The new topographics are pictures that portray unromanticised views of industrial landscapes, and suburban areas, areas that are not normally given a second glance. Its known as ‘The Man Altered Landscape’. It is the examination of the American Landscape in a new way, instead of focusing on natural and pristine scenery like parks they turned there cameras to more suburban things like petrol stations, freeways etc.
Post-War America
The New Topographics movement in America was an attempt to be “objective” about its survey of the West in post-war America.
Post-war America struggled with
Inflation and labor unrest. The country’s main economic concern in the immediate post-war years was inflation. …
The baby boom and suburbia. Making up for lost time, millions of returning veterans soon married and started families…
Isolation and splitting of the family unit, pharmaceuticals and mental health problems
Vast distances, road networks and mobility
The Shift
New Topographics represented a radical shift by redefining the subject of landscape photography as the built environment. In the 1920s, Ansel Adams formed an approach to landscape photography that posited nature as separate from human presence. He used vantage points that emphasized the towering scale of mountain peaks, and embraced a wide tonal range from black to white to record texture and dramatic effects of light and weather. What was both novel and challenging about New Topographics was not only the photographs’ content, but how they made viewers feel. By foregrounding, rather than erasing human presence, the photographs placed people into a stance of responsibility towards the landscape’s future—a position that resonated with ecology, the branch of environmental thought that was gaining traction in the 1970s.
The Aesthetics
Within these images, for example Robert Adams images, they used very neutral boring lighting, for example they just used day lighting, such as the sun shining bright in the middle of the day. This wouldn’t give as good of results as sunset or sunrise, and the sun would be very in the middle of the sky, just shining bright, and there wouldn’t be much room for movement, for example when sunset the sky changed shade and colours to orange and pinky sky’s, but during the day the sky would just be bright blue, or a gloomy grey.
Artist References
Robert Adams’s (no relation to Ansel) 1973 image Tract house, Boulder County, Colorado. The photograph pictures a two-story house whose half-timber framing appears decorative rather than structural. Recorded under bright noon sunlight, the house’s shadow barely extends into its grassless yard. The flag on the mailbox is up, perhaps to signal the presence of outgoing mail, but there are few other signs of habitation.
Joe Deal photographed new homes and construction sites in Albuquerque, New Mexico from the steep foothills of nearby mountains. Eliminating the horizon from his pictures, he filled each square frame with a dense patchwork of surfaces: driveways, newly cut roads, empty lots, and expanses of brush yet to be tamed. The effect was that the terrain appeared compressed into flatness, encouraging viewers to study the photographs as if looking at topographical maps.Deal enabled his viewers to consider the cost of rapid growth in the fragile desert.
Robert adams was a photographer who documented the damage to the American West, including the extent of it and its limitations. He created over fifty books of pictures, which included both despair of the environment and also hope. his goal as he said “is to face facts but find a basis for hope.” Adams grew up in New Jersey, Wisconsin and Colorado, and enjoyed the outdoor environment with his Father in each of them. When he was twenty-five he was a collage English teacher, and that is when in his summers off he picked up photography, After spending time with his wife in Scandinavia he realized that there were complexities in American geography.
His Works
Within the 1970’s and 80’s he produced a series of books which included- The New West,Denver,What We Brought,Summer Nights- which focused on expanding suburbs along Colorado, books that portrayed the need to development but also the surviving light of the natural world. He also examined humanity’s footprint and nature’s resilience in the wider western landscape. Adams has occasionally published smaller, sometimes more personal volumes. These have included a prayer book set in the forest (Prayers in an American Church). He has sometimes directly engaged civic and political issues as well. A series of photographs at the Ludlow memorial, for example, speaks for organized labor, and another at a protest against the second Iraq war records the suffering that accompanies empire.
Adams has used natural daylight when taking tis image, which manipulates the intensity of the sunlight reflecting against the ground. It also looks as if the image is a bit over-exposed, in order to manipulate the burning oil smoke to be as dark as possible compared to its surroundings to show its intensity, and how much damage it is creating. This photo is sharp and infocus, and has a sharp tonal range, using different shades of grey and linking them to emotions. He has laid out the image within a way that the damage to the environment is right in our face while still capturing the environment trying to fight back against this man made damage, he has done this by creating a depth of field where the destruction is right in our faces, but the beauty is surrounding it, we see this when the bug black burning oil smoke is right in our faces, making it very hard to miss, but there is a small tree standing very still to the left of the destruction. His image also relates to a political context, where people were fighting for the burning of oil to be calmed down or stopped all together, this relates to the 1973 oil crisis – In October 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) announced that it was implementing a total oil embargo against the countries who had supported Israel at any point during the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, In an effort that was led by Faisal of Saudi Arabia,[2] the initial countries that OAPEC targeted were Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This list was later expanded to include Portugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa. In March 1974, OAPEC lifted the embargo,[3] but the price of oil had risen by nearly 300%: from US$3 per barrel ($19/m3) to nearly US$12 per barrel ($75/m3) globally. Prices in the United States were significantly higher than the global average. After it was implemented, the embargo caused an oil crisis, or “shock”, with many short- and long-term effects on the global economy as well as on global politics.[4] The 1973 embargo later came to be referred to as the “first oil shock” vis-à-vis the “second oil shock” that was the 1979 oil crisis, brought upon by the Iranian Revolution.– which gives his image a motion, he was showing the people all the many flaws with oil burning, harming the planet, and now also harming people financially. Which turns his image into conceptual art.
In photography, HDR stands for high dynamic range. Dynamic range is simply the range of the lightest tones to the darkest tones within a photo. Put another way — it’s a measure of the light intensities from the highlights to the shadows.
Early Morning, Merced River, Autumn (1950) Ansel Adams
This photograph is just one of may for which Ansel Adams used the water bath development technique. Often times it was trial and error. So his practice was to expose two sheets of film identically for a scene he anticipated would be significant. If, after developing the first he concluded it needed a different development treatment he developed the second as was the case with this negative.
Photoshop HDR editing
HDR ONE
I used these four images:
Which then created this:
I then played around with the dials on the right, things the the shadows and the highlights:
I then played around with the “remove ghosts” option, which created this:
My final piece from my editing of the four images was this, I think it shows some perception of Ansell Adams ideas of HDR and how his images looked, I used a model to portray the actual size of the landscape, and to give more dynamic to my image:
HDR TWO
I used these two images:
Which then created this:
I then played around with the dials on the right, things the the shadows and the highlights:
This is my final piece from using these two images, I think the momentum of the car created a blur which adds depth to the image, and in a way obstructs your field of view away from the beautiful sand dunes, also the use of the woman running created another motion blur, although this image may not relate to Ansell Adams I think that it is one of my post dynamic photos, and allows many different things for the eye to look at by the use of things like lighting, field of view ect :
HDR THREE
I used these two images:
Which then created this:
I then played around with the dials on the right, things the the shadows and the highlights:
My final image related to my other artist reference Peter Mitchell, the reason I think it relates is because his images are those more of environmental photography, so I think within my image the two people sitting on the bench together portrays a sense of his imagery:
Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer, and environmentalist, known for his black-and-white images of the American West, whereas Peter Mitchell is a British documentary photographer, known for documenting Leeds and the surrounding area for more than 40 years.
Ansell Adams example:
Ansell Adams photography relies very much on ‘the zone system’, which portrays dark and in depth element’s, which creates more within the field of view and creates a story. This creates a new lense over the human eye and a new story, portraying that it obviously didn’t actually look like this when the photograph was taken, he has added his own spin on what the human eye is viewing.
Peter Mitchell example:
Peter Mitchell’s photographs create a reality, where the image is almost exactly the same as he would’ve seen when he took the photo. The photo portrays a real life story, one where you can really see what he was trying to capture and where you can see his ideas coming to life, using a model to create a field of depth within the image, and a scale tro size of how widely he has taken this image.
Comparison:
These two images are so similar yet so different. Some similarities include the use of wide landscape photography, created a long vertical image which focuses on things further in the background rather than an image like a up-close headshot for example. They also relate in how they use field of view, for example Peter Mitchell’s use of thing like the man stood at his door and the use of the green bin on the right of the house to portray the actual scale of things within the image such as the house, similarly Ansel Adams uses shading within the image such as the lighter slow compared to the darkness of the mountain which creates a tone of contrast. These images differ within how they use colour, with Ansel Adams keeping to a grey scale whereas Peter Mitchell has used colours such as brown and green to portray the liveliness of the world, both images give off different stories and different emotions which can be portrayed in colour as Ansel Adams photography creates a more eerie and dimmer tone to create a more melancholy story.
Exposure bracketing means that you take two more pictures: one slightly underexposed (usually by dialing in a negative exposure compensation, say -1/3EV), and the second one slightly overexposed (usually by dialing in a positive exposure compensation, say +1/3EV), again according to your camera’s light meter.
To manually take bracketed exposures, set up your camera for a shot as normal. You can create the best photos by using a tripod as you know excatly where you have taken the photo and can therefore change the exposure without moving your cameras positioning around too much. As soon as you take your first shot, adjust the exposure compensation, shutter speed or ISO by around one stop and take a second shot. Adjust the shutter speed or ISO two stops in the other direction and take a third. Now you should have three identical photos that are one stop underexposed, correctly exposed, and one stop overexposed. To automatically take bracketed exposures, you’ll need to dive into your camera’s settings. The procedure is a bit different for every camera so check the manual for the specific steps. Once you have exposure bracketing set up like this when you hold your finger on the shutter button your camera will take a burst of photos varying the shutter speed each time.
My artist references are Ansel Adams and Peter Mitchell, I am going to take inspiration from there “story telling” images.
The reason I have chosen to put these images on my mood board is because I like the emotions the images create. The use of colour and lighting is what I want to be in my imagery. The use of models is also what I want to use. I like how these images have huge contrast within all of them, the contrast of lighting, the contrast of colour, the contrast of weather. These really change peoples attitudes when they look at photos.
Peter Mitchell is a British documentary photographer, known for documenting Leeds and the surrounding area for more than 40 years. Mitchell’s photographs have been published in three monographs of his own.
A selection of Peter Mitchell’s most inconic photographs, some of which had been sat unseen for over 30 years, are now available as A2 poster prints, printed on 200gsm paper.
These photographs can be seen in his publications, Early Sunday Morning, Memento Mori and Strangely Familiar. Hundred-year-old terraces and cobbled streets sit flanked by concrete flats, with newly cleared ground to either side are presented with Mitchell’s, typical graphic framing.
“It is as if Peter Mitchell has taken the atmosphere and mood of Edward Hopper’s famous painting and established it as a matter of documentary fact in the north of England at a moment when collapse can lead to further desolation or possible renewal. So these beautiful pictures are drily drenched in history – social, economic and photographic.” – Geoff Dyer
Photos
Colour Photography
Peter’s striking images were an essential part of the colour documentary scene in the seventies and eighties and often featured shopkeepers and factory workers outside their places of work. I was interested in talking to Peter about his days back then, and how he came to photograph the changing face of the city, he now calls home.
Story Work
Many of Peters work portrays a story for example,
Rave On
The argument among some is that the term ‘Rave On’ didn’t originate until the acid house and rave explosion in the late 80s. I did my best to explain that it was popularised during the rock and roll and jazz eras of the 1950s. When I caught up with Peter, he found this hilarious. “I’m a Buddy Holly fan, that’s why I took it. The single ‘Rave On’ was released in 1958, and it’s one of my favorite Buddy Holly tracks!”
Image Analysis
Kingston Racing Motors in Olinda Terrace, spring 1975.Is the man with the wrench a mechanic? Why is the woman with the clapped-out Porsche looking so naughty? Will James C Gallagher, whose business it is, always have his back to the camera? And after painting the wall, why did Barry have to leave Leeds? The council demolished the lot shortly after this snap
Mitchell’s photography tells a story, he uses visual imagery to portray meaning, he knows what aesthetic he wants and how to achieve it. He does this by how and when he chooses to shoot his photos, for example the photo above has been taken on what looks like a cloudy maybe even rainy day, which creates an atmosphere surrounding the image, and pulls on people’s emotions. Mitchell knows what he is doing here. He has photographed a group of bikers, who already have a reputation of bringing trouble wherever they go, and Mitchell has added to this by photographing them under vandalism and a grey sky. He has used over exposure to create a lighter sky and make the blacks darker. This image has been shot with a wide lense, which shows a whole entire view of the situation, to ensure the whole story is being told.
All the visible features of an area of land, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal, a format of printed matter or screen display that is wider than it is high. It consists of the geographic features that mark, or are characteristic of, a particular area. The term comes from the Dutch word landschap, the name given to paintings of the countryside.
Fay Godwin
Fay Godwin (17 February 1931 – 27 May 2005) was a British photographer known for her black-and-white landscapes of the British countryside and coast.
Composition in Landscape Photography
The Rule of Thirds is very simple. Just imagine a grid of 9 rectangles on your image and try to compose the photo so that the main points are situated on those lines – or better still at the point where two lines intersect. Generally, when following the Rule of Thirds, I would aim to place the bottom of the horizon on the top third line (occasionally the bottom third) and put a focal point on the top left or top right intersection of thirds. I would then try to find a secondary point of interest and place that on the diagonally opposite intersection of thirds. This creates a diagonal within the photo which tends to add depth.
he Golden Ratio can be seen in nature and it has been used by us, either consciously or subconsciously, in architecture and art dating for a long time. When key elements of a painting, building, or photograph are positioned in the Golden Ratio they are thought to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible.
Perspective in landscape photography
The height also gives an important perspective in a landscape scene, there are two dominant zones: the ground and the horizon. The closer a photographic element is to the horizon, the more distant and smaller it will appear. The closer an element is to the lens, the further away from the horizon, the larger it appears.
We are probably all aware of the impact of atmospheric perspective without necessarily ever having thought about it. It is most obvious in scenes where we can see a long way. Notice how, in the above photo, the landscape features become less well defined as we progress into the distance.On very clear days distant hills might look closer than normal, an illusion created by the clarity with which we can see them but, when compared to foreground, distant landscape features always look less saturated and have less contrast, giving them a slightly hazy, often blue, appearance.
Even without atmospheric perspective, we would still interpret interlocking hills as a feature of a 3-dimensional scene. We know that where one hill slope is broken by another we have an overlap of features, and one is nearer than the other.But this type of perspective is often used to create illusions, such as having someone nearer the camera, effectively leaning against the top of a tall building or holding a distant object in their hands.
Depth in landscape photography
You already know how to get more depth of field, you stop down the lens aperture. Stopping down a lens to smaller apertures means more of the view will be in focus then if shot with a wider aperture.Having foreground interest goes hand in hand with the previous tip, or you can implement this technique on its own. Foreground interest tends to make a view as though they are part of the image, since the foreground element may be seen as a substitute for the viewer.
A leading line brings the viewer somewhere. Depending on intent, you can lead the viewer from one side of the image to the other or it can lead the viewer deeper into the photograph.
A tool for creating depth in landscape photos that may not be completely obvious is adjusting exposure and also contrast levels from light to dark or vice versa.
The way this works often depends on the percentage of light to dark, how extreme the difference, and where in the photo we place the differences. This is similar to the previous tip about light to dark and vice versa, simply using color differences instead.
Scale in landscape photography
Perhaps the most common way to show the size of a grand landscape is to include a person for scale. Some find this technique overused, but there is a reason it is so popular — people are easy to find. In the same way that it is easy to judge the size of people in a landscape, other animals also are quite good at providing a sense of scale to your photos. Of course, it is difficult to find a beautiful landscape with picturesque wildlife in the same frame — which is why it is easier to use people for scale, if that works for your image.So far, I have discussed the living creatures that can provide scale to a scene — people, wildlife, and plants — but nonliving structures can do the same job. Everything from roads to houses can be incorporated into a landscape photo, and they make it possible to demonstrate the size of the scene as well. Though not as exact as including objects for scale, it also is possible to compose your photos in a way that shows the size of your scene. Sometimes, this isn’t feasible — for example, it can be impossible to show the size of a distant sand dune without including an object for scale — but other landscapes can be put into perspective simply by the way you frame your photo.
Light in landscape photography
Landscape photographers talk about two essential lighting characteristics: the quality and the direction. Lighting quality refers to the hardness or softness of the light, where soft light produces limited shadows and saturated colors, while hard light adds lots of contrast and heavy shadows.And lighting direction refers to the direction at which the light strikes your subject. For instance, noontime sunlight hits the subject from above, evening sunlight hits the subject from the side, etc. Reflected light, also called bounced or diffused light, occurs when direct sunlight reflects off an adjacent surface. It can make for stunning photos, thanks to its soft, even, beautiful effect.Light on overcast and foggy days is soft, subdued, and bluish. Shadows are negligible, and light directionality essentially disappears.Note that you can have partial backlighting, when the sun comes from roughly behind the subject, and you can have total backlighting, when the sun beams out from directly behind the subject. You can also use human-made light to carefully illuminate subjects with a flashlight (this technique is known as light painting).
Colour in landscape photography
Colors have different psychological associations. Different combinations of color determine how we comprehend a photograph. For example the harmonious combination of blue and green cultivates a relaxed atmosphere. The color wheel contains all the colors in a readable format.All creative applications of color exist within the color wheel. This allows photographers to refer to the tool as a handy guide. Here is a version below.
You can use analogous groups like autumnal reds, vermilion, and oranges in landscape photos. Or you can use marine greens, teals, and blues. These create depth and visual resonance.
Shadow in landscape photography
The visualization of a photograph, whether it is a landscape or not, arises from the creative intention of the photographer, which in turn leads to the framing of the composition. From there, the choice of the quality of light (e.g., the directionality and color temperature) provides the photographer his or her most powerful tool to translate that artistic vision into reality.
Texture in landscape photography
Textures are all around us; especially in the natural world. By paying close attention to the details found in nature, you’ll be able to incorporate textures into your photographs more easily.One way to make a big impact with texture is by looking for contrast. Whether it’s soft, billowing clouds contrasting with rugged trees and mountains, or a smooth, flowing river and rugged rocks, look to combine contrasting textures for maximum visual impact.
Tonal Values in landscape photography
Tonal range in photography is the brightness levels of light captured by your camera. This can range from pure blacks to pure white and shades of grey in-between. An image with a wide range of tones will have pure black to pure white in your image. A small or narrow range of tones will include a smaller range from shadows to highlights, no pure white, or no pure black, or neither black or whites. The brightness levels within your photo also determines the extent of contrast. If you capture an image with a small range of tones, the overall contrast will be flatter vs. a larger range. In post-processing, you can increase the range of tones to add more contrast by stretching the image to the outer edges… by adding pure black and pure white.
How can landscape photography portray meaning?
Creating emotion is very important during landscape photography, it can portray an emotion with a dramatic and drastic scene. These photos are the ones that draw people in, making them feel like they are within the story line and immersed in the image. Lighting and weather is a really big one when it comes to portraying emotion within a landscape, weather can heavily instantly affect a persons mood and attitude towards a photo. If a landscape photo is taken in the rain it will instantly change a persons attitude to be more gloomy and sad, whereas the sun generally brings out the best in people.
Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer, and environmentalist, known for his black-and-white images of the American West. When Adams was only four, an aftershock of the great earthquake and fire of 1906 threw him to the ground and badly broke his nose, distinctly marking him for life. He was not successful in the various schools to which his parents sent him; consequently, his father and aunt tutored him at home.The most important result of Adams’s somewhat solitary and unmistakably different childhood was the joy that he found in nature, as evidenced by his taking long walks in the still-wild reaches of the Golden Gate.
Monolith, The Face of Half Dome
The Story Behind The Image – On the chilly spring morning of April 10th, 1927, Ansel Adams set out along Yosemite’s LeConte Gully to capture an image of the striking sheer face of Half Dome, one of Yosemite National Park’s most iconic natural features.The photograph he made, shows the mountain rising from an ink-black sky, its face illuminated by a dazzling midday sun just out of frame. Though Ansel initially made an exposure using a yellow filter, he immediately swapped that for a dark red filter, which darkened the sky and produced the deep shadows and bright light we recognize in the final image. Today, the image stands as not only one of Adams’ finest works, but as a lasting and iconic depiction of one of the most unique spots in the American wilderness.
What Is The Zone System
One does not hear much about the origin of the Zone System anymore. Many of us shoot with digital cameras and no longer use a spot meter or full manual exposure mode for that matter. My advice is to take a bit of time and learn why this vital technique, formulated by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer in the late 1930’s, played such a crucial role in their work. Although the technique originated for use with black and white sheet film, the fundamental lessons can be carried through to digital work, and can help you compose for best results today.Ansel Adams wrote a deeply descriptive book detailing the Zone System called The Negative, which can be found on Amazon. It takes the reader on an in-depth journey into the Zone System.
How To Use The Zone System
The 11 zones in Ansel Adams’ system were defined to represent the gradation of all the different tonal values you would see in a black and white print, with zone 5 being middle gray, zone 0 being pure black (with no detail), and zone 10 being pure white (with no detail). Theoretically, each zone represents one f-stop in exposure. You’ll also notice there is then an 11-stop difference between pure black and pure white, with a 7-stop difference between the darkest black with detail and the lightest white with detail.
The American West
In his autobiography, Adams expressed his concern about Americans’ loss of connection to nature in the course of industrialization and the exploitation of the land’s natural resources. He stated, “We all know the tragedy of the dustbowls, the cruel unforgivable erosions of the soil, the depletion of fish or game, and the shrinking of the noble forests. And we know that such catastrophes shrivel the spirit of the people… The wilderness is pushed back, man is everywhere. Solitude, so vital to the individual man, is almost nowhere.”With increasing environmental degradation in the West during the 20th century, his photos show a commitment to conservation.
Group f/64
Group f/64 or f.64 was a group founded by seven 20th-century who shared a common photographic style characterized by sharply focused and carefully framed images seen through a particularly Western (U.S.) viewpoint. In 1932, Adams helped form the anti‐pictorialist Group f/64, a loose and relatively short-lived association of like-minded “straight” or “pure” photographers on the West Coast whose members included Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham. The modernist group favored sharp focus—f/64 being a very small aperture setting that gives great depth of field on large-format view cameras—contact printing, precisely exposed images of natural forms and found objects, and the use of the entire tonal range of a photograph. Group f/64 limits its members and invitational names to those workers who are striving to define photography as an art-form by a simple and direct presentation through purely photographic methods. The Group will show no work at any time that does not conform to its standards of pure photography.
The emotion his images make you feel
Ansel Adams images are generally dark and dim, he uses the zone system and takes photos of mainly the American West. He did this to express his concern for the loss. So he used his images to create a feeling, to portray to people his specific concern. He has used imaragy as a outlook, and as a way of processing what he is going through. He uses it to put his emotions on other people, he wants to make people feel how he feels. He is letting people in on his emotions in an artistic way.
