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.

Why did I choose to focus on the impact of the fishing industry, and re-create Mandy Barker’s work?

My first thoughts were to shoot the pollution by La Collette as it is a clear example of Anthropocene. However I had already taken photos there and found the final outcomes not very interesting. My next thought was to re-create Mandy Barker’s work. At first I thought it was a boring idea as it could be seen as copying her style, but I decided I really liked her images, and I didn’t have to completely copy them. Photographing fishing waste wasn’t planned, but when I went to collect rubbish for my shoot I saw how much waste there was. I took photos as I collected plastic, and I am happy that I did as the photos add to my project.

How did I do the shoot?

I used my digital camera to photograph both shoots. For my studio shoot, I used a Copy Stand to create the overhead shot angle. I organised the waste quite roughly to begin with, then collected the smaller pieces to put together a group of pieces to look like Barker’s work. I wasn’t completely happy with the results of those images because I didn’t collect enough pieces and the images weren’t as compact as hers.

Overall:

In the end I am happy with my basic edits, but I prefer the edits I did in photoshop because I think they’re more interesting. I think the photos I took on the beach aren’t as well composed as they could have been. I also think I could have improved my studio shoot by using more pieces, and trying a black background to emphasise the vibrancy and tones in the waste.

My favourite edit is my re-creation of Barker’s photo in photoshop. What went wrong with this edit? I think I can improve it if I add more to add density like her images. I also don’t have a background that has different light ranges in it. Although her photos have this, I am not worried about not including it.

I went back into photoshop and chose an image of micro plastics off the internet. I filled the background in black, and dragged the layer onto my edit. I erased around my parts, and filled in the background. Although the new pieces of plastic aren’t my image, I am happier with the outcome as the overall edit is more compact and interesting.

I think I did a pretty good job to sum up my entire Anthropocene project. Overall, the quality of the photos is great but quantity is unfortunately slightly lacking. With the Estate photos being very good as a whole, it only featured mainly two areas and I could have improved by going out further to capture other buildings.

The Jung photos also look good but are both lacking in quantity and, slightly, the editing. Because some of the photos didn’t have dramatic enough blurring which I think I could have improved on significantly by taking more building photos and adding more layers to distort the images more.

These photos have been some of my best ones I’ve ever taken and I’ve enjoyed this entire project. I loved taking these photos as much as I did editing them and I hope I get the opportunity to take photos like these again.

Stephanie Jung:

My Work:

Jung’s Work:

Very similar themes here and I think mine are just as good as hers, although you can definitely tell who made what as Jung’s pictures have a much stronger blur and probably involved a different camera technique. Some of mine don’t have a lot of visual blurring and I made my ones from the same single photo. Something else is that Jung’s photos have better views of cities and streets and mine are single objects where not much is going on nearby. I wish I had ventured more into town to take pictures of the streets along with the many more buildings. I also wish that when I was editing mine, I had one of Jung’s photos open so I could quickly compare them for the best accuracy. All together these photos aren’t actually that bad, but compared to Stephanie’s ones they are quite weak.

Robert Clayton:

My Work:

Clayton’s Work:

I don’t think, compared to Robert, that my pictures are that bad. I think they might even be better on a scale of colours and sharpness. When I said I was going to mimic Clayton’s work I instantly knew I was going to go down to Le Marais and take pictures of the tall buildings and they turned out just how I expected them to. Nothing I don’t think I could have improved on in these photos, but I should have gone to other areas to take pictures of different buildings. That would have most likely improved the variation and made the photos more interesting.

I took a handful of some of the best photos from my Anthropocene photoshoot and edited them. I did all sorts of edits to these photos to make them look more interesting and better and I like the finished products.

Stephanie Jung:

I edited some of my photos to mimic Stephanie Jung’s editing style. I took one image and lowered the opacity, then I duplicated the layer multiple times and moved each one slightly to make the distorted effect. Each edited photo will be compared to the original.

Method used:

Results:

Kaleidoscope:

I decided to play with the mirroring function on Photoshop and made a weird but interesting amalgamation of a single photo, I think they look pretty cool.

Method Used:

Results:

Black and White:

I turned some of the photos black and white and they look pretty nice.

Random Edits:

As the title implies, I was editing these images with no exact plan in my head and I was just making things up, and some of these actually turned out alright.

Dumps:

I went to the dump at La Collette and took pictures of the big metal bins filled with all kinds of rubbish. Along with the huge mountains of rubbish that have been there for years now.

I like the bin shots as they look very full and crowded, showing us that we produce and throw away too many things. And the mountains show us where it goes, it just gets dumped here because we don’t know what to do with it. I like the weather seen in the background in some of these too, the clouds are very dark and sad which I’d like to think reflect the feelings of the world currently because of what we are doing to it.

Seawalls:

I visited a few places near the sea that had seawalls preventing the water from going any further into the land.

Once again, very happy with these shots as they show mankind intercepting with the ocean. Especially so with the pictures that include the Waterfront as that area is on top of reclaimed land and landfill. I like that the photos also show the side perspectives, showing the seawalls stretch all the way out.

Estates:

I went to Le Marais and other areas nearby to take pictures of some of the buildings that people live in. Some of these turned out great. These photos are also my Robert Clayton photoshoot.

VERY proud of these images, I enjoyed taking these images and knew they were going to look great in my blog post, I love the perspectives of some of these, from vertical shots down a street between adjacent buildings to wide angle views showing houses in the foreground and tall buildings in the background standing high. I think these relate to Anthropocene very well as, for example, the pictures involving the small patch of grass in the middle of the surrounding man-made environment, I think it can show nature sort of being trapped and compressed by us with no way out. Another example could be the pictures with the tall building and the lamp post in the frame, it could be showing us how long we have been damaging the planet as the lamp post looks kind of old and classic and the building is more new. Indicating we have been around for quite a long time.