New topographics is the photographs of nature and man altered landscapes.
focusing on urban, residential, leisure and industrial landscapes
where did the name come from?
the word originates from “graphia” and “topo”.
what is the idea behind new topographics
New Topographics reinvented both the subject matter of landscape and the kind of response we can have to such pictures: not just awe or uplift, but a sense of responsibility like the romanticism and the sublime. As long as humans continue to develop upon nature, this will remain a vital avenue of contemporary photography.
This style was supposed to show how times were changing because the landscape they were once photographing now has man made buildings which stand in the way of the once nice background, this shows how the photographs would like to shoot straight on “dead pan” with “no emotion” so that they could draw awareness to how much construction and change had happened, this is emphasised in the black and white.
Robert Adams
Robert Adams was born in Orange, New Jersey, in 1937
He photographs and has documented scenes of the american west for 4 decades, showing the effects of suburbanization. Adams’s photographs capture the physical traces of human life: a garbage-scatter roadside, a clear-cut forest, a half-built house.
Adams uses photography to express his love for the landscape and to understand how urban and industrial growth have changed it, all the while insisting that beauty in the world has not been entirely eclipsed.
“I think if you placed me almost anywhere and gave me a camera you could return the next day to find me photographing. It helps me, more than anything I know, to find home.”
– ROBERT ADAMS
Adams had been using a large 4-by-5-inch camera, which required a tripod, which produced wonderfully detailed images. But he moved to smaller, more portable formats, often making small, square images in black-and-white that are drenched in sunlight and full of sharp tonal contrast.
his objectivity isnt a lack of emotion, he does it because it keeps the truth of image and makes it look soft.all of Adams’ work is simple, but deceptively so. Since he first came to public attention in the mid-1970s as part of the New Topographics movement, his subject has been the American west: its vastness, its sparse beauty and its ecological fragility.
There is a subtle tonal quality to his pictures – a shading of light and shadow, and various gradations of the same –
Born: February 20th, 1902, Western Addition, San Francisco, California, United States
Died: April 22nd, 1984 (age 82 ), Bariatric Surgery Center at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, Monterey, California, United States
How did he begin photography and what did he do after?
Ansel Adams was given a camera at 12 when he first visited the Yosemite national park where he admired the beautiful valley, at age 17 he joined the sierra club which is an American environmental organization with chapters in all 50 U.S. states, In 1927, Adams participated in the Club’s annual outing, known as the High Trip, and, the next year, he became the Club’s official trip photographer. In 1930 he became assistant manager of the outings which consisted of month-long excursions of up to 200 people.
In 1934, Adams was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club, a role he maintained for 37 years. Then he made a big book of photos of the national park in the Kings River region of the Sierra Nevada. Adam then was lobbying congress for a Kings Canyon National Park. he had to keep persuading congress to not change the waterfall into a power dam and make it protected instead.
In 1968 Adams was awarded the Conservation Service Award, the Interior Department’s highest civilian honor, “in recognition of your many years of distinguished work as a photographer, artist, interpreter and conservationist, a role in which your efforts have been of profound importance in the conservation of our great natural resources.”
In 1980 Adams received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for “his efforts to preserve this country’s wild and scenic areas, both on film and on earth. Drawn to the beauty of nature’s monuments, he is regarded by environmentalists as a national institution.”
His 5 photo techniques
1. “You don’t take a photograph, you make it“
Ansel Adams is famous for his “zone system” — a complicated method of making the “perfect” monochromatic print.
Ansel would say this a lot because he believed that it wasn’t just about clicking the shutter it was spending hours in a dark room developing and editing to make it how he visualised.
2. Know where to stand
“A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” – Ansel Adams
In landscape photography, position is everything. Where you are situated in respect to your landscape, will determine your perspective, the mood of the photograph, as well as the composition.
By moving your feet and getting a better position, you will create more unique and creative images. Not only that, but practice crouching, moving to the left, to the right, and sometimes even your tippy-toes. Try to hike to get very high perspectives, and sometimes lie on your stomach or back to get very low perspectives.
3. Photograph how it feels (not how it looks)
we want to make more effective images, we should focus on photographing how a scene feels— not how it looks. Ansel Adams tells why he decided to photograph his famous image, “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico” shot with an extremely dark sky:
“My Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico has the emotion and the feeling that the experience of seeing the actual moonrise created in me, but it is not at all realistic. Merely clicking the camera and making a simple print from the negative would have created a wholly different–and ordinary–photograph. People have asked me why the sky is so dark, thinking exactly in terms of the literal. But the dark sky is how it felt.” – Ansel Adams
We can create a certain emotion or feeling in our photos by different methods and techniques. If we are photographing landscapes, we should look for the light, mist, smoke, fog, or other natural splendors. And the way we post-process our photos afterwards will change the emotion dramatically.
4. Pre-visualize your photos
“In my mind’s eye, I am visualizing how a particular revelation of sight and feeling will appear on a print. If I am looking at you, I can continue to see you as a person, but I am also in the habit of shifting from that consciously dimensional presence to a photograph, relating you in your surroundings to an image in my mind. If what I see in my mind excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense and also an ability that comes from a lot of practice. Some people never can get it.” – Ansel Adams
To become a better photographer is to better-translate what you see in real life, and make it appear in a photograph.
This happens by improving your composition, understanding your technical settings, understanding your camera, and also knowing where to stand, when to click, and how to post-processing your photos.
5.Ignore critics
No matter what, you can never please 100% of your audience with your photography. In-fact, I think becoming a good photographer is to not compromise your vision. The more innovative you are in your photography, the more people you are going to confuse, frustrate, and alienate.
Romanticism is attitudes, ideals, and feelings which are romantic rather than realistic. Romantics celebrated the spontaneity, imagination, and the purity of nature. Along with these elements it also included a deep feeling of emotion as an authentic source of experience which put new emphasis on emotions such as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe.
when did romanticism come about and what was going on in the time?
The Romantic Period began roughly around 1798 and lasted until 1837. in 1789-1799 the french revolution took place followed by the napoleon war in 1815. romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789.
The Enlightenment ,is a philosophical movement that dominated in Europe during the 18th century, was centered around the idea that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and advocated such ideals as liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state to create a sense of free will. This also inspired the romanticism art to start.
romanticism and the sublime is like a rebellion of the heart against the head
what are characteristics of romanticism.
what does sublime mean?
sublime is the quality of greatness, sublime is like extraordinary or glorious. Romanticism artist try to use the sublime because it increases emotional depth in the art, and could even create a juxtaposition. the sublime shows that we are so small and inferior to these natural landscapes and it is emphasised ny the darkness and the comparison between the light.
Landscape art in the early 19th century was guided by two rival concepts: the picturesque, which emphasized touristic pleasures and visual delight, and the sublime, an aesthetic category rooted in notions of fear and danger.
what did edmund burke think was the ruling principle of the sublime?
“and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror.” Here Burke makes the shocking and innovative observation that the sublime is in fact an important aesthetic category because of the terror
what is landscape photography?
Landscape photography is a broad genre that encompasses many different styles and techniques. Some photographers prefer to capture sweeping panoramas that showcase the scale of the natural world, while others focus on intimate landscapes close-up shots that reveal the intricate details of the environment.
john constable
the haywain 1821
Born- June 11, 1776, East Bergholt, Suffolk, England
Died – March 31, 1837, London.
John was a major figure in English landscape painting in the early 19th century. He is best known for his paintings of the English countryside, particularly those representing his native valley of the River Stour, an area that came to be known as “Constable country.”
In his studies of nature during the period, Constable reverted from oil to watercolour and drawing, and he exhibited a fascinating range of work, such as Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831).
Constable created this painting, which quoted motifs from his renowned Hay Wain, while agitation for parliamentary reform against the church made conservatives such as himself very anxious. This panic is perhaps embodied in the painting’s dramatic shifts in scale: the wagon appears enormous next to the houses, yet is dwarfed by the looming cathedral, which symbolically stands firm, enveloped in a rainbow, in the face of stormy skies.
A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.
Although paintings from the earliest ancient and Classical periods included natural scenic elements, landscape as an independent genre did not emerge in the Western tradition until the Renaissance in the 16th century. In the Eastern tradition, the genre can be traced back to 4th-century-ce China.
In the 16th century the renaissance happened which the culture and style of art and architecture developed during this time. A German Renaissance Master. Painter, draftsman, and printmaker active in Regensburg, Albrecht Altdorfer (around 1480–1538) was a major German artist of the 16th century.
Classical Landscapes
In the 17th century the classical landscape was born. These landscapes were influenced by classical antiquity and sought to illustrate an ideal landscape recalling Arcadia, a legendary place in ancient Greece known for its quiet pastoral beauty
Nicolas Poussin spent most of his career in Rome, immersed in the study of ancient art, where he painted classically inspired works for an educated elite. His art has long been considered the embodiment of the ideals of seventeenth-century
classicism.
Romanticism
Landscape painting eventually gained prominence in the late 18th century with the rise of Romanticism. Romanticism is a literary and artistic movement marked chiefly by an emphasis on the imagination and emotions: the quality or state of being romantic.
Additionally, it became a method of self-expression, with the emotions of the painter and their appreciation of nature demonstrated in the painting.
Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes was a French painter who was influential in elevating the status of En plein air (open-air painting).
Photography
1826 and 1827 According to records, the earliest known evidence of a landscape photograph was taken between the years of 1826 and 1827. It was an urban landscape photo taken by a French inventor by the name of Nicephore Niepce
Mood Board
landscapes are natural scenery, photos and paintings of land.
Femininity refers to traits which are associated with nurture whilst masculinity refers to traits which are associated with assertiveness.
Definitions:
Femininity= “qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of women or girls.”- google
Masculinity= “qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of men or boys.”- google
femininity and masculinity are binary opposites which means it is a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning.
mood board:
femininity
masculinity
Ways identity can be influenced.
Identity is not certain and constantly changes around different factors.
Place– The place a person is from can influence identity because we hold memories which relate to other people who have been or lived there compared to the people who do not have these memories.
Upbringing– The physical environments where children live affect their development and health. The conditions of a place can have positive or negative influences on child health and development. Environmental exposures early in life can cause lasting changes in developing biological systems.Our families play a crucial role in shaping our values and identity. They can help us become more confident, compassionate, and curious, or they can make us more insecure, selfish, and closed-minded. The good news is that we have some control over how we let our families and friends influence us.
Cultural– Culture influences our beliefs about what is true and false, our attitudes including our likes and dislikes, our values regarding what is right and wrong, and our behaviours.
Stereotypes– Impose limitations on the people they target, assign them roles that are not necessarily suited to them and make it harder for them to be their true selves, girls and women are generally expected to dress in typically feminine ways and be polite, accommodating, and nurturing. Men are generally expected to be strong, aggressive, and bold. Every society, ethnic group, and culture has gender role expectations, but they can be very different from group to group.
Political– Certain people are brought up to follow normalities of their society ran by politics, this affects people by having strong beliefs which you may not understand until you are older but still follow in to or they may follow different beliefs’ those people would be very different as this is a part of their identity and how they believe and act.
Mind maps on femininity and masculinity.
Artist Reference
Claude Cahun
“Claude Cahun (1894-1954) was an artist, photographer and writer. She is best known today for her surreal self-portrait photographs which show her dressed as different characters. Cahun questioned the accepted status-quo, particularly the position of women, through her art and in the way she lived her life”- jersey heritage
This photo of Cahun also deals with the theme of masculinity. Because of the stereotype that men should be tough, strong, and protective of women, Cahun (women), who are typically supposed to look more feminine, actually look more masculine. Cahun relates to this stereotype because of the props she uses. In this photo, she uses support weights, suggesting that she is strong and tough, which is closer to male characteristics in society. Cahun is a more masculine woman in order to show society that gender fluidity is real, stereotypes are not accurate most of the time, and that women can also be masculine (and vice versa). Disguise yourself as a “character” or another version of yourself. ). However, her makeup in this photo also suggests that she is very feminine. Because at that time, society considered it appropriate for only women to wear makeup. Although Cahun wears feminine makeup, the use of more masculine props allows her to be feminine and masculine at the same time, increasing her gender fluidity. This proves the stereotype that men are strong and tough and women are weak and emotional. Because carrying femininity suggests that women can be just as strong and tough as men.
Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman works, play with womanish conceptions. Masquerading as a myriad of characters, Cindy Sherman( American, born 1954) invents personas and tableaus that examine the construction of identity, the nature of representation, and the artifice of photography. To produce her images, she assumes the multiple places of shooter, model, makeup artist, hairstylist, and hairstylist. Whether portraying a career girl, a fair stunner, a fashion victim, a zany, or a society lady of a certain age, for over thirty- five times this relentlessly audacious artist has created an eloquent and instigative body of work that resonates deeply in our visual culture, this also shows how the women we see in movies aren’t real, because Cindy is showing she can embody all these different identities and challenging the roles of females.
Cindy Sherman inspired my photo shoot by challenging stereotypes.
response shoot:
For this edit I have used four photos which have a binary opposite, the female model look unprepared and nervous, whilst carrying a briefcase, the briefcase indicates a work and serious environment, whilst the male model is assertive in his stance and looks as if he is on the move to show how a business man may be rushing around, he is also holding the briefcase up in comparison to the female model where it looks like it is holding her down. I paired these photos with close ups of the briefcase to give it a different perspective, in the top right photo the prop is darker with different rays of light on the side and handle to show it has been used but also is intriguing to open. The photo on the bottom left is brighter which makes it shine and appear cleaner and more elegant. I have used black and white for all of these photos because I think it helps to create a sense of work and power.
Cindy Sherman showed how things we see in tv aren’t real life and that the model or actor could be anyone so I made this photo into black and white as I believe it helps to emphasise the body and challenge the stereotypes of females and femininity. as you can see I kept the vibrancies but turned down the saturation to get the black and white but still have some colour in the skin.
I like this photo because it has a “feminine side” then a harsh line where it is much darker to show a split in fitting in to the background and being yourself. the skin shows us her but the darkness represents what we don’t know about her.
I like this photo as it shows strength from the male models which is a key feature in masculinity and the stereotypes of men but it also shows the female model being flexible which is a strength for females and plays on the “different roles/ aspects” for femininity and masculinity.
photo montage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image
Multiple exposures are photographs in which two or more images are superimposed in a single frame, and they’re super easy to create using your analogue camera. Set an image of a train against a field of flowers, or prop your friend’s face against an image of a city skyline to create enchanting and surreal images.
Chiaroscuro is a high-contrast lighting technique that utilises a low-key lighting setup to achieve contrast between the subject and a dark background.
High-key and low-key lighting are two studio lighting techniques that result in very different moods and aesthetics.
the photo on the left is low key because it emphasises on shadows whilst the photo on the right is high key as it minimalizes on shadows and low contrast.
High key lighting -
photos typically have a more optimistic feel and are used for fun, bright projects.
It is the go to source for many sitcoms and comedies. It is often used for portraits and weddings. This technique is great for making your recordings look active and energetic.
low-
photos typically have a cold, gloomy feel and are used for dramatic effect.
it is popular for portrait photography.
Response shoot:
What Is Rembrandt Lightning?
Rembrandt lighting takes its name after Rembrandt Harmen zoon van Rijn, a 17th-century Dutch painter who was known for using earthy tones and golden highlights to frame the faces of his portraiture subjects. What made his painting style distinct was focusing lighting on the subject’s face and adding detail around it, tapping into an innate human attraction to the face.
The Rembrandt lighting technique results in a moody and dramatic effect. This type of lighting technique often features a dark or black background behind the subject, putting the subject front and center.
Rembrandt lighting technique is considered one of the go-to photography lighting setups because it produces a dramatic visual effect without requiring a lot of setup
A more sophisticated version of this setup includes a reflector, which brings detail back into the shadows on the subject’s face, but even this setup requires minimal tools and associated costs
In this way, all renditions of the Rembrandt method are considered low-effort while producing high-impact photographs
How to Create a Rembrandt Lighting Setup
a single light source placed on a 45 degree offset from the subject, about 5 feet away. Positioned roughly two feet higher than eye level, the light source is angled slightly downward and hits the side of the face that is farthest away from the camera.
Response shoot:
Butterfly lighting
What is butterfly lighting?
Butterfly lighting is a type of portrait lighting technique used primarily in a studio setting. Its name comes from the butterfly-shaped shadow that forms under the nose because the light comes from above the camera. You may also hear it called ‘paramount lighting’ or ‘glamour lighting’.
What is it used for?
Butterfly lighting is used for portraits. It’s a light pattern that flatters almost everybody, making it one of the most common lighting setups.
