Ansel Adams was born in 1902, and during the ‘Great Quake’ his nose was broke. He never had this fixed so in school, he didn’t quite fit in and was very shy. This led to him moving schools many times until his father decided to have him tutored outside of school. During this time, he liked to go for walks around the forest and sand dunes around his house. At 14 years old, he got his first camera, a Kodak Box Brownie, and at this age he also visited Yosemite Park for the first time. He admired the landscape views that he saw.
In 1927 he was named the Sierra Club’s official trip photographer which became vital to his success as a photographer as his photographs and writings were published in the Sierra Club Bulletin. He was also heavily involved politically, suggesting improvements of other parks and wildlife areas. This lead to him being wildly known as an artist as well as representative of Yosemite National Park.
With this authority, he was able to win the fight of ensuring that Kings Canyon would be saved and not turned into a dam. To make this possible, he had to make a portfolio of images of Kings Canyon which was 17 inches tall, 13 inches wide and almost 2 inches thick.
Photographer Ansel Adams is known for his black and white landscape photographs of the American West. While taking his images, he would use visualisation to discover how he wanted the final photograph to look if he wasn’t impressed with the original look of it. He used different filters to take a photo to darken the dark colours and brighten the lighter ones. This added more depth and drama to the original landscape.
He created the Zonal System to use while taking photographs to ensure that all different tones were included in the image. The Zone system assigns numbers from 0 – 10 to different brightness values, with 0 representing black, 5 middle grey, and 10 pure white.
John Constable was born on June 11th 1776 East Bergholt Suffolk and died March 31st 1837. He was a major figure in English Landscape paintings in the early 19th century. He is best known for his paintings of the English countryside.
Who was John Constable influenced by ?
John Constable was influenced by Dutch artists such as Jacob van Ruisdael and Jacob van Ruisdael. Constables work was highly original because of the realism and vitality of his paintings.
John Constables Paintings
Image Analysis
The colour in this painting is very dark and dramatic and looks like the painting is representing a storm and how small the person in the painting actually is compared to the storm and the severity of the storm. The size of the person in the painting shows just how destructive and terrifying storms can be. The lines in this painting suggests how dramatic John Constable tried to make the painting as the dark black lines have been painted in all directions which make the painting look very chaotic. There is no pattern in this painting which doesn’t make it very aesthetic to look at and makes you not know where to look at the painting because the directions of the lines are all over the place and not in any specific pattern. The layout of this painting is focused more in the middle of the painting and a bit towards the outside but is mainly in the middle where the storm is painted.
The idea behind this painting ?
The idea behind this painting is linked to the sublime as the storm can be so beautiful and mesmerising but also terrifying and can turn and destroy anything so quickly. The thought behind the painting to make the man so small also suggests how big the storm can get and how much more powerful the storm is compared to the man in the painting.
For this photoshoot, I decided to visit beaches such as Greve De Lecq, Beauport and other beaches, this is due to the fact they have a huge amounts of space covered with rocks, beaches and dramatic skies, which is perfect for my take on ‘The Sublime’.
My favourite photos.
These photos I think perfectly signify the sublime. This is due to the fact they have bright, dramatic backgrounds which emphasize and romanticize the setting. These photos are symbolizing how insignificant man is to their surroundings and how small humans really are physically and metaphorically when it comes to earth and its landscapes. In these photos I wanted my models to stand far away from me and look like they are exploring the area. This was to symbolize humans attempting to understand how big the world really is. I wanted them to also be appreciating the setting around them but from a far distance so yo can not see their faces or any particular individual details to show we are all as insignificant as each other when it comes to the vast landscapes around us. I also wanted some photos to be in black and white as well as colour as some do not need colour to show their romanticism.
My other photos do not have people in them but still signify ‘The Sublime’ because The Sublime is associated with the extraordinary and grand, which my pictures display with the huge blue skies, bright colours and beautiful views. These photos I also think inspire a feeling of awe or fear when looking at them, this feeling of fear may come from a feeling of overwhelm when seeing the large distance the e.g. sea goes on for. This may be defined as the sublime.
For my Photoshoot I will edit my pictures in the style of Ansel Adams landscape photos. To replicate his aesthetic of dramatic tonal range I will use settings in Lightroom to do this, since Ansel Adams didn’t have the advantage of technology and having to use yellow and red glass panels I will use the Black and white mix to make these colours within in the image stand out more when converted in to Greyscale.
First Edits:
Before:
Edit settings:
Using an exposure brush I was able to high light some of the trees that I thought weren’t bright enough inside the picture. With the sky before being a nice bright blue, Once converted to grey scale I used the Black and White mix to make the sky seem darker like how Ansel Adams did in his Photos,
Final result:
Before:
Edit Settings:
Using a HDR merge, I was able to create a more artificially exposed image, although not natural looking to nature, it provided a vibrant tonal once converted to grey scale. Like in the previous image instead of darkening the sky, I thought it would contrast to much with the shadows in the foreground, instead I played around with the yellow and green to make them stand out more.
Final Result:
Before:
Edit settings:
In this image I tried to make a sharp contrast from the sky and the surroundings in the foreground. By Using large variations in exposure, contrast and highlights I was able to add more detail to the composition of the image that can said to go fairly unnoticed when not in black and white.
Final Result:
Before:
Edit settings:
Using tint settings as well as the contrast, I was able to create a more diverse difference in the shadows of the image. Using visualisation I saw the how the long path way could create an interesting depth to the image. Using Adam’s Zonal system, I was able to create a large range of tone. With darker tones being in the lower half of the image and gradually getting lighter towards the top.
Final Result:
Before:
Edit settings:
Due to the image being over exposed, I lowered it down and added some more depth by adjusting the tone with less highlights and more whites to make features on the old stone farm house pop out some more.
Final Result:
Before:
First Edits:
In this image, I edited this image to have stages on tone from top to bottom. With darker tones in the trees above I used a graduated filter to create that transitional effect of dark tones into the lighter tones of the thin branches.
Final Result:
Before:
First Edits:
With this image, I used a highlighting brush to increase the tone of the 3 trees, making a contrast from the trees in the background I completed this by altering a lot of the exposure, white and black balance and highlights.
When it comes to thinking about my overall satisfaction with my finished products, I think that I did quite well. I believe that I’m satisfied with some of my final work.
With reference to editing my photographs, I think that I was able to use my editing skills to edit my photos like Ansel’s work. I was able to show the different tones in my pictures just like Ansel did. The textured and evident clouds Ansel had in his pictures was something I really liked and focused on. In two of my pictures, it is apparent that I edited the picture so that it would peak the dark shadows.
I’d say that I was able to clearly show my understanding towards Ansel’s work and how powerfully I was able to make my pictures reflect his work. I also made sure that most of my pictures were in black and white because the period Ansel produced his pictures was a time when colored pictures were just being introduced, so all of them were black and white.
However, I admit that some of my pictures need improvement. In some of my pictures I don’t show that texture that Ansel’s work had. It was something that I didn’t realize when I was editing so I wasn’t able to focus on that and apply that technique on my pictures which is something that I will have to keep in mind in my future projects.
I experimented with Lightroom and used specifically three photos that I wanted to bracket in the specific locations.
I imported these test images taken of buildings and nature/greenery.
In the image above it is presented that the the merge went ahead and the level can be adjusted, the medium/highest level seems the best appearance when looked at the image.
The image above presents the photograph in it’s best selection and the merge which does not look to dark yet too bright. This middle selection works best with all the elements presented as the darker features of the building contrasting to the sky which contrasts in terms of the grassy areas in the centre-lower area of the photographs.
I decided to merge another photograph in a similar environment taking in the same process I did in the previous photograph. As well as choosing the medium level as it suited it the best with the different tonalities.
The image above presents the merge between the three different shadowed photographs. I believe the merge in HDR bracketing is a god option when choosing the right scale for the landscape and nature like photographs as it suits it well.
For this picture, I pressed on develop and increased vibrancy by +100 and decreased saturation by -100. Then at the top bar I pressed on an icon that looks like a paint brush that looks like this,
In this icon, I increased clarity by 16,dehaze by 55 and sharpness by 43
Image 2:
Editing process:
For this picture, I pressed on develop and increased temperature by +23 and tint by +25. Then at the top bar I pressed on a icon that looks like a paint brush and increased the dehaze by 33 and brushed the whole image making sure no spot is missed. This was all I did, in terms of editing, for this picture.
Image 3:
Editing process:
For this picture, I pressed on develop and increased vibrancy by +100 and decreased saturation by -100. Then at the top bar I pressed on an icon that looks like a paint brush and increased contrast by 23, shadows by 38,clarity by 16, dehaze by 45 and sharpness by 43. With these adjustments, I bushed the brush icon only on the clouds in the image, nothing else. This was all the editing I did in this image.
Image 4:
Editing process:
For this picture, I pressed on develop and increased vibrancy by +100 and decreased saturation by -100. Then at the top bar I pressed on a icon that looks like a paint brush and decreased the blacks by -21 and increased dehaze by 38 and then brushed the whole image, head to toe.
Image 5:
Editing process:
For this image, I pressed on develop and increased shadows by +53,texture by +42 and contrast by +5. Then I decreased exposure by -0.79. This was all I did in terms of editing.
Image 6:
Editing process:
For this image, I pressed on develop and increased vibrancy by +100 and decreased saturation by -100. Then at the top bar I pressed on an icon that looks like a paint brush and increased dehaze by 60 and only brushed the top part of the image (the sky).
I had decided to take a photoshoot of my old neighbourhood and surrounding areas that have been affected during the storm. I tried to focus on both urban and semi rural places to show all the damage the storm had created.
Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) is useful for capturing scenes with a high amount of contrast. When AEB is selected, the camera automatically takes three or more auto-bracketed shots each at a different exposure. Many digital cameras have an AEB option.
The most common method of using Auto Exposure Bracketing is to adjust the exposure to what appears best for the photo, and it will take three or more photos either side of the exposure you think is best, one slightly darker and one slightly lighter. Once combining the photos taken with different exposures, it creates a HDR photo, which is rich in detail in the parts of a photo that would be underexposed or overexposed by using the single exposure instead.
Below are examples of photos taken with Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) and merged to become High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos, allowing the details from every bracketed exposure shot to be seen:
Ansel Adams, born February 20, 1902 to April 22, 1984, was the most important American landscape photographer and environmentalist who created famous black and white photographs mostly based in the American West. He was the grandson of a wealthy timber baron and grew up in a house set amid the sand dunes of the Golden Gate. At age 4, there was an aftershock of the earthquake and fire of 1906 which threw Adams onto the ground where he sustained a bad nose break. This distinctly marked him for life. His high level of intelligence, shyness and permanently injured nose caused Adams to struggle with fitting in at school. it became clear to him later on in his life that he may have been hyperactive. As well as this, it was highly likely that he also suffered with dyslexia. he was taken out of school and tutored by his father and his aunt. His childhood of a limited amount of friends or socialising lead him to be immersed in nature where he’d been commonly found taking walks and hikes in the still-wild reaches of the Golden Gate. At about age 12, Adams became a gifted and ambitious pianist. After he received his first camera in 1916, Adams also proved to be a talented photographer. He devoted his dedication to being inspired by the forgotten and unspoiled wilderness of America’s national parks and other protected conservation areas in the West.
He was the one to found the group of photographers called Group f/64. This group consisted of people who shared the same interest in photography characterized by sharply focused and carefully framed images seen through a particularly American Western viewpoint. Group f/64 were Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, Henry Swift, John Paul Edwards, Brett Weston, Consuelo Kanaga, Alma Levenson, Sonya Noskowiak, and Preston Holder.
The Zone System
He and a man called Freud Archer developed a system of image-making called the Zone System. The Zone system assigns numbers from 0 through 10 to different brightness values, with 0 representing black, 5 middle grey, and 10 pure white. Thought they were a group, each person had their own interests/specialities that all came together to show a range of photograph from different places or things. For example, Adams’s images of Yosemite National Park, Edward Weston’s close-up, high-detail photographs of fruits and vegetables and of sand dunes, and Cunningham’s studies of calla lilies.
Ansel Adams and Romanticism
apart from the contrast of colour uses, these photos are very similar to each other. One main characteristic of romanticism is emotion, and in both photos, I can receive the emotion of calmness. the use of the two rivers represent piece and tranquillity. both images focus on one natural landscape of a mountain/hill. this can also be linked with romanticism since it tends to focus on natural things rather than manmade. in the romanticism photo, another thing that relates to this point about natural is the use of the animals. Another emotion, which contrasts with calmness, could also be a sense of fear and negativity and this could be represented with the sky. Ansel’s image looks much more dramatic in terms of an approaching storm as you can see that, in terms of his Zone System, the clouds start to approach a 3 or 4. Though the romanticism isn’t as dramatic, the weather is still a similarity. As stated before, there is an obvious contrast of colours since Ansel’s photos are all in black and white and focus mostly on the darkness/lightness of the shades whereas the romanticism photo is filled with warming tones.
Influence on others
Ansel Adams main influence has been to awaken people to the beauty of nature. Each of his photos focus on natural landscapes where it captures different aspects of the world (in this case, American west) and the beauty of them within a photograph. Ansel Adams biggest development was the Zone System, a technique for determining optimal film exposure and development, which has clearly had a huge impact of the photography world. His invention has helped many photographers with the control of image values, ensuring that light and dark values are rendered as desired and just improving their images over all.
Image Analysis
This was one of Ansel’s photos called ‘Fern Springs, Dusk’
It is clear that Ansel has only used natural daylight with no artificial as it is a natural scene where he wouldn’t have the equipment properly set up in a place like this for artificial light. The use of him using natural light clearly shows the patients he has to be able to wait for the correct moment of light to pass through the water as well as his exposure time on his box camera. Though the image is black and white, I think it stills gives off a cool tone due to the overuse of bright white. as well as this, the brightness of the water drips also closely resemble ice crystals. Adams has managed to use space well, he has zoomed close up to the natural landscape so that is leaves no empty spaces and its all filled with the natural aspects. I think Adams choice of photographing a waterfall is very effective with the theme of naturalistic landscapes as water is a very obvious natural element.
My Response -> Ansel Adams
This is one of the landscape photos that I had taken while I was in France. I liked this image because of how it matched Ansel Adams photo of the mountain and snow. I took this image in colour where the sun was hitting the top of the mountain. I edited this image on photoshop by going to adjustments and then black & white. from there, I was able to adjust the different colours with the scale. this meant that I could make some parts of the photo look darker and some look lighter
