Both could be described as landscape pictures. What kinds of landscapes do they describe?

Both photographs are seascapes. However, the artists have chosen to develop their images in different ways; Gustave Le Gray’s being more simplistic, and Dafna Talmor’s being more abstract.

What similarities do you notice about these two pictures?

Both photographs are seascapes.

What differences do you notice?

Although both photographers have chosen to photograph seascapes, they have edited them in different ways in order to produce these final images. Gustave Le Gray printed 2 negatives on a single sheet of paper: one exposed for the sea, the other for the sky, and sometimes made on separate occasions or in different locations. Whereas Dafna Talmor first shot the photographs on medium format film. She then sliced them to pieces. She could combine places thousands of miles apart on the same surface and construct her own imaginary land. The images are the product of laborious and painstaking collaging techniques that Talmor executes herself and then enlarges the newly created negative in the darkroom.

What words/phrases best describe each of these landscapes?

Dramatic, abstract, mysterious, gloomy, dark

In which of these landscapes would you prefer to live? 

Gustave Le Gray’s ‘The Great Wave’ as although the image has been altered like Dafna Talmor’s photograph, you can still see the whole structure. Dafna Talmor’s photograph is more mysterious and unknown which makes it less appealing to want to live in.

Unedited:

Edited:

(Lightroom)

Using more objects from home, I went down to the studio to take some more images for this project. I ended up with 89 images total however a lot of them were quite blurry, this narrowed it down to 42 images total.

I wanted to try using photoshop to manipulate and edit my images into something new however i believe that with this piece of work it took away the from the dramatic feel of the piece which was my main goal when editing these photos.

Overall i believe i prefer the images as they are since that was my vision when making my action plan.

as i believe keeping the images simple will help convey the message i would like to share easier.

I have chosen these because of their contrast to each other and I believe that through some editing I can really showcase this to create my final prints. Whilst only 2 of these photos were taken specifically for this project, I think that the others are suitable anyhow and they do show the kind of contrast that I wanted to demonstrate. This makes up for the somewhat lack of good weather and time to take images due to the early sunsets of this time of year.

This edit is more in a relation with Axel Braun’s photography. More simple, landscape no major editing.

UNEDITED IMAGE:

I used Lightroom to edit this image:

Matthew Brandt grew up surrounded by photography, with his dad, David Allan Brandt, being successful commercial photographer. he was a highly influenced by him, and this gave a birth to many ups and downs down his pathway, towards discovering his own way of working and making his visions a reality. He has later became inspired by other photographers he studied at Cooper Union or UCLA, where he earned his master’s degree.

Other than photographers what also inspired him was his passion for traveling, he stated “Travel definitely helps,”.“It allows me to come back and see things with fresh eyes, and suddenly the familiar becomes strange. There are also day-to-day things that I do, such as watering the plants and watching things grow and develop in our garden. Even just going into a store and finding neon crayons sparks new ideas.” which to me means that as long as someone is influenced by new ideas and is going through new experiences, this will allow them to be creative and find inspiration through anything they are going through, especially is they are fresh for the mind.

For Brandt, the finished print is rarely, if ever, the finished product. “Essentially what I’m doing with this process is letting the subject influence its own image and print size,” he said depending on what he is photographing, it influences the print size . Brandt also makes a lot of his own negatives, on an Epson 11880 inkjet printer.

He has included many different and strange range of materials to include in his photographs, with this one for instance was the subject’s mucus, in place of a salt solution, when forming the light-sensitive emulsion. This image is from the “Portraits” series.

“I sometimes make normal inkjet prints, but I feel as if I can’t make a picture without considering the material in relation to the subject, and vice versa. For example, inkjet prints I’ve made capturing stacks of inkjet cartridges. I put the same sheet of paper through the inkjet printer over and over again, printing on top of itself. And the ink builds up and eventually thickens.” 

These are two mounted prints joined to form a diptych. “I used a heliograph,” the first photomechanical reproduction process invented by Niépce, which ultimately led to the daguerreotype.” He used bitumen of Judea (a form of asphalt) on a pewter plate. He made an exposure and washed what wasn’t hardened with UV and lavender oil. He used tar collected from the La Brea Tar Pits, in Los Angeles. The subject is a prehistoric animal skeleton that was unearthed from this tar. He photographed the skeleton in the adjacent George C. Page Museum.” This image is from the “La Brea” series.

From a series where he photographed tropical forest, he had took an image and then buried the C-prints in the ground in Wai’anae, he said he rolls the prints up before putting them in the ground, so they develop this layered effect, and could add burlap or other fabric as he rolls the paper so that the fabric patterns imprint on the surface of the print. This image is from the “Wai’anae” series

“I’ve even hand-made my own substrates, for example, from a tree. I’ve also made charcoal for use as pigment from the same tree, to make a picture of the tree out of the tree. The substrates that I made from a tree were used in silkscreens.”

“In certain situations, for instance when I buried prints in the ground or soaked them in lake water, you can’t really control that, other than for how long you allow the process to continue. You can’t be sure what your results will be, although you do have a sense of the direction it will take after doing it a few times. And you do know, for instance, that if you leave a print in the ground for six months, versus one month, the print will become increasingly degraded the longer it stays buried.”

 “Every print is always different and I’m capitalizing on that, and it’s part of the fun. I grew up learning about silver gelatin processes and wet chemical photography. Then digital came in and it offered a shift in terms of thinking about photography and image-making. I think I may be holding on to some of that tangibility. Working with ones and zeros is a very different relationship than thinking about making prints and light transmission. It’s no longer chemistry. It’s more like programming.”

I have watched a video https://youtu.be/PVOqkkxksWE where he shows his studio as well as explains the sense behind choosing his medium. he explains the interest of c-print process and wet chemical photography, as Cibachrome printing is a wet photography, it made sense to use that as something that represents bodies of water, e.g. lakes and reservoirs. This is because they are both submerged in water in order to get the final result.

But what interested me and is the most relevant to the topic of landscape work is his interest in reservoirs, on which he did a project on in 2014, titled Lakes and Reservoirs. these are some of the pictures from the project :

This is a C-print, shot on 4×5 color negative film. this effect was achieved by soaking that print in lake water taken from the location the picture was taken at, Shasta Lake water. All the color craziness comes from the water interacting with the C-print and breaking down the inherent color layers in the paper. This image is from the “Lakes and Reservoirs” series.

What draws me to his work is is this uniqueness of it, how he considers the environment around him while taking a photograph and includes this. This makes the photograph feel real as the nature has it’s input on the photograph. I like how determined he is and almost always will figure how to include the subject being photographed into the photograph. Like going as far as creating his own substances. I am really interested in the above photograph as the photograph gives a feeling of the place, as he photographs reservoirs and the water in them, he takes a sample to his studio and then leaves the image in the water. the image appears liquid as the water has degraded it to become in this form. this gives the impression of the colour escaping away from the print.

what I also like about this photograph is how in every area you look at, every part is different. for example on the right the colour has collected in tiny areas and a lot of white from underneath is exposed,

but then in the middle there are many unpredictable swirls, full of colour. The ink has been picked up and carried by the water where it would want it .

I really like the abstract effects the water creates as then not only it makes the original colours more interesting, it creates a completely feel to the photograph, this method can take an ordinary photograph to something eccentric and intimidating.

I am looking forward to create my own images through his methods as I can never be sure how an image would turn out and I have limited control of it apart from taking the photograph.

Overall I love how much freedom the photograph shows to a person, where they can interpret it on their own and it is up to them to think what the image is representing, without knowing the context of it. On top of that because I am aware that this effect was caused by the water taken from the location, this created a higher value to me as then I am aware that the photograph meant a lot to the photographer as more effort is shown, more creativity and thought that creates a deeper meaning. I like to think that because the substance is from the location, the photograph doesn’t only have one artist behind it, but the environment as well, which works together with Matthew and he works together with the environment, having this connection with it, represented in his photography.

First, I went through my images one more time, making sure they were all in focus on the part I wanted and then I started editing them all. A lot of the images needed to have the exposure changed in some way and some were quite blurry but I managed to fix that.

These are some of my favourites edits of my images:

I started off with experimenting different ways I could edit my images, what’s intrigued me the most is highlighting specific areas on my images to enhance them. although, I have taken into consideration that Ansel Adams did not edit his pictures like this, I wanted to add more creativity and use of my time to make my images more interesting.

Electric tower- EDIT ONE

UNEDITED IMAGE:

• Firstly, I straightened the image in Lightroom and changed it to black and white.

• Secondly, i used photoshop to start editing my picture more carefully.

• Thirdly, I used the spot healing brush tool and eraser tool to blend the different poles of the electric tower I had layered on each other.

• Finalizing my image..

FINAL EDIT: