Shooting during a sunset, a sunrise or at night in a full moon is a good idea because it will really bring out the darks and the whites like all the romanticism visual arts, the strong contrast will help to convey the power of the sublime. A cloudy, rainy, foggy and windy day would also be a good setting for the shoot as it would present nature at its finest. Photographing a path in the woods or a side road would make a good lines in the photograph.
Potential shoot locations:
devils hole, fern valley, grantez headland, any ruins, bunkers, forests, the sea, lighthouses, cliffs, sand dunes.
New topographics was a term invented by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers (such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar minimal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape. Most images consisted of man-made objects in nature and run – down buildings, predominantly focused on textures.
New topographics was a reaction to idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental, much like Ansel Adams’ work. New topographics emphasized man vs nature in form of photography, showing how urban areas and buildings had taken over nature, but photographed in a way that covered the ugly side of built-up areas and presented urban landscapes to look just as beautiful as nature.
ROBERT ADAMS
Robert Adams is one of the most important figures of modern American photography; a key figure in the New Topographics movement. He photographs in black and white, usually during daytime, of urban areas that are typically deserted, save for a few people that make an appearance in his work. Adams’ monochrome style was influenced by 19th-century photographers like Timothy O’Sullivan, William Henry Jackson and Carleton Watkin, who also focussed on the landscape of the West (in its more primitive state) as well as Lewis Hine, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams, all of whom married social and aesthetic concerns in their work.
Photos from Adams’ The New West collection, 1974.
The turning point in Adams’ career was the creation of his photo-essay, The New West, in 1974. Divided into five sections, the book takes us along the Colorado Rocky Mountains, with photos of the entire suburban Southwest. Starting from the empty streets and street signs, Robert Adams takes the viewer on a journey with him, finishing his book in the suburbs with the rapidly growing streets of houses and mobile homes in a sparse stretch of land, before presenting us with an entire town of these compact white caravans, which appear tiny and somehow insignificant against the backdrop of the towering mountains and an omnipresent sky to show the nature found amongst urban landscapes.
LEWIS BALTZ
Whilst Robert Adams’ photography style combined nature with man-made landscapes, Baltz’ style of work is entirely urban. He made photographs in series focused on a particular theme and published them in book form, as in The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California (1975), Nevada (1978) and Park City (1981). His work, like Adams, challenges the tradition of western landscape photography by presenting a less innocent view of the landscape. Baltz’s perception of the landscape reveals the effects of twentieth-century culture and suburban development on the nation’s topography.
Photos from Baltz’ book, The New Industrial Park Near Irvine, California (1975)
One of his most famous works, The New Industrial Parks is part of a series developed in the 1970s deals with wide-ranging cultural and philosophical questions about the growing urban landscape. By focusing his attention on the familiar, Baltz created a powerful work in his critical photographic approach to the built environment.
MY PLAN
My plan for urban landscape photos is to focus on decaying or derelict buildings/constructions as i’ve always been drawn to them and now have the chance to photograph them. I chose some photos of abandoned places that i both like and appeal to the theme of new topographics. I also plan to photograph busy, urban areas like town or parks. My images will be in black and white to mimic photographers of the new topographics era and i will try to eliminate any unnecessary objects in the photos to give a miminal approach like Lewis Baltz’ work.
“New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” was an exhibition that epitomized a key moment in American landscape photography. The term “New Topographics” was 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.
Many popular photographers that were linked to New Topographic 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.
These photographers began to move away from traditional landscape photographs of natural views and started photographing what replaced them, unromanticised views of stark industrial landscapes, suburban sprawl, and everyday scenes which are not usually given a second glance.
Joel Sternfeld
Joel Sternfeld is an American fine-art colour photographer. He is known for his large-format documentary pictures of the United Statesand helping establish colour photography as a respected artistic medium. Sternfeld began taking colour photographs in 1970 after learning the colour theory of Johannes Itten and Josef Albers. Colour is an important element of his photographs. Joel Sternfeld produced many books but one of his most popular being American Prospects.
Space Shuttle Columbia, Texas, 1979–2008
Looking East on 30th Street on a Late September Morning, 2000
Glen Canyon Dam, Page, Arizona, 1983
Jungle Gym, Wet ‘N’ Wild Aquatic Theme Park, Orlando, Florida, September 1980,
Lake Oswego, Oregon June 1979
A Man at His Campsite, El Prado, New Mexico, August 1999
The Mojave Desert, California, July 1979
Wet ‘N’ Wild Aquatic Theme Park, Orlando, Florida, September 1980
“No individual photo explains anything. That’s what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium,”
American Prospects (1987) is Sternfeld’s most known book and explores the irony of human-altered landscapes in the United States. To make the book, Sternfeld photographed ordinary things, including unsuccessful towns and barren-looking landscapes. Sternfelds work looks more into utopic and dystopic possibilities of the American experience which is mainly shown through his pieces in this book. Walker Evans was a big role model for Sternfeld and much like Evans he continued working in the tradition of American naturalist colour photography. Seen through his lens, the late-1970s’ America oscillates between artificial, nostalgic paradises and crude reality.
“I picked this title because the word ‘prospect’ has several meanings in English: first, it means ‘view.’ In New England, when a new farm is being built, care is taken to give the farmer’s wife a nice view from the kitchen window (nice for the women, right?). ‘Prospect’ also means ‘seen from above, perspective,’ which goes well with my working method. But it also signifies possibility, hope, future, like when you prospect for gold, you hope to find something…,” Stated Sternfeld
What was the new topographics a reaction to?
Their stark, beautifully printed images of this mundane but oddly fascinating topography was both a reflection of the increasingly suburbanised world around them, and a reaction to the tyranny of idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental.
The Tetons and Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Ansel Adams
On the left is my image taken in St Ouens on a stormy day. On the right is an image taken by Ansel Adams which was captured in Wyoming.
Both of these images have many similarities and some differences. To compare these images, I first saw the way the mud tracks from my image and the river in the second image have very similar features such as, they both start at the bottom of the photo and turn out of the range of the landscape captured. Also, both images are displayed in black and white which has a very good effect on images that display colours of green and brown. Another similarity is that if both images werent in black and white they would both have a very similar colour scheme including colours such as, green, white, brown and grey.
I have also noticed a few differences between the two images. One of these differences is that my image has many man-made things such as, football field, playground, and the tractor mud tracks, however in Ansel Adams image all scenery displayed is natural with no man-made structures in range of sight. I also noticed the image by Ansel Adams shows a lot of landscape which is hidden by the shadows and in my image it only has a small range captured.
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.
I started by going through my best shots and edited the ones I thought I could enhance via editing.
Contact sheet of my best shots
Edits
I felt inspired by Roger Fenton’s work so I attempted to make my image looks similar to his through editing.
—-Edit 1: ————————
My Original Photo
My Edit
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: ————————
My Original Photo
My Edit
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: ————————
My Original Photo
My Edit
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: ————————
My Original Photo
My Edit
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: ————————
My Original Photo
My Edit
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.
The two images of Ansel Adams’ above have similar characteristics of my image below. There are a wide variety of tonal values in all images, my image perhaps has less greys and only a sharp contrast between almost pure white and pure black. My image has less definition/ is not in as sharp as a focus, this could be changed by changing the aperture setting, which secures greater depth of field (i.e. Ansel Adams often shot in an aperture setting of f64). My image is also really intriguing to me as the perception of the image presents itself as an optical illusion, with some questioning over what the image actually is, whether it be a close up photo of roots or trees from afar, Adams’ image of roots gives this same effect where the tangled roots look almost scalic and alive rather than just being roots.
Ansel Adams was a an American photographer and environmentalist throughout the 1900’s who was extremely well known for his work on landscapes and use of sharp focus in order to capture crisp images that included huge variety of tones, adding incredible depth and contrast to his photos. He often captured black and white images of rural landscapes in the American West, in particular Yosemite National Park, as he wanted to promote conservation of wilderness.
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.
Lodgepole Pines, Lyell Fork of the Merced River, Yosemite National Park [Ansel Adams, 1921]
‘Monolith, the Face of Half Dome‘ was the landscape that Adams considered his “first really fine photograph” and is also his most famous photo due to the intense contrast between the tones, which he enhanced through the use of filters, creating an almost surreal image.
Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California [Ansel Adams] released in 1927
Analysing Ansel Adams Work
Yosemite national park [Ansel Adams]
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.
