To crop an image is to remove or adjust the outside edges of an image, usually a photo, to improve framing or composition, draw a viewer’s eye to the subject, or change the size or aspect ratio. In other words, photo cropping is the act of improving an image by removing unnecessary parts. It may seem illogical, but the most interesting and eye-catching photos rarely have their subject smack-bang in the middle of the image. In fact, it’s a fundamental rule of photography that your primary subject shouldn’t be in the centre.
The rule of thirds
The rule of thirds divides all images into three equal horizontal and vertical sections (or nine individual boxes) separated by grid lines. Normally, you want to place the points of interest near the spots where these grid lines intersect.
You need to take in to consideration:
The discovery of background elements you didn’t realize were there
Issues with the framing or composition
To better focus on your subject
Mood Board
This is a mood board of cropping. As you can see the pictures usually have a main focus, this is all down to cropping, where you narrow down the image to focus on one subject.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, born August 22, 1908 Chanteloup, France, and died August 3, 2004, Céreste, was a French photographer whose humane, spontaneous photographs helped establish photojournalism as an art form.
His photographs impart spontaneous instances with meaning, mystery, and humour in terms of precise visual organization, and his work, although tremendously difficult to imitate, has influenced many other photographers. His photographs may be summed up through a phrase of his own: “the decisive moment,” the magical instant when the world falls into apparent order and meaning, and may be apprehended by a gifted photographer.
The Decisive Moment
Henri Cartier-Bresson is rightfully recognized as a master of the craft. He was one of the first true street photographers and artfully captured everyday life through the lens. But he also coined a term:
The “Decisive Moment”.
With it he described the exact instance when a unique event is captured by the photographer. When something that may never happen again is frozen in the frame. He said it best himself, in an iconic quote:
“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.”
Beyond “The Decisive Moment”, the title of his 1952 landmark monograph and philosophical theory on photographing as the artless art, Cartier-Bresson was a zealous geometrician and strictly adhered to only composing within the camera and never in the darkroom. His passion for visual harmony, humanity and the impermanence of reality focused by a classically trained eye allowed for the creation of an unrivalled body of historic imagery.
How did Henri Cartier become famous?
He was drafted into the film and photo unit of the French army in 1940 and was taken prisoner by the Germans that same year. After three years of imprisonment he escaped and began working for the French underground. In 1943 he made series of portraits of artists, including Matisse, Bonnard, and Braque. Through 1944 and 1945, Cartier-Bresson photographed the occupation of France and its liberation. In 1947 he co-founded the Magnum agency with David Seymour, and George Rodger. He spent the next twenty years traveling around the world, then received the Overseas Press Club Award four times; the ‘American Society of Magazine Photographers award’ in 1953; and the ‘Prix de la Société Française de Photographie’ in 1959
A few Iconic Artworks By Henri Cartier Bresson
Rue Mouffetard, Paris
Seville, Spain
Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare
What did Henri Cartier-Bresson discover?
In 1931, Cartier-Bresson discovered the hand-held Leica camera and was practically consumed by the new art form.
He was known for using only one camera, a Leica rangefinder, and one lens, a 50mm, for almost all of his life’s work. The Leica continued to be the go to device for photographers after World War II, especially for New York City photographers such as Roy De Carava, Lisette Model, William Klein, and Helen Levitt. Robert Frank, who is best known for his book The Americans (1959) and was the leading influence on street photographers of the succeeding generation, documented culture throughout the United States and in Europe.
For my virtual gallery’s, I used the website ArtStep. In the website, you can create walls or rooms to show off your pictures. For each topic, I picked my favourite images.
The German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher (1931–2007; 1934–2015) changed the course of late twentieth-century photography. Working as a rare artist couple, they focused on a single subject: the disappearing industrial architecture of Western Europe and North America that fuelled the modern era. They began collaborating together in 1959 after meeting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1957. Bernd originally studied painting and then typography, whereas Hilla had trained as a commercial photographer. After two years collaborating together, they married.
What did they photograph?
Industrial structures including water towers, coal bunkers, gas tanks and factories. Their work had a documentary style as their images were always taken in black and white. Their photographs never included people.
They exhibited their work in sets or typologies, grouping of several photographs of the same type of structure. The are well known for presenting their images in grid formations.
What were their key works?
Their first photobook Anonymous Sculptures was published in 1970 and is their most well-known body of work. The title is a nod to Marcel Duchamp’s readymades and indicates that the Becher’s referred to industrial buildings as found objects.
The book consisted of an encyclopaedic inventory of industrial structures including kilns, blast furnaces and gas-holders categorised into sections (the pot, the oven, the chimney, the winch, the pump, and the laboratory.
These are some of my images from my photoshoot. I colour labelled them to know which ones were good, and which ones weren’t as good.
These are my final edited images.
I took this picture at a beach, this is because my artist reference also did similar. I like how the colours are vibrant, how the sun reflects off the wrapper, and how the sand looks golden as if it was glorifying littering.
In this image, I like how the colour of the chewing gum packet, nearly matches the colour of the sky. I also like how the shadow enters the picture, as if it was coming in to the whole photo. This gives off a negative, depressing view on littering.
I like the different colours in this picture. I also like the simple but bold statement this photo gives off.
In all my photos, I tried to be as dramatic as possible as Andy Hughes also was in his pictures. I like these images best as I think they look best to represent Andy Hughes work. I liked working with the same style he used as it is different and fun, but also shows a deep meaning in to how our world is affected through human input.
For all my images, I put a black and white filter on. This was a recurring theme throughout all my photos as in typologies, you’ll notice that it is a well known fact that most typology images are black and white. I believe it gives a much better effect for the photo, and will most definitely draw in peoples eyes. For pictures 1&2, I found an abandoned looking green house. The reason it looked abandoned was due to the storm. I like these 2 images as the contrast of fencing, grass and the shed, all relate to each other, almost as if it could tell a story within itself. For pictures 3&4, I took a picture of the green house from a different angle, getting the whole building in it. Personally, they are my two favourites out of all my typologies images. This is as they show typologies well. For picture 5, I liked how there was quite a few things included(motorbike, fencing, trees, storage etc), but also how the black and white filter keeps it all the same. Pictures 6&7 were taken at a petrol station. I like that the photo gives off a rustic feel. Picture 8 is also one of my favourites. I like how the two benches are alone, but are also the most focused on part of the image. I like how it’s simple but effective. For my final image, I took a picture of scaffolding around a house. I liked this as it gives an industrial look.
To get my images, I went on a walk and I took these landscape pictures around school campus. I wanted to get buildings in my pictures as much as possible to show the real urban/industrial setting and show the real change in time and years. All these buildings have been built through the economic growth.
These are a chunk of the images I took on a walk around the school of urban/industrial views. I edited these final images on Lightroom to make sure they are clear and in focus. On Lightroom, I colour coded them and gave them a star rating as to what I think of my images.
Final Images
These are the best photos showing urban/industrial sights in my opinion.
I like how this photo shows a building as well as a car. This shows the economic growth through the years as you can see how much more developed cars have become.
I like how this photo shows a building as well as a worker. I like how the worker can represent the working industry.
This is one of my favourite as it shows the view of town and all the crowded streets.
I also love this image as the contrast of having lots of buildings in the back with a tree in the front. I like how I’m showing that pollution is killing our world and I tried showing that through the use of a tree with no leaf’s.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an evolving technology that tries to simulate human intelligence using machines. AI encompasses various subfields, including machine learning and deep learning, which allow systems to learn and adapt in novel ways from training data. It has vast applications across multiple industries, such as healthcare, finance, and transportation. While AI offers significant advancements. it also raises ethical, privacy, and employment concerns.
How it AI used to generate images and visual content using new technology?
An AI image generator is a sophisticated tool that uses artificial intelligence algorithms to create images from textual descriptions or prompts. These generators analyse the input text and generate corresponding visual representations, ranging from realistic photographs to abstract artworks. By controlling the power of machine learning and neural networks, these systems can produce high-quality images that mimic the style and content described in the text.
Mood board of AI images
All these images are somewhat related and edited to AI. I used this for inspiration as I think it represents AI properly and there are some images I believe I can replacer.
These are past, present, and future images I played around with on photoshop.
Final Images
Past
In this picture, I used an image of a beach and changed the filter to ‘sepia’. This gives it the effect of being an old picture. I also used AI to add in soldiers and an army plane to make it look like it was taken during the war.
Present
In this image, I took a picture over town. I used AI to add builders, a bird and a plane. I did this for my present image as it is present that we still use planes and real people for work. The bird represents that the world isn’t fully ruined as we still have wildlife.
Future
I used this picture of a lake. I got AI to add litter and pollution. I used this to represent the future as I believe this is what it’ll look like due to global warming and technological advancements, humans wont be needed.
Andy Hughes was born in 1966 in Castleford, Yorkshire, he developed an interest in the seascape and landscape after learning to surf whilst at Art College in Wales. He obtained a First Class Degree in Fine Art at Cardiff University and an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, London.
Andy Hughes’ photographic work explores the littoral zone and the politics of waste. In 2013 he travelled to Alaska, invited as part of an international team of artists and scientists to work on the project Gyre: The Plastic Ocean. This project was a world first and unique project that explored the integration of science and art to document and interpret the issue of plastic and human waste in the marine and coastal environment. He was the first Artist in Residence at Tate Gallery St. Ives and short-listed reserve residency artist for the Arts Council England Antarctic Fellowship. His previous work explores human scale waste products such as plastic and other discarded items washed ashore across various beaches in the USA and Europe. For over two decades he has worked consistently on this theme. In 2013 he travelled to Alaska, invited as part of an international team of artists and scientists [Pam Longobardi, Mark Dion, Alexis Rockman, Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Carl Safina] to work on the project GYRE: The Plastic Ocean.
Some of Andy Hughes work:
I like how he represents Anthropocene through the use of plastic on a beach. People littering is a world wide problem, 12 million tonnes of plastic finds its way into the ocean every single year. 9.5 million tonnes of this enters the ocean from the land with 1.75 tonnes being chucked into the sea directly from the fishing a shipping industry. There are approximately 51 trillion microscopic pieces of plastic, weighing 269,000 tons.
Romanticism placed particular emphasis on emotion, horror, awe, terror and apprehension. Emotion and feeling were central not only to the creation of the work, but also in how it should be read. The following characteristic attitudes of Romanticism are the following: a deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature; a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect; a turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of human personality and its moods and mental potentialities
What Are the Characteristics of Romanticism?
Emotion and passion.
The critique of progress.
A return to the past.
An awe of nature.
The idealization of women.
The purity of childhood.
The search for subjective truth.
The celebration of the individual
Mood Board
Romanticism of Rural life/outcome
Nineteenth century urban society romanticized rural life. “The frontier farmer was idealized, and it was held to be true that life in the west fostered independence and self-reliance.” It was believed that life on the frontier consisted of a classless society in which people were judged not by their family name or position, but on their character, ability, and talent. The belief in “the nobility of country life” and the “purity of lives lived so close to the soil” contributed to the acceptance of the placing out movement by nineteenth century society. The west was viewed as the perfect place for the “urban poor to begin over and reach their full potential.” Brace actively pursued the placing out of New York City children in homes in rural America as a result of this idealization of rural life. He viewed the city as “an evil place full of temptations and unsavory associates.” Brace believed that children were easily corrupted by the immorality and wickedness they witnessed on the city streets and that this exposure doomed them to a life of crime and misery.
The country, on the other hand, represented a healthy, wholesome environment filled with opportunities for prosperity. Brace held a “startling idealized portrait of country folk.” He believed the tables of rural America overflowed with an abundance of nutritious food which rural families would be happy to share with hungry children. Brace believed that rural America was the “cradle of wholesome values.” He enthusiastically believed that rural families could be trusted to embrace the disadvantaged children of poor and educate them to become successful, productive members of society. The determination of Brace and the CAS to remove children from New York City, transport them across the country, and place them in rural homes, was a direct result of the romanticized view of rural life held by the majority of people living in nineteenth century society.
