After doing some final finishing touches, this was the end result. I am quite pleased with the end result as I feel it looks good and the reds and yellow in the photo go well and really compliment it.

Photo #2 edit

On the Left photo I slightly adjusted the saturation for the grass making it look greener and for the sky to make it slightly enhanced. The contrast, whites and shadows was also slightly increased, whilst also gradually decreasing the highlights and blacks. Basically small adjustments to enhance the photo.

On the right photo is the same photo but in Black and White as another variation.

I chose the edited colour photo as the better one, rather than the one in black and white, as I really like the colour detail and the contrast.

My take on Topographic Photography.

I started by seeing this perfect angle with these three buildings next to each other. At first they look similar, but if you look closely you can see they are all different styles with the front right building being old fashioned with the curved walls and windows and with the pointy roof chimney. The building in the back being 50/50 old and new with the old style of colours/windows and materials. But the new style with balcony’s and straight edged walls and so finally the long building to the left being fully modern with the white plane walls, mixed with black balcony gates, plus modern looking windows and straight walls and roof.

I really liked how these three different exposures looked but I felt confident with trying the B/W style on it. This worked very well with still showcasing each era of buildings but also the same contrast gives the photo the same idea of buildings.

This was the final photo after editing and the B/W added on top of it came out just as I imagined. I also love how each building is a different shape with the left building being rectangular going away from the camera. The right square-like building standing flat, face-on towards the camera and then the tall building in the background still very distant from the other two but still stands out as a main view in the photo.

The term ‘New Topographics’ was first invented by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers who made pictures that had similar banal aesthetics. Their images where mostly black and white prints of urban landscapes.

(Banal Aesthetics –  Post-industrial realism style)

New Topographics was inspired by Albert Renger Patszch and the concept of The New Objectivity. It was a reaction to the increase of urban environments and industrialisation. Many who were associated with this type of photography were inspired by man-made subjects such as parking lots, suburban housing and warehouses.

An exhibition at the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York featured photographers, such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, who showed the growing unease about how the natural landscape was being taken away by suburbanisation.

(Suburbanisation – A population shift from historic core cities or rural areas into suburbs, resulting in the formation of urban sprawl)

Here are some examples of photographer’s work that focused on New Topographics:

These are my favourite edited images from my photoshoots on The Sublime, Romanticism, New Topographics, and Havre Des Pas trip.

What was The New Typo graphics

The 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 who had a similar Banal Aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape. The photos often captured the tension between natural scenery and the mundane structures of post war America.

What Inspired the New Topographics

Many of the photographers associated with new typographics including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Nicholas Nixon and Bernd and Hiller Becher, were inspired by the man-made, selecting subject matter that was matter-of-fact.

Image Analysis

This photo separates the natural beauty of the mountain and then the trailer park below it juxtaposing the negative and the positive of the post was in America as many Americans lost their homes from the destruction of the was and couldn’t afford to stay in their houses any longer as they might of lost their families or their partners to the war. The colour in this image is in Black and white which makes the image look more dramatic and more powerful, which gives the image a dark and sombre look to it.

Industrialised building photoshoot

Edited Images

Best Images

These are two of my best images as they capture industrialisation the best. The lines and shapes in these two images make the photos look so much more interesting and different. The line of the poles in the first image is a really good focal point and the lines in the sand direct your eyes to the focal point. The colour of the sky also makes the poles stand out more as the contrast between the dark sky makes the white look more vibrant.

In the second image the building in the background has been there for many years and is quite old but in the foreground the building has only just been built and is very modern . Which contrasts between old and new. The tree in the background suggests that this place was once overflowing with nature until industrialisation took over and buildings needed to be built to accommodate for the growing population.

Edited best photos

I changed the colour into black and white and then changed the darkness of the sky to give a more dramatic and darkened contrast between the sky and the rest of the image.

I further experimented with my photos and made this image of the stairs a darker shade of blue and altered the angle of the stairs making the stair rail straighter and look more in line with the stairs.

For this image I made the image on the right a lot darker by increasing the shadows and decreasing the amount of whites on the image.

These are the camera settings I used for this photoshoot:

I also switched to the landscape setting and pressed the cloud option for the white balance. I ensured that I stuck to an ISO of 100, and had the Aperture between f/11 to f/16.

I also needed to remember to:

• Keep my foreground and background sharp
• Capture the foreground details
• Straightened my horizons
• Don’t shoot everything at eye level, use different angles
• Pick the right time of day

HDR Images.– Exposure Bracketing

HDR IMAGE 1:

HDR IMAGE 2:

I attempted 2 different exposure bracketing images. After adjusting my camera settings (using the exposure compensation dial, and turning it to -1, take a photo, turn it to 0, take a photo, and then set it to +1 and take the third photo). I then imported them into Lightroom and merged them together to create the images. I then repeated this process once again. To improve this, next time I need to take a burst of 3 photos at once instead of needing to click it 3 separate times, this is because the camera is likely to move and change position slightly within the time it takes to press the button.

Best Images+ Edits.

These are my two favourite photos I took for this photoshoot. I like the first photo because of the angle facing upwards, and how the sky is blue with the sun is shining on the metal. It is also showing the vast industrial structures, which show the great power that they generate. To improve it, next time I would like the sky to be more cloudy and grey to also replicate a more morbid and dark approach to my photos.

I also like the second image because it is demonstrating the divide between the urban landscape and the natural landscape. They are facing each other and this photo captures how beautiful the natural mountain is compared to the rusty and dirty machinery and how it possibly ruins the landscape by showing the replacement of natural earth, to urbanised cars, buildings and machinery. I also like the deadpan approach in this image and how is is showing the straightforward angle which gives a ‘raw’ image feeling. To improve next time I should attempt to time the photograph as to when there is no cars driving past, I also would have taken it at a more straight on and direct angle and be aware of my camera slightly slanting to one side.

My Favourite Edited Images.

For this Havre Des Pas photoshoot, I decided to capture both natural and urbanised landscapes. I began with the beach an its natural beauty, these photos capture the sea, sand and rocks and demonstrate the natural landscapes of Jersey. My photos then progress from the original landscapes that exists before it is acted upon by human culture and into an urbanised landscape and how the action of man has such a huge consequence of the development on the territory, as a whole. I particularly like photos of the machinery and how the metal glistens in the sun, I think small effects like this create beauty even though they cause such destruction. Throughout Jersey the growth of local industries including agriculture,
tourism, and financial services has helped grow the population of the Island. However, Urban areas are major contributors to climate change, they are responsible for 71 to 76 per cent of CO2 emissions from global final energy use. I decided to focus on highlighting the beauty and amazing modernisation of technology, but also highlighting how much money, climate change, sacrifices and landscape loss goes into the industrialisation of Jersey.

Black and White Images.

I also decided to create some black and white images from this photoshoot. This is to create a slightly more meaningful and morbid affect to the images when photographing Jersey’s landscapes and how they have been replaced with machinery. This ties into New Topographics as many of the photographers took black and white prints.

I also created virtual galleries to display my favourite photos in both black and white and colour, however, to improve I would like my photos to be a slightly better quality, this will help me to see them displayed better.

These were the three images I came up with I wanted to try and do it so it would tell a story with the first being all natural before us humans started to change things and start to ruin the environment so I used words like nature, pond, trees and plants etc… I think it came out really well as it does appear very natural.

The second image I was trying to get in-between so where it had start to be built on however it wasn’t bad yet. So I kept the roads from the original photo I removed the flats on the right with AI then I started to change some of the ca to make them look older. I made sure to still have lots of greenery and plants to show that its not been too built up yet.

However for the last one I got rid of all the roads added a flooded area. I also kept the flats however I did change them slightly to make them appear more worn down. I even added more buildings in the background to emphasise how built up it now is. There is still some plants in the lastly image however they look kind of dead and lifeless they are this vivid green like other others are.

Exhibition Link

The Land & Us — ArtHouse Jersey

New Topographics is a style of landscape photography that focuses on the clash between the human world and the natural world.

It originated in the 1970s in America. Rather than focusing their cameras at the beautiful national parks of America such as Yosemite Valley, new topographic photographers instead took photos of the newly made, post-war, bleak and baron American suburbs. Photographers such as Nicholas Nixon, Frank Gohlke and Robert Adams were the pioneers of early new topographics (who were all featured in the 1975 exhibition “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape”).

Robert Adams

Robert Adams was born in the 1930s in the city of New Jersey, but later moved to a town in the middle of the deserts in Colorado. This is where Adams would begin to take new topographic photos to show the wasteland towns hidden deep in America and how mankind has vandalised the beautiful, vast open landscapes of America.

Here is a good example of how Robert Adams expresses this distaste for the American town. In the photo, we see two boxy mobile homes on an empty street with empty driveways. The mobile homes block the view of a mountain in the background, and we can only see the top of it. This could be to demonstrate the point that these mobile homes that were flooding America at this time were useless and that they ruined the landscape. It could also imply Adams’ distaste for 1960s American suburb architecture. The homes of the time were very boxy and flat, and had no detail or personality, rather they appeared dull and lifeless.

Here is another example of Robert Adams’ work. In this photo, we can see in the foreground that there are, once again, boxy mobile homes. Although there are clear signs of life; there are cars in driveways and plants scattered outside homes, the image still appears lifeless. This is because of three things. Firstly, the image is in black and white and has no colour, which strips the image of any positive emotion. Secondly, the background is mostly empty and takes up half of the shot. Thirdly, the mobile homes in the foreground all look the same and appear very repetitive. The combination of all 3 implies a deeper message. The new wave of American suburbia is ugly.

Here is the final photograph by Robert Adams I want to show you. In this photo, we can see a distant large suburb that is bordered by a small road, and in the distance we see a tall mountain range reaching high into the clouds. It is important to note that the sky takes up the majority of the shot. Additionally, the mountains are clearly visible in this photo, rather than being hidden or covered by a boxy house or mobile home. Adams took this photo to show that, although these mass produced suburbs are very big, the natural world such as the mountains and the sky still tower over us. In his words, “Though the mountains are no longer wild, they still dwarf us and thereby give us the courage to look at our mistakes”. This is another reason why new topographics photos like to clash the natural and man-made world, to show that there is a more beautiful world outside of these repetitive and ugly towns, and that we are doing an injustice to the environment around us by creating these massive capitalist monstrosities.

Frank Gohlke

Frank Gohlke was born in the 40s in Texas. He later moved to Connecticut to study at Yale university, where he would meet two renowned photographers, Walker Evans and Paul Caponigro, who he would study the art of landscape photography with. In later years, he began to take new topographics photos in the south and west of America.

Here are a few examples of the photographs he took during this time. There are a few common themes in each of these photos. The most obvious one is emptiness. In these photos, there are no people. This is because Gohlke doesn’t want to portray these places as being urban and social, rather he wants the viewer to focus on the objects in the photos and what they truly demonstrate. Another theme is a focus on capitalism. In all of these photos, some form of capitalism is presented; cars, tourism, company logos on the smallest and the largest buildings. These photos are meant to be a demonstration of human greed. Additionally, in each of these photos at least a small piece of nature is present, however the nature is never the focus of the photo, instead it is hidden from the viewer in the reflection of windows or in the distant background. This is to show that mankind has become very detached from the natural world, and we have resorted to mass producing cities to confine ourselves from it. And the main drive for doing this has been capitalism. Businesses want their name as widespread as possible, seen by everyone, and a small area with millions of people, such as Los Angeles, is the perfect place to do that. Some of the money these businesses made was also then given to the city, which was then invested into building the city more and more. Frank Gohlke took these photos to show how detached people are from the reality of the natural world, and how mankind has completely neglected and converted the fight for survival in the wild into the fight for capital.

Summary

These new topographics works come from somewhere deep in the photographers heart. It is likely that they have watched the rapid growth of post-war American society as they grew up and how it has tainted and blinded the people into believing a false normal. These photographers understand that the natural world is much more powerful than the environments they have grown up in, and have demonstrated this emotion simply by displaying this new world in a single frame.

The main focus of new topographics is to demonstrate how mankind has altered the landscape to be perfect for us, but also to show how the development of this new world has blinded us from the beauty of the natural world.

Introduction

New topographics was a term created to describe pictures that have a similar formal aesthetic, usually black and white prints of the urban landscape. Many of the photographers associated with new topographics, including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz and Bernd and Hiller Becher, were inspired by man-made objects. Other inspiration came from the streets, warehouses, city centres, industrial sites and suburban housing, which were all depicted with a beautiful stark atmosphere. These photographers chose to take photos of landscapes which lack a feeling of life and comfort which provided a new perspective of the American landscape.

What was the New Topographics a reaction to?

These unique, stark images were created due to a reflection of the increasingly suburbanised world around them. This is because the photographers involved in New Topographic photography felt strong emotions towards the changing landscapes, and wanted to share this with the world. New topographics can also be a reaction to the tyranny of idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and basic landscapes to become urbanised. One last reason could be due to the American war.

America post-war struggled with..

• Inflation and labour unrest.
• The baby boom and suburbia.
• Isolation and splitting of the family unit, pharmaceuticals and mental health problems
• Vast distances, road networks and mobility

Artist research- Robert Adams

Robert Adams is a famous American photographer who focuses his photography around the changing landscapes, which are developing from natural to man-made. Adams uses black and white photography to express his love for landscapes and nature. Through these his images, he explores how urban and industrial growth have changed and he documents changes wrought by humans upon nature.

Adams was born in New Jersey in 1937, and raised in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado. He moved to Southern California in 1956 to attend the University of Redlands. After earning a Ph.D. in English Literature, he returned to Colorado to begin what he anticipated would be a career in teaching. At age twenty-five, as a college English teacher with summers off, he started doing photography in his free time and soon learned to love it. He began by taking pictures in 1964 of nature and architecture, and learned photographic techniques from the professional photographer Myron Wood. Since the 1970s, more than twenty-five books of Adams’s photographs have been published, as well as two collections of his essays, and he became a full-time working photographer.

‘The notable thing, it seems to me, about great pictures is that everything fits. There is nothing extraneous. There is nothing too much, too little, and everything within that frame relates. Nothing is isolated. The reason that becomes so moving is that the artist finally says that the form that he or she has found in that frame is analogous to form in life. The coherence within that frame points to a wider coherence in life as a whole.’ –Robert Adams