For my first photoshoot I have taken a variety of shots at Val De La Mare, a reservoir. Specifically I looked at the dam, a huge manmade structure constructed to hold all the water the reservoir collects. I wanted to use this location as it is a great way of showing people how agriculture has impacted the land. Before the dam was built it would have been untouched land but as the population increased the need for water did so the dam was built to hold 938 megalitres of water. This is a huge volume of water with 1 megalitre being 10,000 litres and the dam itself is equally as impressive and vast, almost incomprehensible as you get closer to it.
Contact Sheet
For this shoot I took a variety of shots from different angles and building different compositions. I used red for photos I didn’t think were suitable for the editing style I will use, green for the photos I do like and yellow for photos I can use if they would be suitable more so than the ones already highlighted in green.
Best Shots Before Editing
I picked these as my best shots due to the composition I have used a wide angle lens at roughly 15mm to take these shots so it has been really effective in expressing the vastness of the dam and the impact it has on the overall land around it.
Editing
I will now go onto edit a mixture of these shots and my other photoshoots. I will go onto make a series of photos I edit, for my first editing experiments I will look into how to highlight the unnatural parts in the natural world.
Edward Burtynsky is a photographer who is incredibly influential in the photography world especially when it comes to the topics of Anthropocene. Regarded as ‘one of the worlds most accomplished contemporary photographers’ having many world wide exhibitions looking at topics like the human impact on the world displaying the work across 80 major museums all over the world.
About Edward Burtynsky
Born in 1955 in Ontario, he then went onto receive a BAA in photography/media studies in 1982 at the Toronto Metropolitan University in 1982. Since then he has received an Alumni Achievement award and an honorary doctorate and even now he sits on the board of directors for The Image Centre. Along side this he has won many awards for his work, including a TED prize in 2015 and the Governors General’s awards in visual and media arts. He became intrigued by the concept of photography when he was 11 and his father brought a dark room and cameras and provided Burtynsky with two rolls of film. While learning black and white photography he learnt how to create lack and white prints. As he continued to progress he began selling photos for 50 cents a photo when he was photography events, eventually this led to him being able to travel and photograph ‘pristine landscapes’ the landscapes of his childhood, quickly developing his passion for landscape photography, as seen in his later career. After he left University in 1982, he quickly became the ever developing photographer we know now. Many of his early works were inspired by the likes of Ansel Adam’s landscapes, being coloured landscapes however he did go onto work for an architecture company and the Ontario hospital. This was before he founded Toronto Image works in 1985, which was not only a work space for himself but a place it doubled as a dark room rental facility, custom photo laboratory and training centre for up and coming media and digital development. This was a significant step in his career as now he could choose to produce his own work and take photos without jobs depending on it.
Edward Burtunsky’s link to Anthropocene
Burtynsky chose to start to move away from typical landscapes and became involved with the Anthropocene project. He also produced a Manufactured Landscapes collection containing 60 images. This was first step in becoming the influential landscape, or damage on landscape photographer he is today. His work has been shown many times, all over the world show casing just how as humans we have impacted the planet around us. Taking a different approach to many other Anthropocene photographers he has captured the things we don’t normally see but operate on a huge scale or just how easily we have taken away from nature without many truly realising as well as often adding in reminders of the greatness of untouched natured.
Photo Analysis
This photo is bright, colourful and bold. It has an element of enjoyment when looing at it that many photos based around the environment don’t, by drawing people in that way something based on a hugely damaging topic don’t tend to. The photo itself is of Lithium mines in Chile, with the ever growing production of battery’s for cars and as such as the world converts to electric to escape the damage and limited supply of fossil fuels the damage that comes with electric power will increase. The photo above truly shows how much damage we are causing on the world while thinking we are fixing the previous damage we have caused. From a high angle the photo is taken from a high angle, Burtynsky tends to use helicopters so this does actually contradict the idea of raising awareness of the Anthropocene development however we have to consider the amount of awareness these photos have brought to the topic ask the question is it worth it for the awareness it brings. The photo has been composed very well making use of the high angle to produce a large depth of field, emphasising the vastness of of the oil field in comparison to the mountain range. Textures appear scattered in the photo from the smooth foreground to the rugged mountain scape, again hinting at the human impact and how we are wearing the world around us down.
Guy Catling is a modern designer/photographer who works with a mixture of photos, often old war photos. His style is unique and comes from a unique inspiration source. He graduated as a graphic designer in 2014 in the UK continuing to go into a career in graphic design; he often also calls himself an artist for much of the work he does is considered art rather than photography as such. He is best know for his works of adding patterns and colour onto old war photos but he continues to use collage as a main medium, although unlike the classic sense of cutting and sticking magazines together he tends to use photoshop and inspiration drawn from graveyards. Believing collage can ‘create beautiful visual contrasts and can also give old material new life.’ has led Catling down many paths of sharing his work and ideas quickly leading to inspiring many other creators out there, from photographers to artists.
Why does Catling work in this style?
Catling uses patterned fabrics to collage onto black and white photographs. Consequently, adding these vibrant textures softens their dull moods and raises them to a more uplifting tone. The same way flowers add happiness, colour and love to a field full of grief that is grave yards.
He is best known for the floral work that he has done, which was inspired by him visiting a graveyard and experiencing the juxtaposition between life and death. After this, Catling responded by adding patterned fabrics over the top of dull images to give them a new lease of life. Catling focuses on giving photographs an entire new feeling. By using collage and graphic design, Catling creates bright contrasting compositions that have been inspired from what surrounds him. The photo above is a great example of Catling’s style, using photos shop to add sharp lines and colourful patterns completely contrasting the softer, older photos. This gives old photos a new lease of life creating stark contrast between. This photo splits into sections of dark, high contrast foreground, colourful, bright mountain in the middle and softer, brown toned background with the patterned area reflecting this being a brown rather than a bright colour. I love how the photo has been broken up and made into something completely new, merging new technology of photoshop with ancient landscape and collaging as a technique which is between the two on a timeline, pulling all the elements of the photo together while keeping the photo relevant to modern time. However through this Catling hasn’t taken away from the stunning completely natural landscape. Catling’s style as reflected in the photo above shows the beauty and vastness of nature but also how easily we, as humans, can alter it.
The proposed current geological epoch, in which humans are the primary cause of permanent planetary change.
The word “Anthropocene” was coined by Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen about a decade ago. One day Crutzen, who shared a Nobel Prize for discovering the effects of ozone-depleting compounds, was sitting at a scientific conference. The conference chairman kept referring to the Holocene, the epoch that began at the end of the last ice age, 11,500 years ago, and that—officially, at least-continues to this day.
The word ‘Anthropocene’ itself breaks down as ‘Anthropo’ meaning human and ‘cene’ beginning a new period of time, together meaning the period of time we are currently in following on from the Holocene, the term was coined in the 1980s but didn’t become commonly used till the early 2000s. The Anthropocene is the time period in which we look at just how greatly we, as humans, have impacted and damaged the natural environment around us for out benefit alone. To name a few impacts we have had on the planet, decrease in biodiversity, pollution increase, climate change, misuse of natural resources and many many more. Anthropocene began in the 1950s however wasn’t labelled as starting till 2016 when radioactive waste, we had caused, were found in soil samples. It was labelled as starting in the 1950s as there was a dramatic increase in human impact that year and we truly started to see the impact it was leaving/creating on the planet we so dearly love. As we started to introduce the invention of plastic into everyday life the problem quickly spiralled out of control, leaving us in the idea that life was improving thanks to the new everyday use of the material plastic. However very quickly we became careless with the quick growing population, thanks to the benefits of plastic from being able to store food better, more hygienically to the use of different medical treatments to the consumption rates at which we were using plastic for everything we do sky rocketing. As humans we have become the single most impactful species on the world around us in a very short space of time, we effect everything from the mass amounts of plastic pollution we create to the water and it’s life we threaten from melting the ice caps with climate change to killing biodiversity with eutrophication.
Consumerism and the impact of it on the Anthropocene
Consumerism is the over consumption of goods. From making a huge amount of pollution, it makes us as people always want more because there is always a better or newer thing. This is ever present throughout our lives from fast fashion to trends in every part of our lives. A simple statistic that explains this is that is that the average American spends $1,497 a month on non essential items. This doesn’t change that much throughout the world where most places that have a stable economy follow suit with similar statistics. This is hugely highlighted in the fast fashion industry, this has a huge impact on the world as the trends increase as social media becomes more advanced this means the ‘need’ for more fast fashion. Fast fashion in itself has doubled the clothing produced while the use time of a garment has massively decreased. Not only is the fast fashion industry incredibly harmful and unethical using extremely poor pay and working conditions to make huge profits. The impact it has on the world is irreversible. With all the flights and marine transport fast fashion still comes out on top for creation of CO2 which in turn speeds up climate change at a rapid pace. It truly is the second largest polluter when it comes to different industries, the only one outweighing it is the use of fossil fuels which is a huge part of everything in our lives. Over consumption isn’t limited to just the fashion industry we do it in everything we own, from buying the new water bottle everyone is talking about when our old one is perfectly fine to needing multiple of something just because it comes in a different design for example. In general over consumption hasn’t only caused mass amounts of non revisable damage to our planet but it has made us as the human species incredibly unaware of how much we have and enjoy the smaller things in life.
The Holocene
The Holocene is the only state in which we know humanity can thrive with anything like the 7.5 billion humans being supported today. It began at the last major glacial epoch, which was the ice age 11,700 years ago now. It had another name which meant the age of man, this being Anthropogene, similar to the newly coined Anthropocene, however this can be misleading as in fact humans existed before the ice age but around this time was when we started to see the recorded history and now it’s history from ice age to modern day in the development of humans and the impact they left in their wake. The climate changes during the Holocene were more stable than the Ice Age period, however there were still changes for example when a large ice sheets collapsed the oceans oscillations dramatically changed thought he time period. However the Holocene was considered to be an an atypical interglacial that has not experienced significant cooling over its course ‘an atypical interglacial that has not experienced significant cooling over its course’. Was this a warning for the drastic increase in sea temperature increase in modern day, the Anthropocene? We have now left the Holocene and are in the transition to the Anthropocene. This new geological epoch was named to acknowledge human influence on the state of the planet.
Causes of Anthropocene
Urbanisation –
The increase in the proportion of people living in towns and cities.
Urbanisation has a huge impact on the planet around us from improving things for humans with more housing etc which improves our lives directly with providing us safe, good places to live. However this comes at great cost to the planet as not only does it mean the ever increasing population will likely continue to increase, but it also then creates more and more over crowded, polluted city space but this then takes more and more of the natural land. So not only does this decrease the natural Earth that is best left untouched but it continues to decrease the area of our planet that can still be saved. As we increase in the urban scape the pollution will continue to increase and just add to the un reversible damage we have already done to this planet.
Agriculture –
Agriculture, an essential part of daily life that people hesitate to think about or consider how greatly we cannot exist without it. Simply over half of the worlds inhabitable land is used in agriculture and 26% of all the worlds greenhouse emissions comes from food and the production of it. However not only do we not consider how much we reliable on the agriculture industry, we forget how much it impacts the planet. Unlike other industries agriculture impacts many areas of the eco system from polluting the water with the run off of fertilisers causing eutrophication, to the general increase on green house gas emissions from the rearing and looking after animals to the transporting of out of season produce across the world to more scientific developments as in looking at genetic modification on certain foods aiming to produce bigger and better qualities while being quicker and less laborious. However we cannot blame this on the sole providers of our food as in fact a lot of time we are to blame. The rise of the human population, rising as quickly as it is means we will be needing even more food in less time so again the rates of damage agriculture is enforcing on the planet will be doubled before we know it.
Industrialisation –
This is the development of industries in a country or region on a wide scale. As the population continues to increase the rate of industrialisation has also increased, taking up more natural land than ever to the demand for supplies being on the rise. This actually dates back further than some of the bigger issues now as while a lot of hand powered agriculture machinery was used and a lot less of the things we have now like private jets and commercial oil rigs. This became significant in the industrial revolution which was 1790-1840 and not only began significant new development in the world around us and increase in pollution but also caused a depletion of natural sources. This also started a large and incredibly harmful trend of using fossil fuels that we still use to this day but will one day not too far away be depleted leaving only nasty after effects.
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.
New topographic was a term created by William Jenkins in 1975, used to describe the style of American photographers. Including photographers like Robert Williams and Lewis Baltz who all had a similar style of light contrast black and white images of landscapes with new industrial work and areas that were just nature before being built up.
What was it a reaction to?
New topographics was a reaction to the irony of idolising the beautiful landscapes, like in Ansel Adam’s work in comparison to what we see every day and how in fact everything was becoming a lot more industrial and torn away from just nature. It was a contrast to landscape photography as it was known reflecting how quickly the world was urbanising around us without us even noticing.
What is a new topographic?
To be basic it is a photo or a series of photos in black and white of urban areas. However there are smaller details within each shot that is important to the idea of new topographic, each one is in black and white historically as it allows for the simplicity of some of the shots to seem more impressive. Using low contrast often allows the images to feel hollow and empty linking the stunning landscapes being eaten away at by urban industrialisation to the simple photo. Most new topographic will commonly have some sort of nature in the image, whether it be a perfectly cut lawn or unruly mountain range, juxtaposing the rest of the image which has buildings and human involvement of some kind. Unlike Ansel Adam’s work which aimed to inspire and interest people with hints of romanticism, the new topographic movement strays away from being romantic and instead the shots tend to be bleak and foreboding with the future of America’s nature and how it was becoming more and more mundane and built up.
Ansel Adam’s Connection to New Topographics
“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.” This was a response to ‘the Installation view, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape, 1975, George Eastman Museum’ it describes new topographics very well. As the movement pulled away from Ansel Adam’s style of big, beautiful dramatic nature scenes with a style of romanticism people started to realise that even though, America particularly, has some stunning landscapes and breath taking views that in fact that wasn’t the reality of most of the places. It was also a clear difference to Adam’s style of differentiating nature from people where as new topographics pull both nature and human/human construction into one image. “At first it’s stark nothing, but then you look at it, and it’s just about the way things are.” New topographics showed the real America and what was the reality of what many people saw every day in comparison to Adam’s work that helped people escape and almost live in the naivety that we all appreciate nature and it’s strength just because we have seen a couple of stunning photos.
Formatting New Topographics
The photos are often filled frame, common place captures. However it always has an unfamiliar look to it as a camera can capture so much in one photo that would take the human eye and brain a few minutes to register all of the same things and even then not notice things we see everyday at all as we tend to pick up important details, bright colours, loud noises etc, but in a photo we do the same first taking in the bright colours, high contrast or unusual shapes. the difference being we also see so much more as we are only looking at one scene without any other option. This is quite interesting when looking at the style of the photos, being deadpan and removing any things lie horizon lies that would make the photo more impressive than what we would see if we looked past the scene everyday. This is why a lot of the photos use harsh lighting in the middle of the day as that’s what we seen when we walk past a scene.
Typologies
Typologies are a grouping of similar photos in a grid pattern. Often used for documentary, pattern and similar subject photography, it has a distinct look to it and is a great way to display multiple shots at once. Often used in the new topographics style as it can showcase the similar architecture and built up world around us.
Hilla and Bernd Becher
Hilla and Bernd Becher were a husband and wife photography team who made the typology style what it is today. They took photos of industrial architecture but specifically industrial architecture that was disappearing over time, forgotten about. The duo first started working together in 1959 after meeting in 1957 in Kunstakademie Düsseldorf the academy of fine arts in Germany. Bernd always trained in typology and fine art and Hilla a commercial photographer, combining their efforts created the pieces of their work we know now. From travelling around Europe and North America we now have images of the the long forgotten water towers and many other what would have been essential parts of daily life no one else noticed until put in a typology by the Becher’s. This really started the mainstream use of typologies all over the world, continuing to develop over time.
HDR stands for high dynamic range, which place in between the lightest and darkest contrasting parts of a photo. A HDR image is a final product composed of multiple shots that have used exposure bracketing to create a final product that pulls out the best colours in all of the images combined. You create a HDR image by using exposure bracketing. (as explained below)
When are HDR techniques used?
HDR is used when photographers are struggling to capture all the details and colours of a scene correctly so they use exposure bracketing, taking multiple photos using different exposure settings and then using technology to merge all the photos together making a HDR image. This creates the best result of all the shots pulled together, leaving a well saturated, balanced contrasting image.
Exposure Bracketing
Exposure bracketing is where the photographer will take multiple shots of the exact same scene altering the settings each time to get different exposures of the same image. This can also be done on the camera using settings so the camera will do it automatically. This means the photographer ether has many photos to pick from in the editing process or they can create a HDR image merge which will combine all the shots and create a best fit image for all of them.
How to Create a HDR image on Lightroom
Gather all shots in one row and selected them all using the shortcut, clicking on the first image then pressing CTRL and clicking the last image.
Once all the shots are selected you right click and select photo merge.
This option will come up before the images are fully merged allowing you to pick the amount of deghost for the final image.
It will allow you to see what and where the deghost effects as in this photo especially in each shot the waves were slightly different so if I changed through each deghost amount setting it would show the different details that changed. Once the deghost amount is selected press conform and then the image will create a HDR version.
Edit One
In this one you can see how it has increased the blue colour for the sea and brought back the clouds from being washed out but kept the rocks light enough to be seen and the details and tonal changes within them to be seen. Therefore creating an image much more similar to what I had seen when taking the photo.
Additional Editing
I felt this photo would benefit from further editing, using the adjustments tools and the brush tools, bringing out the sky and cliffs details in more depth.
Edit Two
For this edit, I started by using selecting two base images and then using the HDR photo merge.
This is my second edit, for this one I used the same process but I chose to use the high setting on the deghost as it helped produce more detail in waves and added the splash back onto the rocks. I worked out which bits the different settings of deghost changed by using the deghost over lay filter.
Final Photos
This technique was useful to learn and the exposure bracketing was a new technique I hadn’t tried before. I am very happy with the results, I was limited on the day as it was very bright and I didn’t have a lens hood, this meant a lot of my photos looked similar even when reducing/increasing the exposure. The results while being slightly unrealistic in terms of saturation it does follow the HDR style.
For this edit I made sure to make the rocks stand out in the dark grey sea as I didn’t want the imagine to appear flat. The harsh horizon line adds depth to the image and well as contrast from dark grey of the sea to light grey of the sky. By then using the brush tool I make the pure white less luminescent and instead just pure white. This helped add more detail back into the waves.
Edit Two
For my next edit I made sure to make the rock face bold as it is the subject of the photo, the waves I kept lighter with white to reflect the zone system. By decreasing the exposure I increased the details in the waves which had been washed out by the bright light. I then again used the brush tool to add contrast to certain points of the photo adjusting the settings each time to create distinct tonal separation.
Edit Three
This shot isn’t my strongest so I chose to just use basic editing of the contrast and shadows mostly after using the Adobe monochrome auto settings to increase detail in the rock and bring back the waves details that had gotten washed out with over exposure.
Edit Four
This photo just needed the exposure reducing to get the dark sky and the highlights increasing to get the white flecks of rock to show up and contrast with the otherwise similarly coloured bracken on the left side of the photo. The editing helped the shapes and lines in the image stand out making for an interesting but natural looking photo with depth.
Edit Five
Edit Six
Edit Seven
For this edit I wanted the lighter rock to show up more. To create this I used the black and white setting and then used the adjustments tools to create the contrast I wanted before adding further depth and contrast with the brush tool.
Edit Eight
For this photo I used the Adobe monochrome and the adjustments tool. After that I then used the brush tool with a low exposure adjustment to make sure the clouds stood out and the sky wasn’t washed out creating the high contrast, dramatic photo.
For this edit I wanted to keep the green grass and the orangey tone in the background as it contrasts very well with the lighter sage coloured moss on the broken branch. I just adjusted the exposure to bring out the colours in the photo and then used the other adjustments to balance the images colouring.
Edit Two
Edit Three
Final Images
Evaluation
From this photoshoot I had three good photos, I found I liked these three photos as they all had a lot of textures and showcased the damage caused by the storm on a small woodland area. I like how all three have the same tones and colours, this was because I made a conscious effort to match the colours when editing I think this helps keep the idea that all three photos were from the same location which was important as I wanted to show how much damage had been caused in only a tiny section of the island. I don’t however think this is a very strong photoshoot as I don’t think it captured the intensity of the damage nor are the photos particularly in a romanticism style. I have redone this shoot in a different location as I did like the textures created by capturing the fallen trees as I think that does provide some context of the severity of it and creates interesting photos but I chose a location I could compose the photos differently and showed a wider expanse of land.
These are the settings I used for most of the photos. With a low iso and high f stop with a shutter speed that will capture the photos quickly enough to be in complete focus without having to compensate with the iso.
The contact sheet above contains all the photos from this particular location. I have used green to mark the best photos and yellow to mark ones with possible potential, and then red for any shots that I don’t like. Along side this I have used a start rating system to give me an idea of the best photos and the ones that have possible potential.
Edit One
I have used the adobe monochrome setting to help produce this high contrast black and white image. Inspired by Ansel Adam’s work I have increased the contrast by using a variety of adjustment settings. I wanted to create a visible difference between the tree tops and the trunks/ground with the tops of the trees being a lot lighter it has highlighted the interesting patterns and vastness of the landscape. I kept Adam’s zone theory in mind looking for the pure white and pure black and the other 9 grey colours in between.
Edit Two
Moving onto my next edit I started by changing the adjustments under the adobe monochrome settings and then moved on to using the brush tools. It took a couple of attempts to achieve the results I wanted. I started with a small brush size and and way too low exposure on the brush settings, after trying a couple of different adjustments I settled on a minimally low exposure adding depth and shadow to the highlighted areas. This stopped any harsh or visible editing lines while adding further shadow that the normal adjustments could not.
Edit Three
This I think is one of my best raw photos from this shoot. So to edit this I made sure I highlighted the best parts that were naturally lighter like the light green grass. I started by again changing the image to Adobe Monochrome and then looking to use the adjustment sliders to increase the contrast before looking at increasing things like the texture. I increased the texture to add more detail back into the image as it was a bit flat when I turned it black and white.
Edit Four
Removing the electrical box
Adjustment HistoryBrush adjustments
This photo was flat and boring before as while the green and brown colours were accurate the sky was over exposed. I started by doing the same with changing it to Adobe Monochrome, and then adjusting the sliders to increase contrast. This did improve the image but it didn’t do enough so I then went onto using the brush tool again to add depth into the sky, bringing the texture and shape of the clouds back into the image.
Edit Five
Pure Black
Example of range of colours in Adam’s ‘zone theory’ I have in my photo pure black and then around colour 9 on the chart of light grey.
This is the final photo I edited for this shoot. I liked how the trees went up the hill and wanted to again repair the clouds so they were truer to real life. Repeating the same process I did with the other photos and then using the brush tool to create a deeper black in places and a softer grey. I then used the eyedropper tool to see how different I to the contrast and I manged to get pure black and close to pure white including a range of the scale of colours, in the zone system, in between.
