In order to find and choose my best shots, I began by flagging the photos which were of good quality [i.e: had good lighting, weren’t blurry etc.] and discarding the one’s that I didn’t think would be usable via Lightroom, making it easier for me to distinguish my higher quality photos from my lower quality images.

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Next, I went through all the photos I flagged and gave a yellow colour label to any images that I wanted to use at any point throughout the project either due to their quality or how the linked in to my ideas for my final outcome. I also ended up flagging any photos that had rubbish in them as blue so it would be easier to find them later on rather than having to search through all my images again.

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After I finished colour coding my photos, I was left with 78 images that I wanted to use for my project.

Some of my best shots:

After looking through my ideas I came up with a few ideas that I wanted to explore further via photoshoots and use for my final Anthropocene project:

Plan/Ideas:

One of my ideas was to take images around St Helier of a variety of things such as housing, littering etc so I could later mount everything on a map of the Parish, making some sort of constructed landscape, in order to present how bad humanity is hurting the environment. I would take some inspiration from Dafna Talmor and her work where she takes apart photos an puts them together in an abstract way in order to make the original image[s] almost unrecognisable due to the way she’s put them back together. However, for my project, I’d do it on a much larger scale.

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Another idea I had was to take a bunch of photos of litter and compile them together in order to create a human-esque figure that’s somewhat distorted to represent how humanity’s habits have had a negative on the planet. I plan on doing this by either making the faces in person then photographing them and improving them via editing or by photographing each piece of rubbish individually on a plain background and forming the faces in photoshop. I would take inspiration from the artist Nick Gentry and his work on compiling objects/photographs into faces, however, I would put my own twist on it, making mine look less human and much grimier.

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A third idea involves taking photos of rubbish and placing the final images next to one another, showcasing the griminess and sheer amount of junk that humans produce. I plan on editing my raw photos in order to exaggerate the objects in each image and hopefully make them look even murkier than they originally were. I plan on taking inspiration from Keith Arnatt’s work as he’s taken a variety of photos of things he’s found from decaying food itself and smaller objects that he’s retrieved and photographed separately in a studio.

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I also liked the idea of juxtaposing through the use of landscapes and wanted to try showing the contrast between nature and manmade buildings and how rural landscapes are slowly being over taken by humans and their impact. I was inspired by some of Felicity Hammond’s work, in particular 2 photos [shown below]. I like how she doesn’t attempt to make the environments look natural and change them, either through editing or via installing a piece, in order to create interesting and engaging images. I plan on taking some photos with both buildings and aspects of nature and will hopefully be able to create some photos similar to hers.

Mindmaps:

Here, I explored topics that I felt linked to Anthropocene along with some brief ideas on what I could photograph with those topics: i.e: I could photograph different types of plastic in the ocean.

When coming up with ideas for my photoshoot, I kept in mind some locations that I thought would work well with the project. I tried keeping my ideas open and quite vague in order to ensure I has a lot to work with so I could later explore them further and choose what I wanted to focus on the most for the project.

Moodboard:

Here, I gathered a mixture of different photos that I felt linked to Anthropocene and inspired me in some way

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I went through all of my photos and chose my best images before I began editing them.

My edits

In order to create these edits I turned my photos black and white and increased the contrast in order to make the shadows and highlights easily distinguishable from one another. Then, I darkened the shadows even further as I wanted to exaggerate the different depths and tones between everything in frame.

— Edit 1: ——————–

I believe this is my most successful edit as there’s a variety of tones within the image due to the different shadows and textures, creating a visually interesting image. The highlights create a contrast between the darker tones, emphasising the pattern created by the shadows.

— Edit 2: ——————–

I also think this edit is successful as I turned the image black and white then increased the exposure, making the sky in the background completely white which caused the darkness of the construction to stand out, emphasising the smaller details.

— Edit 4: ——————–

— Edit 5: ——————–

— Edit 6: ——————–

Anthropocene

The word ‘Anthropocene’ was first used by biologist Eugene Stormer and chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000. Anthropocene is the current geological age where humans have the most influence on climate change and the environment due to their constant terraforming, mining deforestation and a heap more.

Keld-Helmer Peterson

Keld-Helmer Peterson is a photographer who tends to focus on taking photos of urban/industrial landscapes and makes them into black and white silhouettes through editing. He pays close attention to lighting when photographing as it can enhance the details in his image, making interesting and dynamic patterns when he turns his images into silhouettes.

My Edits

In order to create these edits, I lowered the saturation of my images and increased the contrast which allowed me to have even white, black and grey tones throughout my photos and prepare for the next stage of editing. Then, I used the threshold tool on photoshop in order to get rid of the grey tones and make my photo purely black and white and I adjusted as I needed to get my final edits.

The New Topographics

‘New Topographics’ was a term used by William Jenkins in 1970 to refer to a group of photographers whose urban landscape photos all had similar formal and black and white aesthetics. They were known for having an ‘anti-aesthetic’ as they took formal photos of America’s landscape as it was without romanticising it. This was as they wanted to shift away from traditional landscape photography and draw attention towards how natural landscapes were being overtaken by manmade structures.

Some of their work includes:

Contact Sheets

When taking these photos, I made sure to use a variety of angles and distances to get a range of different images.

Best Shots

I went through all of my images and decided which ones I liked best and thought could be enhanced through editing to look even better.

I started by going through my best shots and edited the ones I thought I could enhance via editing.

Edits

I felt inspired by Roger Fenton’s work so I attempted to make my image looks similar to his through editing.

—-Edit 1: ————————

In order to create this edit, I cropped the image slightly in order to draw more attention to the dug up sand [the main focus of the image]. From there, I increased the temperature of the photo and increased the saturation slightly, giving the image a yellow tint. I decided that in order to improve my edit further, I would increase the sharpness and contrast which helped the smaller details within the image stand out more.

—-Edit 2: ————————

I started this edit by increasing the temperature, making the image warmer. I then decreased the contrast and shadows which allowed the yellow highlights to stand out more without distracting from the main focus of the image. Finally, I finished my edit by increasing the sharpness which allowed the image to be seen clearly.

—-Edit 3: ————————

I began this edit by increasing the temperature of the image, however, I didn’t like the way it looked so I tinted the shadows orange and pink in order to exaggerate the shadows so they wouldn’t be drowned out by the rest of the image. Next, I lowered the exposure of the image slightly along with the contrast to create a softer look. I then finished off my edit by increasing the sharpness and highlights, adding a bit of contrast between the different yellow tones in the image.

—-Edit 4: ————————

I made this edit by tinting the highlights yellow and the shadows orange which made the colours in the image blend together nicely. I increased the exposure of the image slightly before decreasing the contrast as it made the shadows in the image look a little softer and made the highlights look a little more golden. I finished off the edit by increasing the sharpness which made the foreground clearer and kept the rest of the image somewhat soft-looking.

—-Edit 5: ————————

I began this edit by increasing the temperature, tinting the midtones yellow and the shadows orange. This created a variety of yellow tones within the trees which made the image feel warmer and slightly aged. Then, I decreased the contrast a little as I wanted the shadows to look slightly softer whilst still allowing some of the details within the trees to remain dark and hidden. I finished the edit by increasing the sharpness and the vibrance of the image, causing the yellows to really pop out.

Ansel Adams

Adams received his first camera in 1916 at age 12, a Kodak #1 box brownie camera, on a visit to Yosemite National Park and proved to be a talented photographer. He continued creating impressive landscapes all throughout the 1920s after becoming a custodian for the Sierra Club’s Lodge at Yosemite National Park.

Analysing Ansel Adams Work

In this photo, Adams used the camera in order to create a lot of contrast between everything in frame, capturing a variety of tones which makes every detail within the image stand out without over/under exposing the photo. His use of depth of field has allowed his image to be completely in focus including both the foreground and the background, allowing the beauty of the environment to be clearly in frame. This was due to Adams’ goal of using photography in order to promote the conservation of the environment and wilderness areas which made him pay close attention to how he planned on capturing what was in front of him.