What

Landscapes:

Where

• St Clements
• St Saviour
• St Helier

When

Around midday in order to have good lighting.

Why

I want to take pictures of buildings and construction sites as it links into the theme of Anthropocene as it shows how human activities have impacted the environment.

I want to photograph roads as it also links to the theme, but also because I like the look of having tree tunnels separated by roads. I think it emphasises how because of something man-made (roads), the environment around us has been altered and changed/separated.

This is my virtual gallery that I’ve created using the photographs I’ve captured across the anthropocene project.

The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time.

Anthropocene refers to a period of time during which human activities have impacted the environment enough to create a distinct geological change. These changes include;

My mood board shows things like buildings, cars, or other man made objects and how they have impacted earth in perhaps a negative way. As my photoshoots will take place in Jersey, I think taking pictures of buildings in town, or even just cars in crowded car parks will fit the theme of Anthropocene.

Mind-map

Typology is a system of putting things into groups according to how they are similar. A typology in photography, refers to one or more photographs that have a high level of consistency. This can be in the form of subjects, environments, etc.

Bernd and Hilla Becher are known best for their work with typologies. These consisted of black and white photographs of an industrial structure.

Case study: Bernd and Hilla Becher

The German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher travelled to large mines and steel mills, and systematically photographed the major structures, such as the winding towers that haul coal and iron ore to the surface and the blast furnaces that transform the ore into metal.

A lot of work goes into composing these collections of photographs. It would be very time consuming to find these similar/same structures. However, I imagine it is also quite time consuming to crop and adjust the images in order to create the sense of uniformity and for them to appear identical in order to produce the typology.

By choosing to make the photographs black and white, it maintains the focus on the subject. If there were external factors, (i.e. background settings, contrasting colours, different times of day) then that would make the photos appear different and eliminate the sense of uniformity within the typology.

Contact sheet

This is a screenshot from a photoshoot we did in school, focussing on urban landscapes that we have previously discussed in school. This shows my editing process of the photographs I took from Havre des pas to La Collette.

Final images

Robert Adams is an American photographer who focusses his work on the changing landscapes of the American West. His work started to get more attention in the 1970s after the publishing of his book ‘The New West’ and the exhibition ‘New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape’ that he participated in in 1975.

Much like Ansel Adams, his work consists of American West landscape photographs. However, Ansel Adams only captured natural landscapes. Robert Adams combines the natural and the man-made aspects when creating photographs. This contrasts with Ansel Adams work as his work gives off the impression of a certain ignorance to the modern age.

Realistically, nowadays there is lots more man-made objects created by humans when adapting and modifying the world in order to make it inhabitable. Ansel Adams chooses to ignore this, which is why he is able to capture beautiful photographs of natural landscapes. However, Robert Adams work is arguably more impactful as he found a way to incorporate both aspects while still creating influential images.

Image analysis

I think this photograph has been very carefully composed and captured. It appears very dark and moody. Robert Adams has highlighted the subject (the assumed woman in the house) by manipulating the light and creating a silhouette. The darkness of the house enhances the light coming from the back of the house to highlight the subject. The combination of the single subject and the lighting creates a theme of loneliness.

There are a number of straight lines in the photograph. However, the shape of the pathway is more curved and it being one of the brightest aspects of the image draws attention to it leading up to the house. Suggesting it may have some importance. The repetition of the straight lines creates a sense of uniformity and contrasts the unique, soft shape of the subject. Allowing it to stand out, and appear more mysterious.

The straight lines create quite rigid square or rectangular shapes. This frames the subject and may imply the idea of a cage, thus making the subject a prisoner. Which adds to the suggested theme of loneliness.

Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The word topography comes from the greek word “topo,” which means place, and “graphia,” which means to write or to record. Which in photography, would mean taking pictures of places i.e. landscapes.

New topographics refers to a term coined by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers (such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar banal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape. New topographic photographs would consist of man-altered landscapes which include both natural and man-made aspects.

Here are some examples:

As you can see, most of these photographs were created by Robert Adams. This is because he was partially responsible for the creation of new topographics.

What was the new topographics a reaction to?

It reflects how the world has become increasingly suburbanised and the collaboration of both man-made and natural aspects in a landscape. New topographics is considered a reaction to the tyranny of idealized landscape photography that elevated the natural and elemental.

Mood-board

Exposure bracketing is the process of creating photographs with different exposure settings. Usually, you take 2 more photographs (therefore, a minimum of 3 photographs need to be taken). One is slightly underexposed, and another is slightly overexposed.

Exposure bracketing – Automatically

Here are the steps you need to take to do exposure bracketing automatically:

Exposure bracketing – Manually

Here are the steps you need to take to do exposure bracketing manually:

Contact sheet

Here are some pictures of the contact sheet of my second photoshoot I have done, of the sand dunes. This shows the process of me selecting and discarding images and rating them on a scale of green being some of my best images, and red being some of the more poor images that maybe aren’t as good.

Final images

These weren’t very exciting landscapes and as it was dark when I was photographing it, the colours also weren’t very bright. So, I decided to make my images black and white. I also think this makes the images appear more dramatic and have more of an impact than if they had dull colours.

Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer. He was best known for his black and white photos of the American West.

In the beginning of his journey as a photographer, he took photos as a visual diary of his experience. This links to David Campany and how he says that photographs can capture special moments people want to keep forever, or that they could simply be to document something.

On April 10th 1927, Ansel Adams went to the diving board in Yosemite National Park to photograph the Half Dome. He had a vision of what he wanted his photo to look like, he felt inspired. Firstly, he used a yellow filter when taking the photograph. A yellow filter is commonly used in black and white film to absorb all light except yellow. However, the photograph was not what he visualised, there was no excitement in the photo. So, he took out his red filter and exposed the camera for 5 seconds. A red filter which transmits only red light and absorbs all other colours. This matched his vision.

The photograph he took with the yellow filter is on the left. The photograph with the red filter is on the right. The red filtered image is much more well exposed and makes the photograph look a lot more dramatic and allows the focus to just be on the rock.

“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”

Ansel Adams

This is one of Ansel Adams’ most famous quotes. I think this is important as it tells photographers that you should have to work to create a photograph. When you ‘take’ a photo, you don’t really create it. It communicates the lack of creativity. I think it kind of implies how you are taking something that isn’t your own. When you ‘make’ a photograph, it implies that creative decisions where made in order to produce that photo and that you made it your own.

The Zone System

The Zone System was created by Fred Archer, a portrait photographer, and Ansel Adams. It is a scale consisting of 11 tone values which allows a photographer to achieve optimal film exposure and ensure that the photographs are properly exposed each and every time. The darkest tone value on the scale is Zone 0 (Pure Black) and the lightest is Zone 10 (Pure White). Adams and Archer first introduced their method at the Art Centre School of Design in Pasadena, California. They said that it would help photographers to analyse the brightness levels of the landscape and manage the way those brightness levels would be rendered in the final printing.

Below is a black and white photograph labelled with the zones corresponding to the tone values in the picture.

The Zone System has helped so many photographers develop their work. Ansel’s photographic assistant, Alan Ross, brought the Zone System back into modern day. He said that the Zone System allows you to “achieve more accurate, consistent and planned results”. Ross was a photographer best known for his black and white photos of the American West. Below is one of his photographs which he has used the Zone System to achieve optimal film exposure and create a well-exposed image.

Group f/64

Group f/64 was a group of photographers founded in 1932 who had similar photographic styles. The group consisted of; Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, John Paul Edwards, Preston Holder, Consuelo Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, Willard Van Dyke, Brett Weston, and Edward Weston. Their photographs had a sharp focus and were carefully framed.

I think the name is original and quite creative as f/64 is an f-stop which represents the smallest aperture possible when using large-format view cameras at that time. F/64 allows as much of the picture as possible to be in sharp focus as it has the greatest depth of field. It allows the photograph to be really good quality and be really clear with lots of definition. This is a very important element in the group members’ work.