Landscape photography shows the spaces within the world, sometimes extensive and unending, but other occasions microscopic. Landscape photographs typically capture the closeness of nature but can further focus on man-made features or disturbances of landscapes. Landscape photography is done for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the most common is to recall a individual observation or knowledge while in the outdoors, especially when touring. Others pursue it particularly as an rustic lifestyle, to be involved with nature and the elements, a few as an escape from the artificial world

History of Landscape Photography

The earliest known record of a landscape photograph was taken between the years of 1826 and 1827. It was an urban landscape photo taken by a French inventor by the name of Nicephore Niepce.

These first 100 or so photos were taken while I was on a train from Bournemouth to Norwich in the UK that I took in preparation for the landscape project.

I didn’t have a camera with me so I had to use my phone and was left with quite a few low quality or blurred images. I took photos of the cities I was travelling to during the day and at night, and was left with many stunning outcomes.

At this point I had travelled to Edinburgh up in Scotland, taking images of the castle during both the day and night, and of various buildings or sculptures that piqued my interest – especially in Livingston with the large shopping centres.

I’d also made my way back down to Coventry, where I had a great view from my hotel near a friend’s house, although not many of the images were that good.

I then went through all of these images and decided to only edit the ones I thought were already fantastic photographs as it was during the mock exam and I didn’t have all that much time.

I was left with these 7 results, that had a large colour palette and vibrant, glowing tones. I think the relation to Anthropocene isn’t as clear with all of these photographs, but almost all of them have urban landscapes implemented with nature – for example the images at Edinburgh castle focuses more on the nature surrounding it – which does question our ongoing connection and destruction of nature.

I think I could edit more of these images in the future, as there is quite a lot in this photoshoot that were left untouched that are still good.

Gerhard Richter is a photographer as well as painter. He is an artist that joins 2 mediums together to produce fascinating images.

He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German artists. He is mainly known for his paintings, however he has also produced in his life a set of photographs , which are exotic in their style. He has produced a book on those images titled “Overpainted Photographs”. These included precious photographs which were unique because of the altered affects given to them.

I find his creativity absorbing. All his images would have been perfectly fine on it’s own, without any paint added onto them, however he doesn’t stop there and has a need to create a contrast between the two mediums.

His choice of colour is almost always a contrast to the photograph, where he would choose an opposite paint colour to the print. The paint appears unplanned and the technique of creating it is unexpected. the texture of the paint is another contrast of it to the print, as it is rough and all over the place, whereas the printed photograph is smooth, glossy and polished. he creates this disturbance with paint, which also shifts the photograph to a more powerful, thrilling one.

I have wanted to experiment with this process, using images I have already taken weeks prior. These images were from my phone when I was on holiday in Spain. This is why I didn’t go through the process of planning a specific photoshoot, as I was very pleased with the ones I had already collected. I also didn’t have a great quantity of them, so I only printed out 2 different photographs. However this was just a little experimentation with this specific artistic/photographic style so I only needed a couple images to try it out.

What inspired me was the work produced by another artist Chen Po-I. :

His work are mainly landscape photographs that have been taken inside a window or building that creates a frame for the landscape. This reminded me that I have similar photographs of landscape taken inside a building, framing them. That is why I decided to mis these two artists work together by taking a photograph that looks similar to Chen Po-I’s work, but with experimentation of paint done by Gerhard Richter.

These are the photographs I have produced:

On both the photographs I have used acrylic paint which is different to Gerhard Richter as he uses oil paint for his work, I was unable to use oil paint as due to its slow drying process and limited time, I had to find a medium that will hold onto the photograph and dry fast.

I have used a palette knife and simply dragged the paint on it across the photograph. With the first image I have also painted a swirl-like line across the photograph. This was influenced by photographs by Gerhard Richter, that I have looked at before applying paint to understand how his paint application works.

To respond to Anthropocene through the study of Matthew Brandt I have decided to photograph reservoirs. as I have previously done a case study of his work, I know one of the subjects he decided to dedicate a project to were reservoirs and lakes. this fit perfectly with my plan as what I planed to do, from the beginning. his way of working is very abstract and because I have never previously produced prints in such a way.

I went to Val De La Mare during midday and these are the photographs I have produced:

What I found the most challenging was to photograph against the light, as I liked that area a lot , however it was tricky to find a balance between the sky and the land as one always turned out overexposed/underexposed.

Sub-Selection

These images were mainly selected based on the exposure, as there was a significant difference between overexposed photographs, I tried picking ones that looked presentable, but I knew that after having a go at editing them I would have a much more narrowed down choices for my final image selection, as not many that I picked, I was able to “rescue” from being overexposed.

Editing

As Matthew takes his photographs by a film camera, I wanted to replicate that effect of a film camera on my own images.

Firstly what I did was to try to get a film look on my images in Lightroom. I slightly tinted these greener and have darkened them, I didn’t want them to be overexposed as then there would be a huge area of just white.

After slight changes I had a plan to put a few substances on them, this is why I needed to find a colourful effect, representing film, however it also meant when the images are soaked in water or other liquids the colours of a overlaid image will show through and create a more of a colourful effect.

I have found an image which acted as overlay of film on my own image. This was a colourful overlay with different combination of colours blended together softly.

I have then opened this image up in Photoshop and using Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C I copied it .

I have also opened my previously edited image from Lightroom into photoshop. Using the copied image done before, I pasted it on top of my own image, by using Ctrl+V.

By pressing Ctrl+T I was able to transform the overlay on top of my own image .

On the right of the screen, in the Layers box, I changed the Opacity of the overlay. In this case I change it to 54%, but with other images I have stayed in the range of 40-60% opacity.

These were my final results after changing the desired photographs in Photoshop.

The differences in the process on the other images apart from the one I explained were that I experimented with different overlays, opacities and have sometimes rotated the overlay if I wanted a specific colour to show in a designated area.

After I was happy with how the photographs looked in Photoshop I have printed them out to experiment on them.

At home I have used many chemicals this including, bleach which created the vibrant blue/violet mark on the photographs, nail polish remover which created more of clear stains as well as some purple ones in some photographs, I have also melted baking soda and salt for texture. after cleaning the photographs, so that when I burn them the fumes wouldn’t be as toxic, I have used a lighter to burn some holes in one of the photograph, but also what I noticed is when I tried to do that with another photograph it has caused the print to crack and the colour layer to split.

The print bellow has a very visible mark in the middle of it, because of the lighter outline around it. this outline was created because of the baking soda that I have put on before.

The lighter, more white-looking stains are because of the liquids applied after baking soda and salt was already on them, but the stains with a redder outline are caused by the nail polish remover, which reacted in a different way to bleach as this time it picked up redder tones in the print rather than bluer that were done with bleach.

This photoshoot was to respond to the topic of Anthropocene while exploring the methods and style of Matthew Brandt. I liked how physical and creative Matthew gets when producing his photographs, this is why I have developed that idea, however using completely different substances. He involves the environment in his photographs, like collecting the water from reservoirs he photographs, I had an opportunity to this however I chose not to because I wanted to relate this photoshoot with Anthropocene. To do that I have used toxic substances that are really harmful for a human as well as the planet. These substances usually end up in our environment and even in reservoirs. So through these photographs that I created I wanted to show how harmful these chemicals are and how much they are destroying our environment, because of human use.