Who – These photographs will focus on storm damage of the environment. Its effects on people will be shows through homes as opposed to showcasing people.
What – I would like to photograph immediate damage such as fallen over trees and missing roofs but also how they are being worked on and fixed such as scaffolding and machinery.
When – These photos will be taken when the weathers not so great and ideally bits of rain. This will be reflective of the storm and the negativity caused by its damage.
Where – There will be a mixture of woodlands and housing estates to showcase a range of effects.
Why – To document the storm which impacted peoples homes, educations, jobs etc. It was a major event which months later is still causing problems.
How – These images will be landscape from a distance. I would like to try exposure bracketing for HDR on some which will require a tripod. I will take some without also where a tripod wouldn’t be usable or realistic. In terms of photoshop experimentation, I would like to try and layout a newspaper of sorts.
These are all images of immediate damage from the news. In addition the JEP has created many articles and covers surrounding the topic which I would like to take inspiration from for some image presentation. I would like to experiment with placing an image in a newspaper article or similar at some point.
Photoshoot 1
For this first photoshoot I took photographs of fallen trees since I will be focussing on houses in a second one. I visited St. Catherine’s woods since many tress had fallen or been recently chopped down for safety. I changed the images into black and white and adjusted the contrasts, highlights, shadows etc. I photographed individual trees and logs mostly instead of landscapes which I didn’t realise until selecting images.
Final Image
I believe that these this one turned out the best. There is greater contrast and the photograph shows a landscape instead of just a single tree like the others.
The New Topographics represented a radical shift by redefining the subject of landscape photography as the built (as opposed to the natural) environment. As environmentalism took hold of the public conscience in the 1970s, The old landscape photography from people like Ansel Adams, which where heroic and displaced the power of nature, where rejected in favour of how human activity connects with the natural world, rather than separating it. This means the truth of the natural world is captured, which making people understand the cruel impacts they are having on the world. 10 photographers pioneered this new way of landscape photography, and first displayed there photos in a small exhibition, in upstate NY, called new Topographics.
The Images they took showed the juxtaposition between humans and nature, and how we are constantly colliding with the natural world. They remind the viewers of the larger issue with our destruction towards the environment, as the heroic images of the natural landscape before often hid the truth. The celebration of nature continues to exist and photographer still try to capture the beauty of untouched nature. It is necessary for the causes of conservation.
Many people believed new topologies was the opposite of romanticism (anti-romanticism). Instead of trying to find the beauty in nature, by going to national parks for example, photographers of this exhibition tried to capture the by-products of Americas post war industrial expansion. Where the rise of urban sprawl and the reliance on cars are becoming a large worry.
the 10 photographers where Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel. They are tying to move away from a celebration of nature to a critique of humanity’s desire for expansion.
Robert Adams Mobile Homes, Jefferson County, Colorado, 1973 George Eastman House Collections.
The image above is a very famous image from the new topographies. It has a very deadpan look, with nothing inherently interesting about it, due to its strait centre framing and blank lighting. Adams also had a very pessimistic tone towards this humans impact on the natural environment, trying to make the square and uniform mobile homes ugly in comparison to the smooth edged mountain top in the background. The harsh sun light reflecting off the mobile homes, with the dark and sinister background of a natural landscape, creates an obvious conflict between humans and nature. Many photos had basic composition, simple aesthetics and no beatification involved.
New topographics presents the American west being a landscape full of human developments, unlike how photographers of the pasted tried to present it as an untouched, beautiful piece of land.
When you think of “landscape photography,” what comes to mind?
Whatever pictures we typically imagining, they likely look different from the photographs in the 1975 exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape.
Organised at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, the show featured ten photographers: Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel, Jr.
Anti Romanticism
The common theme throughout the exhibition was to examine the American landscape in a new way. Instead of focusing on pristine or exceptional scenery found at national parks, they focused their cameras on the byproducts of postwar suburban expansion: freeways, gas stations, industrial parks, and tract homes. They furthermore rendered these banal subjects with a style that suggested cool detachment. The opposite of the Romantic sublime Western landscape of the nineteenth century, or its twentieth-century photographic counterpart that can be seen in the work of Ansel Adams.
New Topographics represented a radical shift by redefining the subject of landscape photography as the built (as opposed to the natural) environment. The photographs were all images of non-idealised landscapes, a mundane American vernacular—sprawling repetitive suburban areas, highways, built environments, suburban sprawl, industrial structures, and the mundane aspects of daily life, that were taking place in the American landscape of the post- War 2
Neutral Style
New Topographics captured this man made landscape with a sense of objectivity and an almost scientific detachment.
In the exhibition’s catalog, curator William Jenkins described the photographs as
“neutral” and “reduced to an essentially topographic state, conveying substantial amounts of visual information but eschewing entirely the aspects of beauty, emotion, and opinion.”
“The New Topographic” photographers embraced a minimalistic and formalistic aesthetic, often employing straightforward compositions, deadpan perspectives, stark geometries, and a focus on the inherent qualities of the subject matter. Their images emphasized the formal aspects of photography, such as sharp focus, lighting, and clarity, which contrasted with the romanticized and subjective styles of the past.
Reactions
While visiting the exhibition, people voiced a range of reactions.
“I don’t like them—they’re dull and flat. There’s no people, no involvement, nothing.”
“At first it’s stark nothing, but then you look at it, and it’s just about the way things are.”
“I don’t like to think there are ugly streets in America, but when it’s shown to you—without beautification—maybe it tells you how much more we need here.”
Preserved within these comments are the expectations these visitors held about the American. The sublime and idyllic landscapes they had come to know from photographers like Ansel Adams, were suddenly being overshadowed with a more truthful landscape.
Social Critique
What was both novel and challenging about New Topographics was not only the photographs’ content, but how they made viewers feel. By foregrounding, rather than erasing human presence, the photographs placed people into a stance of responsibility towards the landscape’s future—a position that resonated with ecology, the branch of environmental thought that was gaining traction in the 1970s.
Working in square format, Joe Deal photographed new homes and construction sites in Albuquerque, New Mexico from the steep foothills of nearby mountains. Eliminating the horizon from his pictures, he filled each square frame with a dense patchwork of surfaces: driveways, newly cut roads, empty lots, and expanses of brush yet to be tamed. The effect was that the terrain appeared compressed into flatness, encouraging viewers to study the photographs as if looking at topographical maps. Their eyes suspended in a state of scanning, viewers could read the landscape as bearing traces of human decision-making. Moments of too-perfect symmetry in the patterns of rocks and bushes expose the landscaping as unnatural. Traces of ongoing development in the form of construction sites are juxtaposed with piles of refuse and empty lots that suggest the wastefulness of abandoned projects. By framing the land in this way, Deal enabled his viewers to consider the cost of rapid growth in the fragile desert.
A closer look – Robert Adams
Robert Adams is one of the most important photographers of the post–World War II West. His images of the developing metropolitan sprawl define suburbanization in Colorado during the late 1960s and 1970s.
His concerned focus on the logged-over areas in the mountains and the bulldozed fields and ponds on the plains present the natural sacrifices made to the consumer culture of tract homes, housing developments, and shopping malls.
The photos capture the sense of peace and harmony that the beauty of nature can instill in us – “the silence of light,” as he calls it. But they also highlight our silent complicity in the destruction of that beauty by consumerism, industrialisation, and lack of environmental stewardship.
He captures the wonder and fragility of the American landscape. It’s inherent beauty juxtaposed with human’s impact on it.
In the photo Newly Occupied Tract Houses, Colorado Springs, 1968, Adams’ use of near/far is a powerful tool. With the nearness of the new excavation, the new scarring of the earth, contrasting with the sublime mountains beyond.
Adams does not intend to encourage judgements but suggest an uneasy coexistence. Photographed in the harsh light of the American West, the classical simplicity of the images illustrates Adams’s visual sense of fairness. Mountains and suburbs are treated with equal gravity and respect.
(Frame for a Tract House, Colorado Springs, 1969)
In other photographs houses become like fossilised dinosaur skeletons, their graves marked by ironic street names such as Darwin Pl. or multiply across the landscape, breeding like some genetically identical sequence.
In the photo ‘Mobile Homes’, Adams splits the Colorado landscape. On the top, we see the organic mountainscape, reminiscent of the sublime depiction of landscapes that we saw from people like Ansel Adams. In the foreground, this is contrasted with the geometric, sharp edges of the man-made mobile homes in the foreground that are highlighted with the harsh sunlight.
The organic edge of the background, contrasting with the angular edges of the foreground, creates and obvious conflict between man and nature.
The photograph makes a comment that the Colorado landscape isn’t the pristine wilderness that Ansel Adams captured, but it is now an interaction between human and nature due to urban sprawl .
The organic mountain-scape continues to frame Adams’s photo ‘Pikes Peak, Colorado’ (below). Here the artificial lights of the petrol station emerge from the mountain as if they are now permanently fused together.
The hazy, organic contour of the distant mountain ranges in Adams’ photos, appears more durable than the newly constructed neighborhood.
The sign blares out the name “Frontier”, exaggerating the division between man and wilderness.
Within these photos we see no or very few habitants. Isolated places and isolated people people living in a barren landscape being colonised and inhabited without much thought for the beauty or the destruction of the landscape.
For my first photoshoot I am planning on focusing on overpopulation. Taking inspiration from photos like this…
To be able to achieve something like this I’m going to go to fort regent where I can get a good look the part of town specifically where the roads are busier. I think taking these photos at around 6pm would be the best idea as that it the time that most people finish work meaning the roads will be at its busiest.
photoshoot 2
For my second photoshoot I am planning g on using plastic bags like Naomi White with bright lights behind theme to create similar effects like this…
For these all I’m going to have to do is collect some plastic bags preferably coloured and have them in front of this white background with a cool toned light in front to make the bags stand out more and it tends to make them look more sheer.
Photoshoot 3
For this photoshoot I would like to do it inspired by Barry Rosenthal who could take objects either the same item like food wrappers or items of the same colour like in the picture in the middle.
In order to achieve this I’m going to have to start collecting plastic similar to which Barry Rosenthal uses and in the studio have a piece of black card then start organising the plastic to create the sharp shape for the square which he uses in his images.
The New Topographic photographers, including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, and Stephen Shore, documented built and natural landscapes in America, often capturing the tension between natural scenery and the mundane structures of post-war America. the 1975 exhibition New Topographics signaled a radical shift away from traditional depictions of landscape. Pictures of transcendent natural vistas gave way to unromanticised views of stark industrial landscapes, suburban sprawl, and everyday scenes not usually given a second glance.
topographic photography:
New Topographies
Topographic Photographers
Robert Adams:
Biography :
Robert Adams, born May 8, 1937, is an American photographer who has focused on the changing landscape of the American West. His work first came to prominence in the mid 1970s through his book The New West in 1974 and his participation in the exhibition New Topographies, Photographs of a Man Altered Landscape in 1975.
why was he famous?
Robert Adams is an American photographer best known for his images of the American West. Offering solemn meditations on the landscapes of California, Colorado, and Oregon, Adams’s black-and-white photos document the changes wrought by humans upon nature.
Why did Robert Adams get into photography?
When Adams returned to Colorado to begin what he anticipated would be a career in teaching, he was dismayed by the changes he saw in the landscape. He bought a 35-mm camera, taught himself the fundamentals of photography, and began making pictures infused with a love for the geography of his home state.
Robert Adams most famous image:
Robert Adams images:
Robert Adams
Lewis Baltz
Biography:
Lewis Baltz was born in Newport Beach, California, he studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, and received an MFA from the Claremont Graduate School in 1971. He worked as a freelance photographer in California and taught photography at various institutions, including the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, Riverside and Santa Cruz, Yale, the Ecole National Supergenre des Beaux Arts, Paris, and the Art Academy of Helsinki. His work has been included in major exhibitions, including New Topographic at the George Eastman House in 1975 and Mirrors and Windows at the Museum of Modern Art in 1978. Baltz, who received National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1973 and 1977 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1977, has produced many projects on commission, among them The Nation’s Capital in Photographs for the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Near Reno for the Nevada State Arts Commission. He has been based in Europe since the mid1980s and travels extensively.
what made Lewis Baltz famous?
He was an important figure in the New Topographics movement of the late 1970s. His best known work was monochrome photography of suburban landscapes and industrial parks which highlighted his commentary of void within the “American Dream”.
what made Lewis Baltz start photography?
Like his contemporaries Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, and Bernd and Hilla Becher, Baltz focused his camera on the unassuming green spaces and architecture of tract housing, office parking lots, and industrial parks.
Lewis Baltz photography:
New Topographic photoshoot
Best Images:
Edits:
Evaluation :
For all of my edits I have used photoshop and Lightroom, I began by choosing some of my best images in Lightroom and manipulating them by changing the highlights, saturation, blacks/whites, brightness, and a few more things, I then saved that version of the image before changing the image to black and white and then resaving it as a new copy.
Best edit:
I would say this is one of my best edits as it has a range of different shades and structures which really make it stand out, the mix of colours within the greyscale makes this photo appealing to the eye, it is a very sharp and snappy image which has areas of pure darkness contrasted with areas of lighter shades which creates a really eye catching, unique effect. This image is a dead pan image which means its very centre lined and straight which is what the new topographic follows. The image is very clear and has a clear range and variety of different shapes within the image.
Within the image there are different generations of architecture, the buildings on the far left are new modern buildings which had been recently built, Then the image in the centre left side of the image was built years ago which makes the image stand out even more as there are three generations of buildings within one image, this shows the industrial side of the image.
Photo comparison :
Lewis Baltz ImageMy Image
In my image I have followed the way in which the new topographic photographers create images by making landscape images of buildings surrounded by the natural elements of the world, As seen in the comparing images they are very similar and both use a wide variation of greyscale and shades throughout the images, with the darker areas drawing your eyes and following out to the lighter areas of the images, both images have a lot of contrast within the shades and both have a variety of shapes and structures within.
New Topographics was 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.
The photos I have highlighted green are the images I have chosen to edit, because they represent Romanticism and the sublime the best, by using different elements of nature. They also have the best lighting and are the most dramatic images. The images highlighted in other colours are the images I have chosen to use for my HDR.
I edited these images in the same way, by increasing the exposure, contrast, shadows, whites, vibrancy and saturation, while decreasing the highlights and the blacks. I did this, so the images would have better lighting, because they originally had poor lighting. This also made the image brighter and the colours brighter.
I took this image at Harve De Pas at around 4pm on the beach. The photo is off into the distance and captures the rocks, sand, sea and the green mountain/fields in the distance. This image shows how a large amount of land is all still nature and has not been urbanised yet.
This is how the final edited images came out. They show the nature closer up and far in the distance. This portrays the beauty of nature well and relates to Romanticism, because it is beautiful, admired and has been kept and not urbanised yet, which was Romanticists goals. This also relates to Ansel Adams work.
I edited this image by increasing the contrast, whites, shadows, vibrancy and saturation, while decreasing the exposure, blacks and highlights, so that the image would be brighter and the colours more vibrant.
This image was also taken at Harve De Pas beach and shows the nature up close and in the distance. It also relates to Romanticism, because it shows the beauty and peacefulness of the nature and the sea. However, it also links to the Sublime, because I had people in the photo, so that the comparison between the size of humans and the sea and rocks around could be seen. This highlights how big the sea is compared to humans, who are much smaller. The clouds also look ‘heavenly’ in this photo, so that symbolises the religious parts of Romanticism and how they believed nature was religious and sacred. This also relates to Ansel Adams work.
The final edited image came out like this, of the sea, clouds, sand and rocks.
I edited this image by increasing the contrast, whites, shadows and vibrancy, while decreasing the exposure, blacks and highlights, so that this image would be brighter and the green of the leaves would ‘pop’ more.
This image was taken in St Brelade near Corbiere in a little forest walk way.
I chose to have a person in this image, so that it would relate to the Sublime. The over grown bushes and trees are much larger and more powerful than the small human in the photo, which relates to the Sublime and how nature is strong and powerful and humans are nothing compared. This also relates to Ansel Adams work.
The final edited image came out like this.
I edited this picture by increasing the contrast, exposure, whites, shadows, vibrancy and saturation, while decreasing the highlights and the blacks, so that this photo would have ,more of a contrast and more of a tonal range as the trees create shade closer up and there is a break in the trees further down, where there is sun light.
This image was taken in St. Catherine’s woods down near the lake.
This is the final edited image.
This image relates to the Sublime, because it presents how big the trees are, and how they tower over the much smaller people in this photo. It also supports romanticism, because the nature is beautiful, and the people are there to be in awe of it. The sun light coming through the break in the trees in the distance of the photo also looks ‘heavenly,’ which is important to Romanticism, because Romanticists believed that nature was sacred, because it was put it from God. This also relates to Ansel Adams work.
I edited this image by increasing the contrast, shadows, whites and vibrancy, while decreasing the blacks and highlights, so that the clouds looked more grey and storm like, and the create contrast in the shades in the grass.
This image was taken at the sand dunes in St ounes.
This photo represents the sublime, because it shows how tiny a human is compared to a vast land of nature. It also shows how there is a storm brewing and how the clouds look ‘angry’ in a way. This supports the Sublime, because the Sublime supports nature as being stronger, bigger and more powerful than humans. This also relates to Ansel Adams work.
I edited these three images by increasing the exposure, contrast, shadows, whites, vibrancy and saturation, while decreasing the blacks and highlights, so that the images would have better lighting, because the original images had poor lighting as they were taken in the dark using the flash.
These images were taken in St Andrews park in St Lawrence.
These are the final edited images.
These images relate to Romanticism, because they present lots of different elements of nature, such as trees and flowers. They present the beauty of them all and the vastness of the nature, as there is nature all through into the distance, with no urbanisation, as it is still a grass field. This also relates to Ansel Adams work.
HDR Merge
Next, I wanted to make a HDR, but I had no photos with bracketed exposure. However, I did take some images at school with bracketed exposure with Mr Toft, but they were lost. Instead, I decided to use these images to make a HDR:
I used Lightroom to create my HDR, but I also did attempt with photoshop, but ultimately decided I prefer using Lightroom.
I chose three images from above with different exposures to create my HDR. Then, I merged them together and chose the type of exposure I wanted.
Here is the HDR in Lightroom with the overlay, while I decided my exposure.
Here is my final HDR image, after using Lightroom to create it.
Then, I experimented with other photos I had taken using exposure bracketing.
For this first photo I used the masking tool to darken the sky without changing the rest of the photo too much. I turned the whole photo to black and white in the style of Lewis Baltz and the new topographic movement. This helped the photo hugely as it added tone to an otherwise flat photo (created by the mix of dull yellows in the original).
Edit Two
Edit two, this has a different subject point. Instead of being a landscape styled image this uses the pillar as a central point to the photo. To emphasis this I used a high contrast black and white adjustment, this helped keep the deadpan tone in the photo. By changing it to black and white removes the yellow tones that are otherwise distracting and makes the photo seem a bit average, where as the black and white gets people to look at the detail they normally miss.
Edit Three
I wanted to use this shot as my third edit because it is a great shot showing the new topographic inspiration. While it is busier than most deadpan photos I used the black and white to reduce some of the atmospheric noise created by the different colours and textures of the sea and surrounding landscape.
Edit Four
I loved this shot and thought it had a lot of potential so to help make it a better photo I levelled the building slightly using the crop tool and then changed the photo to black and white, looking at the tone and making sure the contrast wasn’t too high as I wanted the grey scale to be visible. Often in the New Topographic style and Lewis Baltz in particular grey scale is used as most of the photos are black and white but with low contrast to keep the deadpan look, this is often linked to Ansel Adam’s work as many believe the new topographics style is inspired by his work.
Edit Five
This was my final edit for this project so far as I liked how the water appeared almost still due to the moment the photo was taken the wave had just started to break at the edges. The black and white enhanced the photo, increasing the contrast helped the detail become visible as before the brick work wasn’t as noticeable nor did it really add to the photo and after the editing the photo seems much more joined and has a more deadpan look to the overall image.
This photoshoot is my response to the New Topographics area of photography. To take these photos we used the natural sunlight and adjusted the aperture and shutter speed to make sure the photos were good quality and well exposed. These photographs are mainly focusing on one area, Harve Des Pas beach, and the old and new buildings on and around it. This was a good photoshoot place as the beach itself has man made modifications on it showing how the urban world is and has been taking over. The buildings that surround it gave me a good opportunity to take photos of the beach alone, the buildings and both at once.
The photos below are some of my best ones edited into black and white:
