My first artist : Ansel Adams Mood board

Overview on Ansel Adams Photography

Ansel Adams is a landscape photographer and took most of his images of the environment, usually trees and flowers or picturesque landscapes from the top of mountains and rivers or taking images of these magnificent landscapes looking up from the ground to show the sheer size and enormity of these mountains. His photos are all in black and white and his images are very heavily shadowed which emphasizes the key features of the photos such as the image with the river because the mountain in the background is so heavily shadowed and the river has the sun beams reflecting on it, the river stands out very clearly against the dark shadows making it clearer to see the leading lines of the image.

Why I chose Ansel Adams?

I chose Ansel Adams as my first artist because he photographs the beauty of nature and life. His work looks at high contrast black and white images of the American west specifically showcasing the natural beauty of trees. His tree photographs almost give a new life to the images and show the trees in a different light making them look much more appealing than how they looked before they were edited to be high resolution black and white images.

Ansel Adams Photography

Ansel Adams photography is of lots of living nature such as trees and flowers and the beauty of life which contrasts against my theme for my book which was about one of my grandparents life. I chose to combine these two themes because I wanted to get images of the nature and plants and put them with pictures of my grandads life to show how precious his life was and to celebrate his life. The bright white in this image of a flower shows the purity and preciousness of the flower and almost shows how special and sacred the flower is. The white balance gives the image cold lighting which makes it come across as a very dramatic and striking image and it makes it look like there is a deeper meaning behind the image.

What inspired Ansel Adams ?

Ansel Adams was strongly influenced by Alfred Stieglitz whom he met in 1933 at an American Place gallery in New York City. He was given his first camera at 14 during his first visit to Yosemite national park where he discovered his love for nature and how to show the purity of inanimate objects.

This is Alfred Stieglitz image and it shows the comparison with Ansel Adams image and how similar the lighting and the shadow is with each of the images. The shadows in both images clearly define the features of what is being photographed and show clearly the amount of detail in the image. These two photos are similar as they are both black and white images and they are taken with a very narrow depth of field and they are both very detailed images.

Photoshoot plan

I’m going to take images of flowers up close and then trees from far away. In photoshop I’m going to change the images to black and white and increase the whites in the images to make them appear very clean, pure and positive compared to the dark blacks in the images which makes them come across as very dull and negative.

Artist Study 2 : Mark Power Mood Board

Overview on Mark Powers photography

Mark Power is a documentary photographer and he captures unexpected things on camera and unusual places that might have a significant meaning behind them. His photography also captures people in the images which documents certain events that might of happened or one of his images was a group of people getting out their car at a petrol station, his photography documents unexpected memories and places. His photos are very bright and they have quite a lot of colour in them making them eye catching and interesting to look at, however some of his images are in black and white to give an effect on the time it was taken or what was happening in the time of the photograph, which gives some of the images a dramatic emphasis on what is going on in them.

What kind of photography does Mark Power do?

He made Urban Landscapes and was a documentary photographer. His technical methods changed and he began to use colour film and a large format camera.

What inspired Mark Power?

As a child Mark Power discovered his fathers home made enlarger in the family attic, consisting of an upturned flowerpot, a domestic lightbulb and a simple camera lens. It was at this moment where Mark Forbes discovered his love for photography. However after he went to art college to study life drawing and painting. He was also influenced by documentary photographers such as Walker Evans.

Images like this influenced Mark Power because Walker Evans takes images in unexpected moments but they are almost set up to look a certain way this shows the similarities between Mark Power and Walker Evans style of photography.

Mark Power Image Analysis

The lighting in this image is very bright and vibrant and there is a lot of white in this image which suggests that this is a happy place or memory for someone. The tone of this photo is very light but there is a contrast between the light where there is the shadow at the bottom of the image. The meaning of this image is to show a Landscape image that had significance to Mark Power.

What kind of photos did Mark Power take for his projects?

Mark Power took documentary style images and also took landscape photography. In some of his images he does have a person in the image, which may show significance like that it was an important place for the person in the image.

What was Mark Power’s photography for?

Mark Powers Photography looked at key Landscapes in his book the “The Shipping Forecast” he takes images of points along the coast that had radio signal and wanted to visit all the coasts and get pictures from all of the points.

What were the other opinions on Mark Powers photography?

The Magnum speaks on The Shipping Forecast by Mark Power and says that “nothing now holds the place that the Shipping Forecast did throughout the 20th century”, suggesting that it was a timeless piece of work in the 20th century and that no other artist has lived up to Mark Powers project on the the different radio stations across Europe. “It’s a beautiful, poetic language,” Power says. Now 63, the Magnum photographer first remembers listening to the forecast growing up on a housing estate in Leicester. The soundscapes had a lasting impact on Power which influenced him to create this project and take images that he was fascinated by. The British Journal of Photography says “The book doesn’t take us any closer to an understanding of the forecast, or any sea area. But it is nostalgic and unashamedly romantic” this suggests that the meaning behind the images is deeper than what the image portrays.