The New Topographics arose in 1975 and is where photographers capture contemporary, urban or suburban landscapes. The movements was a reaction to the increasingly suburbanised world and landscapes around them as well as the tyranny of idealised in landscape photography. People involved were trying to keep the world more natural and used photography to get their message across as opposed to words etc.

mood board:

mind map:

For this photoshoot I am going to visit some different palaces as seen above to try and recreate some photos from the New Topographic era. I will ensure that my images are in focus and when they have been take I will edit them on Lightroom to make them black and white, as well as enhancing their features.

Robert Adams:

Robert Adams is an American photography, he focused his work on the ever changing western American landscape. His work first became prominent in the mid 1970’s being promoted by his book The New West, as well as his participation in the New Topographic expedition. Many people in that time and still to this day are inspired by his work and got them into taking pictures.

analysis of image:

I think that Adams’ images are very effective as they stand out with the bold black and white tones, they draw viewers into them as they catch our eyes. I think that his images are capable of holding a lot of meaning behind them as they have depth allowing us to have out own beliefs about them or creating stories in out minds of what we think is happening in the image.

Lewis Baltz:

Lewis Baltz was an American visual artist and photographer. In the late 1970’s he became important in the New Topographic movement. He was best known for his monochrome photography of suburb landscapes and industrial parks, focusing on the bleakness of beauty. Baltz’s says that there is a presence of people in all of his work, ‘they’re present in their absence’. I like his style of photography as it is very run down and shows people how anything can make a good image with lots of detail.

Exposure bracketing is a technique where, instead of taking a single photo, you take three (or more) that are all exposed slightly differently; normally one is correctly exposed, one slightly underexposed, and one slightly overexposed. It’s in quite a few situations, so let’s look at how it works.

In Class Examples

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Above are six photos that we took in the the ‘Street’ a school, the first two photos are over exposed

As soon as you take your first shot, adjust the exposure compensation, shutter speed or ISO by around one stop and take a second shot. Adjust the shutter speed or ISO two stops in the other direction and take a third.

Before and After Editing

Here you can see a photo painted in 1821 by John Constable, it depicts the rural scene of what appears to be a farmland. It is known as England’s most Famous Image and the Most Popular.

It also plays a part in Romanticism as this was painted during the Industrial Revolution. Meaning what is shown in this painting is slowly being shunned out by factories and buildings. Which is the point of Romanticism, to treasure the times pre Industrial Revolution and to battle it.

In the photo, we can see two people by the wagon, I assume the one wearing white is an adult and the other is a child. They are on a wagon being pulled by horses, next to them there is a cottage-like house and the other side, an empty field. We can also see what looks like a sheep dog, commonly used in farms. Which, given all of these details, it is indicated this is a farmland.

You can see no things like factories or machinery, no roads or cars and no cities. It all feels normal, it looks more like how the world should look and normal. Because of this, it feels peaceful and calm.

Who is Ansel Adams:

Ansel Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist. He was also considered by some to be one of the most influential photographers of the American West.

He was best known for his black and white landscape photos of the west and he also founded Group f/64 which was a famous group advocating “Pure Photography”. He was considered to be a “Pure Photographer” as his photos were very sharp and very detailed.

Some of the photos he made:

As you can see, his photos featured lots of detail in the scenery, nicely presented in a black and white finish, it captures the beauty of nature and life, which was one of the things he wanted to teach people. That nature and mankind can live together in harmony.

Beginning:

Ansel Adams was born in 1902 in San Francisco. When he was twelve years old, he got his hands on his first camera from a trip to Yosemite National Park. Since then, he has pursued his passion for photography and has come across many achievements such as being contracted with the United States Department of the Interior to take photos of national parks, being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, co-founding the magazine called Aperture and co-founding the Centre for Creative Photography at the Arizona University.

“The Face of Half Dome”:

“The Face of Half Dome” is one of Ansel’s most popular images, took in 1927 in California. It is in fact the first photo Ansel took that was influenced by his own vision. It is also the first photograph to feature the, yet to be named, Zone System. He took this photo with his Korona view camera, he also had different coloured filters and lenses and twelve panchromatic glass plates. When he first arrived to the dome, the time of day didn’t give the right light so he proceeded to wait for two hours for when the lighting would be just right.

However, by the time it was right, he only had two glass plates remaining, so he had to make sure he made the most of it and capture the absolute best shot he could get with the little he had left. The first attempt, he used a yellow filter and took the shot;

Ansel didn’t think it fitted his vision and ideas, he felt the contrast didn’t create a dramatic enough feeling, the sky was too bright and didn’t create enough sharpness or detail because of it.

Ansel realised that photographic emulsions are less sensitive to red light, so he decided to use a dark red filter to darken the background, he loaded it in and took his last shot;

This was the final photo taken, the red filter made the sky black and because of the darkness of the sky now, it created significantly more contrast between the black sky and the white snow. The red filter even made it so more tiny details in the rock formation could be seen too. Adams was very satisfied with this photo and he decided to publish it and name it “Monolith, the Face of Half Dome”. It was the first time Ansel could control the viewers experience of his photos. And this later refined and set the foundation for his future work later to come.

The Zone System:

As mentioned earlier, the Zone System is what Ansel would come to discover while making his work. The Zone System is a tool used to determine the exposure and light levels in Photography:

It was a tool used a lot by other Photographers who wanted to get more defining and dramatic photographs for their work. Each checkpoint in the system was named and described:

Adams quoted: ‘Not an invention of mine; it is a codification of the principles of sensitometry. Worked out at the art centre in Los Angeles’ This system and quote was made in 1939.

Exposure bracketing is a technique where, instead of taking a single photo, you take multiple that are all exposed slightly differently; normally one is correctly exposed, one slightly underexposed, and one slightly overexposed.

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We went round the school testing exposure bracketing by using the different settings on the camera. We created light and dark images by changing the exposure with the numbers on the ‘M’ setting. Changing the numbers lower e.g -2 to create a darker image and higher e.g +2 it would make the image over exposed and much lighter.

Ansel Adams

American landscape photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams is best renowned for his black-and-white photographs of the American West. In order to ensure that all tonal values are represented in the photos, he co-founded Group f/64, a group of photographers who promoted “pure” photography. This style stressed tight focus and the utilization of the entire tonal range of a shot. Ansel Adams fought for environmental preservation, the establishment of national parks, and the preservation of the power of nature and its beautiful settings via the creation of a lasting legacy.

Group F/64

The group f/64 was formed in 1932. They were a loose association of California photographers who promoted a style of sharply detailed purist photography. The original group members were; Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, John Paul Edwards, Brett Weston, Conseulo Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, Sonya Noskowiak and Preston Holder. The name of this group was taken from the smallest setting of large-format camera diaphragm aperture that gives a good resolution of depth of field. Even though the members of the group had a wide range of subject matter in their work, they were all similar in the way that they all used the camera to photograph life as it is.

The Zone System

This zone system was created by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer. They developed this zone system to help photographers control their black and white images. It was also designed to provide structure for determining exposure, which ensured that the photographer could create a properly exposed image each time they took a photo. It was made to put the 11 zones into order of gradient. Each zone represents all of the different tones you would see in a black and white photo.

I created these edits in Lightroom, using a range of different editing techniques as well as applying different filters for different effects.