban photography is a broad term describing photography that showcases all aspects of an urban environment, combining elements of many other types of photography, including portrait, fine-art, landscape, and architecture photography as well as photojournalism.
Artist comparison
| Ralph Eugene Meatyard (differences) | Similarities | My own photographs (differences) |
| Includes props such as people and cars | Cluttered inclusion of trees | Slightly more close up images |
| Include more of the landscape | Similar shades of greys, blacks and whites | Mainly focused on smaller sections |
| Includes a person’s shadow | Both in black and white | More detail shown in the trees |
Both images (my own photography and that of Ralph Eugene Meatyard) share many similarities and differences. To compare these images, I can first see that both images include the use of a cluttered abundance of trees, swarming and filling up the entire photograph. Although in my image, all the trees are slightly wider and more detailed than the ones in Eugene Meatyard’s. His image has darker trees in the background whilst my image has every tree being more or less the same shade of grey.
I have also noticed that both images are in black and white and contain very similar shades and tones of both colours. I have however noticed, that Eugene’s Meatyards image is slightly more far away so you get the entire length of the tree whilst in my photo you can see that I’ve only captured a smaller portion of the trees. Eugene Meatyard’s also includes someone’s shadow whilst mine on the other hand, does not.
Eugene Meatyard tends to include props in his photographs whether it be landscape, portrait, or any other form of photography. He includes people into his photos, cars, shadows, masks and loads more. I have only captured the trees itself and left it at that.
These photos have a very similar sense of imagery due to the wavy tracks that were created in both. However, Eugene Meatyard’s is more of the entire landscape and is much blurrier than of mine.
These images are both similar themselves in the sense they both focus around the structure of the jagged and messy tree branches, but they are different in the sense that I’ve captured a picture of smaller branches close up and just focused on that, whilst the other image includes a child and is also focusing on bigger pieces of a tree. They do both however, have the same shades of black and white.
Final outcomes
Final images
Photo editing – rural
What I did here for my rural photography was I added a black and white filter on lightroom classic and adjusted the contrast slightly to my liking. I chose the filter labelled ‘B&W low contrast’ and adjusted it so that it didn’t turn out too dark or too light.
Photoshoot 2
Contact sheets
These are the contact sheets I have for my second photoshoot down at corbiere. I thought this would be a perfect location for a more coastal setting for my photographs.
Once again, I have picked and rejected the images that I want to include in my final outcomes after editing and the ones that I don’t want to include in my final pieces.
Best images
Photoshoot 1
Contact sheets
These are my contact sheets for every single photo I ended up taking. I took a really big range of photos so that I would have a really good selection to choose from. For these photos, I ended up going for a walk in St Brelade’s around where the railway walk and the dunes are. I ended up sticking to mainly photos of the woods as I enjoyed the landscape they provided in front of me. I prefer taking photos of dense areas that are also quite cluttered as they present a more interesting image.
What I did was I picked or flagged all of the images that I wanted to use (pressing p), and then I rejected all the remaining images that I didn’t want to use for my final outcome (pressing x)
These are all the images I have ended up picking, getting ready to give them a star rating out of 5 and colour code them in order of green (ones I want to use), yellow (ones I might use) and red (ones I will not use).
Best images
Landscape mindmap
Jersey Landscape moodboard
Mood board of landscape photography in jersey
Early Morning at St Catherine’s Breakwater 
Winter woodland at Noirmont 
My ideas
How I would like to go ahead with this topic is I would like to once again capture black and white images of the rural landscapes among Jersey. I would like to mainly take photos of areas that include loads of trees and grassy lands as I prefer the darker atmosphere that is present in the area. I prefer photographs of the woods or possibly run down/abandoned buildings. I also like to capture that of ancient castles that lay among the landscapes.