photo shoot one:
in all of the images below, i enhanced all of them by using light room.
my second photo shoot didn’t come out well and I am not happy with the results therefore, I am not posting them.
WHERE? Fort Regent Hill, and the Roundabout by the Finance buildings on Pier Road.
WHAT? I decided to base this project on light/ car pollution.
WHEN? we decided to do this photo shoot during rush hour in the week in order to get images with the most amount of cars in. We also had to wait for the sun to set for around 5:30pm to gain the highest quality images for the lights.
HOW? To create a light trail, i kept my IOS as low as possible, changed my shutter speed to around 60 seconds long, and finally, i changed my aperture to around F/16.
not edited:
This is the original photo I took. It is very bland and not particularly even. The colours and tones of the image are boring and very dark; nothing stands out.
However, I was drawn to the left side of the image as it creates a perspective distortion, so I decided to crop the right side of the image out a lot to move the focus of the image to the wall and ocean in the distance:
editing:
I turned the ‘warmth’ of the image up and increased the saturation of the yellow, orange and red in the image. I like that the image now looks tea-stained. I edited a ‘grain’ effect into the image, this creates the illusion that the image is old, it has a vintage look to it.
I was inspired by Gustave Le Gray with this image. His images are always very grainy and yellow toned.
outcome:
Since this first mind map and mood board, I have decided to change my ideas. I was originally going to photograph plastic pollution, however, decided to go against that idea and do a photoshoot on car light pollution. I thought this would fit the theme of Anthropocene well as it focuses on how the world has been altered through human impact. and due to the vast amount of people who drive cars enabling toxic fumes to be released into the air impacting on wild life i thought i would be able to capture this.
The work of a British photographer known only as MSH* manages to capture the frenetic energy of London, he uses a slow shutter speed to create photos from a low down view point to make you feel like you are apart of he image.
here are a few of his images that he has created using slow shutter speed/ long exposure.
on the left are the photos that i have taken, and on the right is an images that MSH* has taken
Jersey has been a leading international finance centre (IFC) for more than six decades. This might be because it is a tax free environment, therefore lots of people decide to move here to become part of the financial industry.
The jersey finance website claims they have over £131.4 billion in deposits. But due to the huge and growing tax-free financial industry, are they putting any of this money forward to help the environment?
Instead they are putting in money to expand the industry by building more offices in different locations, taking away from the environment and industrializing more areas.
Below is a time line posted on their website of their expansion:
2001: Jersey Finance was founded to promote Jersey as an international finance centre globally.
2009: Jersey Finance opened an office in Hong Kong and Jersey companies became able to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
2018 : Jersey Finance became the first international finance centre to set up an office in the Dubai International Finance Centre.
The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change.
The Anthropocene Project
The Anthropocene Project is a multidisciplinary body of work by Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, combining fine art photography, film, virtual reality, augmented reality, and scientific research to investigate human influence on the state, dynamic, and future of the Earth. The Anthropocene is an informal geologic chronological term that serves to mark the evidence and extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth’s ecosystems.
Edward Burtynsky
Edward Burtynsky (born February 22, 1955) is a Canadian photographer and artist known for his large format photographs of industrial landscapes. His works depict locations from around the world that represent the increasing development of industrialization and its impacts on nature and the human existence. It is most often connected to the philosophical concept of the sublime. His photos capture the changes made to the environment and the things that are destroying it. His style of photography is characterised by the sublime nature of the scale of his photographs. Burtynksy worked with Jennifer Baichwal to create a documentary about Anthropocene in 2018. Burtynsky is considered one of the world’s most accomplished contemporary photographers.
Rut Blees Luxemberg
Rut Blees Luxemburg (born 1967) is a German-born British photographer. Her technique is to take photographs at night, mostly exploring the urban landscape. She is a Tutor at the Royal College of Art. In 2020, Luxemburg was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society, Bristol. Her work ranges from large-scale photographic prints, through public art works and operatic mise-en-scène. She mainly photographs at night, using long exposures which allow her to use the ambient light of the city . Her poetic images are recognisable through their contemplative, considered and atmospheric tone.
not edited:
The original image I took of this wall is very dark and boring. I took thus photo as I thought the rust on the wall was very interesting and with some editing and tempering with the image, I could make the colours of the rust really pop.
editing:
outcome:
The outcome of this image is very abstract. Its simple in the fact that it is straight up an image of a rusty wall, however after I edited the colours, textures, exposure and highlights, it becomes a much more interesting image with intriguing colours.
I like this image as it is a photo of a rusty wall. Rust is often displayed as dirty, disgusting thing that usually appears in brown, orange and copper colours. In this case, I’ve turned something that’s overlooked and not liked into a colourful photo.
AGRICULTURE POLLUTION
I took around 160 photos during this photoshoot, however, lots were blurry and the lighting on the day was very dim so this affected the brightness. I had to experiment a lot with the ISO as it was gradually becoming darker whilst I was outside. Also, it depended a lot on what I was photographing; for example, when photographing the drains on the wall the lighting was not as bright as the landscape photos of the sea, therefore I had to turn up the ISO.
The outcome of the images I chose to edit in Lightroom:
Where: Roundabout outside the finance buildings (La Route du Port Elizabeth, Above the tunnel (Pier road)
When: Early evening as rush hour traffic will enable me to produce the best images relating to the topic of light pollution
What: A series of long exposure images highlighting the excessive use of artificial lighting
How: Use of a tripod and shutter priority mode (a low shutter speed) to capture the movement of light in the area
Why: To produce images expressing my view on the topic of Anthropocene
What do I think went well/wrong?
In my opinion, I personally think that the first two diptychs are far stronger than the third, which I regrettably do not particularly like.
However I don’t think this is because of both images, but just because of this one;
I think the reason that this image does not really compliment my others is because it is just a little more cluttered than them – the composition is just less simplistically successful which has unfortunately resulted in a less professional looking image. I also think that it doesn’t at all relate to any of my artist studies.
This being said, I do think that my other images are all really strong and I am happy with my editing choices. I think that all of the images that I put together do compliment and contrast each other in a productive manner.
It was quite frustrating to not have been able to take as many strong and varied images as I would have liked; and I think maybe a more clear framework in my head would have perhaps made this a little easier. Knowing exactly what I wanted before I went out to take photos might have made this simpler. However, I do still feel that the weather was quite difficult during the week and this did invalidate a lot of my images that I actually took for the project.
I think I did use the camera to the best of my abilities, but there is definitely more I could learn and utilise within the settings to take more interesting images.
Altogether, I would like to have put more thought into creating images that really did resemble the work of my artists, specifically Andreas Gursky. I feel that this was not completely taken into account when I went out to take photos, but more importantly in my planning. By not choosing subjects that would suit his style, I was limiting my chances of replicating his photos. I am happy with my outcomes for Fay Godwin however, and I think this might be due to my personal preference toward her style and her photos over those of Gursky.
Gursky’s digital manipulation of his work is something that I feel I was not educated on enough to fully understand and be able to replicate. I was not fully aware of the amount of manipulation that actually went into his images, and I would most likely have not had time to do this to my own.
In conclusion, I enjoyed this project. Taking the time to research the different aspects of Anthropocene and its effects was really interesting and I feel that I have learnt a lot through doing so. I am proud of my outcomes, despite feeling that my idea was not as strong as it could have been, and I am aware that there is room for improvement in all areas of this kind of task for my future reference.