I started by seeing this perfect angle with these three buildings next to each other. At first they look similar, but if you look closely you can see they are all different styles with the front right building being old fashioned with the curved walls and windows and with the pointy roof chimney. The building in the back being 50/50 old and new with the old style of colours/windows and materials. But the new style with balcony’s and straight edged walls and so finally the long building to the left being fully modern with the white plane walls, mixed with black balcony gates, plus modern looking windows and straight walls and roof.
I really liked how these three different exposures looked but I felt confident with trying the B/W style on it. This worked very well with still showcasing each era of buildings but also the same contrast gives the photo the same idea of buildings.
This was the final photo after editing and the B/W added on top of it came out just as I imagined. I also love how each building is a different shape with the left building being rectangular going away from the camera. The right square-like building standing flat, face-on towards the camera and then the tall building in the background still very distant from the other two but still stands out as a main view in the photo.
For this photoshoot, I went from Havre de pas area towards the energy station focusing on urban objects, buildings and structures. I tried to include the man-made vs nature aspect in Jersey with the old/broken structures mixed with the overgrown trees and plants but also new buildings next to old.
Topographic Photography is a technique in which typically a landscape is being photographed from afar.
New topographics was a term coined by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers (such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar banal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape.
Some very important New Topographic Artists were, Robert Adams, Frank Gohlke and then Bernd and Hilla Becher.
Robert Adams focused on changing landscape in the American West. ‘New Topographic’ from Adams, meant the romanticism and idealism traditionally associated with landscape photography. Instead, they adopted a more objective and detached approach to capture the contemporary urban and suburban environment.
Frank Gohlke was also an American but he received two Guggenheim fellowships from the national Endowment for Arts. Gohlke’s oeuvre is marked by a preoccupation with framing landscape as a manmade construct: an artefact of the way we live, a projection of human actions, ideals and aspirations onto the horizon. Landscape is where the human and the natural worlds connect, and in Gohlke’s view, humanity’s power is limited, fragile and temporary.
These topographic photos show a connection between nature and the human aspect called juxtaposition. These two differences join together to create contrast and show how humans and nature always conjoin throughout life.
I used a method of HDR Merging which involves 3 or more of the same picture but at different contrasts and exposures. This is done by a tool on the camera which we set to 16/f-stop and used a shutter release with instead of taking the photo on the actual camera because we needed the photo to be still and in the same place for each photo and with any contact on the camera it would of moved it, even with a tripod.
After I took photos of different landscapes with the 3 exposures for each photo, I uploaded it to my Lightroom, selected all 3 photos that I want to merge, selected ‘photo merge’, then ‘HDR’.
After pressing this, it will load a merged photo of all the photos you selected keeping the best parts of each photo into one photo.
There is 4 types of Deghost amount, None, Low, Medium and High. These also change the exposure of the photos highlighting different sections depending if you want a brighter photo or a darker photo.
After I merged all of them and selected the high one which I thought was the best as it had all the good features from each photo but I still thought it needs to be more exposed as it was still too bright for my liking.
This was my final result which I really like because of how the grass is very green and really pops out but the whole photo is also not too bright which sets a nice mood for the photo.
I also realised that all these other HDR photos online aren’t really what the photographer sees in real life, it is all down to their camera editing and photo merging to create this aesthetic, colourful photo for the audience to enjoy.
Another example photo I took, was of these 3 goal posts stood next to each other all equal distances apart.
I tried two different edits, starting with number 1 which was the photo merging at different levels of Deghost.
So started with Low Deghost.
Then Medium.
Then High.
After I merged them all into one photo, I still felt as if the merged photo was still missing some exposure and contrast, so I manually edited it and I used these edits.
My Photoshoot Plan for the Landscape project is going to be going around Jersey to capture the dramatic landscape.
Capturing the sublime:
Jersey was recently hit by Storm Ciaran, which saw a tornado running through Jersey. I would like to start by trying to capture the environments captured by the storm, reflecting similar ideas of the Sublime in Romanticism. ifferent woods/forests with my dad taking photos of fallen
I would go to areas like these and take photos of different terrains, broken objects and buildings.
I will try take photos of the fallen objects in the rain, on a cloudy day, sunny day and on a windy day to try get a choice of each weather on the broken houses and nature.
I will try to use the HDR photo technique with my landscape photos trying to implant the multi-exposures and then merge the photo after to create this overall end photo with the best features all around.
Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his Black and white photographs and how he put his own style onto photographs with the use of Monochromatic photos.
What is Monochromatic?
Monochromatic means having or consisting of one singular colour. This is a style of photography that relies on the use of one colour, in one or more shades, to create an image.
The type of camera Adams used was called a Kodak Brownie Box Camera. The design of it is in the name ‘box’ with its square-like shape, very old fashioned but very modern at the time with it being a series of camera models made by Eastman Kodak released in 1900.
Ansel Adams was born in 1902, when he got his first camera at the age of 14, he also started playing piano at 14 but he knew he wasn’t going to become a musician. Him and his family went to Sierra Nevada where he took photos of the mountains and different ranges and was really proud of his photos, and that’s where he knew he wanted to become a photographer. In 1906 there was a very big earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9 and during that earthquake Adams got hit and broke his nose. He left it due to the fact he didn’t want anyone to see it and thought it was alright until the fact he went to school and was so shy and insecure about his disfigured nose which made other kids look at him funny and he kept having to move schools because of this leading to eventually his dad pulling him out of school, home-schooling him and getting him a tutor. After that he was feeling a lot better but he still had this disfigured face/nose, but he really enjoyed walking through the forest and taking landscape pictures.
In 1927, he got a break that changed his life dramatically when he was named Sierra’s Club official trip photographer. The Sierra Club was one of the worlds oldest environmental preservation societies.
The Zone System:
Ansel Adams was known for pioneering the zone system to create dramatic tone in his photos.
Starts at grey which is on 0 F Stop. You change the aperture on your camera to change the shade of your photo.
The photo below depicts one of Adams’ first experiments with filters that enabled him to capture the drama he wanted.
This is Adams trying a blue card over his photo which made the result look like this, but he didn’t like it and it wasn’t how he imagined it to be.
So, he tried another filter which was a red one. This made the photo come out looking like this which Ansel loved and so did many more worldwide.
Romanticism: Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) is an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. For most of the Western world, it was at its peak from approximately 1800 to 1850.
Romanticism emphasized inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual. Romanticism is linked with landscape and the sense of romance of the landscape features its spirit in full bloom.
JMW Turner- Hannibal Crossing The Alps 1835
What is the meaning of Romanticism Style?
Romanticism is characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and has an emphasis on imagination and emotions.
Romantic artists depict their nostalgic sentiment through their work.
Effects that were used in Romanticism: Small, Close strokes of complementary colours to create brilliance and vivid visual effect.
Subjectivity:
One main significant elements of Romanticism was increased emphasis on the personal and subjective power of the individual artist. Romantic artists began to explore different psychological, emotional, and mood states in their works. The Neoclassical obsession with genius and hero transformed into new ideas about the artist. Artists were able to express themselves fully, free from the tastes and rules.
Romanticism rejected the Age Of Enlightenment and Neoclassicism
What was the Neoclassical Period?
The Neoclassical Period was an art movement that sought to evoke the style of classical antiquity in writing, painting, sculpting, and architecture found in Greek and Roman culture. It was very popular between late 18th century and early 19th century.
Neoclassicism was a movement which involved idealized form. People were perfected not as they necessarily were but rather as an idealized version would. Romanticism hated that idea. Romanticism believed that the obsession with idealization led to a lack of emotion.
The Age of Enlightenment
Also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and philosophical movement that occurred in Europe, especially Western Europe, in the 17th and 18th centuries, with global influences and effects.
Started in 1685 and ended in 1815.
The main idea for it was that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy. So, it was an emphasized reason over superstition and science over blind faith.
3 major ideas from the Enlightenment was the values of scepticism, reason and individualism.
Sublime:
Sublime means the high quality of greatness and beautiful through physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual and/or artistic. Also means, extremely good, beautiful or enjoyable.
“It is beautiful but terrifying at the same time due to its own power.”
Sublime in the 18th century was a concept first introduced by the philosopher Edmund Burke in the eighteenth century to describe art that is truly extraordinary, invoking a powerful mix of awe, wonder and terror.
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke was known and remembered for his support for Catholic emancipation, the impeachment of Warren Hastings from the East India Company, and his staunch opposition to the French Revolution.
He had a famous quote which says, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.
John Constable
John Constable RA was an English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition.
Constable is famous for his landscapes, which are mostly of the Suffolk countryside, where he was born and lived. He made many open-air sketches, using these as a basis for his large exhibition paintings, which were worked up in the studio.
The Hay Wain
The Hay Wain – (1821) John Constable
The title, The Hay Wain, refers to the wooden wagon (wain) used for transporting cut and dried meadow grass (hay). The empty wagon is making its way through the shallow water to cross to the meadow on the other side where haymakers are at work.
The view is of the millpond at Flatford on the River Stour.
Flatford Mill was a watermill for grinding corn, operated by the Constable family for nearly a hundred years. It still survives and is about a mile from Constable’s birthplace at East Bergholt, Suffolk. The house on the left also survives; in Constable’s time it was occupied by tenant farmer Willy Lott.
It was created in the artist’s studio in London. Working from a number of open-air sketches made over several years, Constable then made a full-size preparatory oil sketch to establish the composition before painting the final picture.
The painting by John Constable depicts a tranquil countryside life. There is no sign of the Industrial Revolution going on at the time. People turned to his painting as an appreciation of rural life, away from the cities that were booming at the time.
What does Landscape mean? Landscape art and photography shows the spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic. Landscape photographs typically capture the presence of nature but can also focus on human-made features or disturbances of landscapes.
History and Traditions of LandscapePhotography
Artists have been painting the landscape since ancient times.
Landscape gained in popularity as a genre due to many factors such as Romanticism. Originally, it was looked as a religious significance, but it also became a method of self-expression with the emotions of the photographer and or painter shown on the painting/photograph.
Before the renaissance, (a period in history and a cultural movement marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity, covering the 15th and 16th century), Landscape Art wasn’t really recognised as a genre in its own right.
This photo is a 1529 oil painting by the German artist Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480–1538), a pioneer of landscape art and a founding member of the Danube school. The painting portrays the 333 BC Battle of Issus, in which Alexander the Great secured a decisive victory over Darius III of Persia and gained crucial leverage in his campaign against the Persian Empire. The painting is widely regarded as Altdorfer’s masterpiece, and is one of the most famous examples of the type of Renaissance landscape painting known as the world landscape, which here reaches an unprecedented grandeur.
In the 17th century the ‘Classical’ landscape evolved . These paintings 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. Even though Classical Landscape was a new genre, it was not yet popular within the hierarchy of art genres.
Nicholas Poussin -an Arcadian landscape with stories from the legends of Pan and Bacchus
In the late 18th, early 19th century we start to see more landscape art coming about as a result of the industrial revolution. During this time, Landscape became more accepted by the academy.
Because industrial revolution had just come about, it made people long for their old life. This made people appreciate nature more, leading to people wanting to celebrate romanticism and showing love to it.
Pierre -Henri de Valenciennes – 18th Century
The very first photography that we know of was taken in an urban landscape during 1826 or 1827 by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce.
This idea came from the artist Lewis Bush and Idris Khan. Two artists that have very similar work which involves multiple exposures overlapping one another to create and end result photo.
This photo from Lewis Bush involves two different models, as you think, but in reality he used tens maybe hundreds of different males and females and overlapped them to create the ‘average female’ and ‘average male’.
This photo is from Idris Khan and he made this by taking pictures of very similar houses and doing the same thing by overlapping them one on top of another to create this overall photo which looks almost alien-like but also abandoned and scary, and even though so much stuff is happening in each photo with the backgrounds, sky and views, I love how you can clearly see the end result and that it is a house.
I started by importing one photo of my model into photoshop.
For this photo, I used artificial lighting by using a black background with no studio lights above, but I used a flash light with box filter over it. Positioned model in the centre, flash light directly on the right side of model, with my model slanted at the light at about a 75 degree angle. F-stop = f/11 Exposure time = 1/160 seconds. ISO speed = ISO-100 Focal length = 22mm
Then I added all of the other photos I wanted to use which was 11 photos in total. Put them on top of each other, all in the centre of the grid. Changed of all of them apart from the base picture to 50% opacity, and made sure that even though they were mostly all 50% opacity, I wanted to make sure you can still see a clear image of my model.
This is my editing process of adding a few in, then some more, and then some more and below.
Which then created this final photo of all of those masculine pictures overlapping each other, which is called Multiple Exposure.
Photo #2
For this photo, I used the artist reference, Cindy Sherman. Sherman uses this way of editing to deceive the audience into thinking that her style is ‘immature, young, funny maybe even considered ugly’. But I used this way of editing on my photo because I like how different body sections are bright and coloured, and the rest is black and white.
But for my photo, I wanted to use it on a body part instead of the models face as Cindy Sherman did. So, I started by using this photo of my models arm that involved his bicep, tricep, shoulder, forearm and upper back.
I then edited it to look more masculine, increasing the contrast, lowering the exposure, lowering highlights and shadows and increasing the whites and blacks. Then, increased the texture and clarity to show more detail and definition.
Then for the final photo, I wanted to put the same picture but in black and white over the top of that photo with cut out parts in it to reveal the coloured masculine photo underneath.
Which then lead to the final result to be a combination of the two with the black and white photo on the top covering most of it, but shapes cut out in it revealing the coloured photo underneath.
Photo #3
My third photo idea came from the artist, Kensuke Koike and this is because I love how he uses 1 picture to create such a bigger photo by either swapping parts of the face around with other parts. Or, having 3 of the same photo, one lighter, one normal, and one darker all in the same position, and then cutting out parts to reveal lighter parts and darker parts too.
So just before I did this style and reference, I thought why not have two layers a blurred one and a clear one as-well, so I used his editing style but made the main photo blurred, and in the cut-out parts, where it reveals the non-blurred lighter photo underneath, another lighter blurred boarder round the cut-out.
I have chosen to use this photo because it resembles femininity a lot with the use of makeup, a female stereotype and involves a necklace and bracelet which are considered feminine. Also, her green with a ring of hazel round the middle eyes, being the main focus of this photo really brings in the audience and could also be considered a feminine idea.
I started on Adobe Lightroom lowering the exposure and contrast and the other lighting tools like shadow, highlights, whites and blacks to create this darker more focused photo.
Then went into photoshop and had the idea of having a blurred photo of my model and then a brighter photo underneath with cut outs revealing parts of the photo. But I blurred both of the photos, the darker and the lighter one, and then cut out parts so that there was lighter revealed parts, still blurred though. So, after I did that I wanted something else to add to it, so I also, cut out the same shapes in a smaller form of the lighter blurred photo to reveal no blur and just the brighter photo, creating my final photo.
Photo #4
I have stuck with the same editing style for this photo which I really like from Lewis Bush and Idris Khan which involves multiple exposures overlapping one another to create end result photo.
I started by using this photo I took, similar to photo #3 but different style.
I didn’t edit this specific photo because you won’t see it properly anyways as the other photos overlapping it will cover it but not fully.
I then started importing other similar photos on top of each other in the same position to create a mixed, ‘confused’ photo.
This is my editing process of importing each picture in slowly with 50% opacity overlapping each other, which eventually created this full final picture.
I am really glad with how this photo ended up being with all the different multiple exposures on top of each other and how each photo is different but you can still clearly see what’s happening and the full photo.
Photo #5
Very similar to photo #1 and #4, I am really glad with my multiple exposures that I have done and so in this one I tried a different idea.
I started with this photo of my Model and was thinking of adding the different angles and positions he was in on top of it.
Again, editing, didn’t need to edit it at all because more different photos are going over it so you won’t see this photo as much.
Started to add the different poses and angles of him over this photo.
But when I started adding each different picture, I thought why not make them alternate.
Between black and white, and coloured, to give it the same style look, but my own touch on it.
After doing that for a few of the photos it came out to looking like this, but I thought why not add some colour in some of them as-well so I added one blue one on the left, and one yellow one on the right, but off-centred to add to the confusion and exposure look.
Having the exposures at different heights and sizes really creates depth for the photo because they are each individual separate photos all showcasing different things, but all also relate to the same thing.
Photo #6
This photo inspiration came from Cindy Sherman again where she uses the different eyes over different faces, but I didn’t want to do that exact idea so I freestyled and came up with the idea of a male model with makeup on, eye shadow on the inner of the eye, glitter on the upper cheek bone, and mascara on the eye lashes. But in the reflection of the pupil/iris was a female who ‘typically’ would be wearing this sort of makeup.
Started by using this photo.
Thought it was a bit dark and so I increased the brightness, increased the exposure, decreased the contrast, increased highlights ever so slightly, decreased the shadows and so it made this photo.
Which I much prefer as it is brighter, warmer, more friendly and helps the ‘feminine’ aesthetic look. But I wanted to use Cindy Sherman’s style by using someone else’s eye over mine, but I thought why don’t I put it in the reflection of the eye, so I got this photo of another Model.
I didn’t need the whole body so I just cut her out so just her head was showing.
As this would be inside of the pupil and iris.
So, after I cut her head out and put it on top of the pupil/iris, I lowered the opacity to 25% and cut around the outside of the face so it fitted the eye, and so you can still see the eye ball behind it ever so slightly and her face doesn’t stand out too much.
This was the final result of the female face in the males eye reflection whilst the male has on all of the ‘feminine’ products such as makeup, (eye shadow, mascara, glitter).
This is my photo gallery of all of my photos being showcased in!
