Intro / Photographing the environment

“…it is hard to consider the birth of the environmental movement without mentioning Carleton Watkins and the rippling, far-reaching influence of his 1861 images of Yosemite National Park. All that came after President Lincoln’s signing of the Yosemite Grant, Muir’s nature writing, the founding of conservation groups such as the Sierra Club – can be traced back to the intake of breath when his images were seen for the first time.”

20th Century 1900 —

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating “pure” photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph…even creating a Zonal System to ensure that all tonal values are represented in the images. Ansel Adams was an advocate of environmental protection, national parks and creating an enduring legacy of responses to the power of nature and sublime conditions…Other members in Group f/64 included Edward Weston, but also Imogen Cunningham among other female photographers who have often been overlooked in the history of photography.

Key Features

Ansel Adams’s photographic style is characterized by its sharp focus, exceptional detail, and dramatic use of light and shadow. He sought to capture the grandeur and beauty of the natural world, emphasizing the importance of preserving these pristine landscapes.

One of the key compositional techniques that Adams employed in many of his images was to place the horizon about two-thirds of the way up the frame. This would mean the composition was biased in favour of the landscape rather than the sky and would help to communicate the epic scale of the scene

BLOG POSTS to complete…

1. An introduction to Ansel Adams and The f/64 Group (landscape photography), including a mood-board of influential images and cross references
2. Create an in-depth case study that analyses and interprets the work of Ansel Adams
3. A blog post that clearly shows your photoshoot(s) , contact sheets, selected best images, editing methods
4. A blog post that clearly shows your final images

IMAGE ANALYSIS: For your analysis of Adams’ work and practice, try and find the story behind the image – as an example, see Monolith, the face of Half Dome, 1927

EXTENSION > COMPARE & CONTRAST: Compare and contrast the work of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston using Photo Literacy Matrix. Find 3 quotes that you can use in your analysis, that either supports/ disapprove your own view. Make sure that you comment on the quote used.

For example, you can use quotes:
1. a quote from Adams’ on Weston’s influence
2. a quote from Adams’ on his own practice, eg. technique, pre-visualisation (zone system), subject (nature), inspiration etc.
3. a quote from Weston on Adams’ images.
4. a quote from someone else, for example a critic, historian that comments either on Adams’ or Weston’s work.

I can’t tell you how swell it was to return to the freshness, the simplicity and natural strength of your photography … I am convinced that the only real security lies with a certain communion with the things of the natural world

— A letter from Edward to Ansel in 1936

Starting points…

Who – were they ?

What – did they do ?

When – was this taking place and what else was happening at the time

Where – was this happening eg Northern California

How – did all of this become synthesised ?

Why – what was driving these changes / developments

Practical / Creative Responses

Create a mind-map + mood-board of potential locations around Jersey that you could record as a response to Ansel Adams….look for extremes (either calm or wild, derelict, desolate, abandoned or stormy, battered and at the mercy of nature)

AIM to photograph the coastline, the sea, the fields, the valleys, the woods, the sand dunes, Cliffs etc.
USE the wild and dynamic weather and elements to help create a sense of atmosphere, and evoke an emotional response within your photo assignment.
PHOTOGRAPH before dark, at sunset or during sunrise…and include rain, fog, mist, ice, wind etc in your work
LOOK for LEADING LINES such as pathways, roads etc to help dissect your images and provide a sense of journey / discovery to them.

Photo-assignment (Ansel Adams inspired)

Monday 24th Feb – Monday 3rd March due date

Take 150-200 photos of romanticised rural landscapes in response to Ansel Adams and the f/64 groups work. Add your edited selective contact sheets / select your best 6-10 images / include edits and screen shots to show this process.

Ensure you include both monochrome and colour examples and show experimentation of producing HDR images from your bracketed shots using techniques both in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Ensure that you include the following key terms in your blog posts…

Definitions

development: a chemical process, carried out in the dark, which makes the image exposed on the film visible and permanent in negative form.

exposure: the amount of light that falls on the film (which will become the photographic negative). This is regulated by controlling the size of the aperture through which light enters the camera and/or the length of the exposure.

gray card: a standardized card, used for measuring light, which corresponds to Zone V, or mid-tone gray.

hand-held light meter: a light-measuring device that is separate from the camera. A spot meter, which covers a one degree angle, is ideal for measuring target zones.

previsualization: a mental exercise in which the photographer imagines the subject in terms of the black, white, and grays desired in the final photographic print.

spot meter: a type of hand-held meter that allows the photographer to easily measure light falling on very small areas within the subject matter.

zones: a specific set of tonal values consisting of pure black, the base white of the black-and-white photographic paper, and eight or nine shades of gray in between [see Zone Scale Card]. When the Zone System is used, the darkest areas of a photographic image are referred to as low values (Zones I — III), the gray areas are called middle values (Zones IV — VI), and the light areas are high values (Zones VII — IX). The zones are always referred to by roman numerals.

EXPOSURE BRACKETING

Exposure bracketing means that you take two more pictures: one slightly under-exposed (usually by dialing in a negative exposure compensation, say -1/3EV), and the second one slightly over-exposed (usually by dialing in a positive exposure compensation, say +1/3EV), again according to your camera’s light meter.

TASK : try a few variation of exposure bracketing to create the exposures that you want…you may already have pre-sets on your phone or camera to help you do this, but experimenting manually will help your understanding!

Many digital cameras include an Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) option. When AEB is selected, the camera automatically takes three or more shots, each at a different exposure. Auto Exposure Bracketing is very useful for capturing high contrast scenes for HDR like this…

…by taking the same photograph with a range of different exposure settings

You can use Exposure Compensation to quickly adjust how light or how dark your exposure will be using these controls…

Or set the amount of “bracketing” like this…

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HDR photography is a technique where multiple bracketed images are blended together to create a single beautifully exposed photograph with a full dynamic range of tones from the very dark to the very brightest.

Your camera can only capture a limited range of lights and darks (i.e., it has a limited dynamic range). If you point your camera at a dark mountain in front of a bright sunset, no matter how much you tweak the image exposure, your camera will generally fail to capture detail in the mountain and the sky; you’ll either capture an image with a beautiful sky but a dark, less detailed mountain, or you’ll capture an image with a detailed mountain but a bright, blown-out sky. High dynamic range photography (HDR) aims to address this issue. Instead of relying on the camera’s limited dynamic range capabilities, you take multiple photos that cover the entire tonal range of the scene.

Ansel Adams zone system was in essence a pre-cursor of HDR with the outcome of producing an image with a full range of tones showing details in both the bright areas and dark shadows.

Further Creative Responses

During the month of March you will carry out further photo-assignments designed to encourage more creative approaches…

1. Panoramic Landscapes
2. Joiner Landscapes

Panoramic Landscapes

Considerations

Level surface, arc-like open landscape. Try to visualise how your landscape will look divided into slices (5-10 slices). Move your camera along a steady plane, use a tripod if possible.

David Hockney Joiner Photo-collage

Considerations

Choose a suitable landscape. Visualise how you can photograph the view in “chunks”. Start on one side and work your way around the view carefully photographing it in a grid-like manner. Do not worry if your images overlap—often this is better anyway.

Always follow the 10 Step Process and create multiple blog posts for each unit to ensure you tackle all Assessment Objectives thoroughly :

1. Mood-board, definition and introduction (AO1)
2. Mind-map of ideas (AO1)
3. Artist References / Case Studies (must include image analysis) (AO1)
4. Photo-shoot Action Plan (AO3)
5. Multiple Photoshoots + contact sheets (AO3)
6. Image Selection, sub selection, review and refine ideas (AO2)
7. Image Editing/ manipulation / experimentation (AO2)
8. Presentation of final outcomes (AO4)
9. Compare and contrast your work to your artist reference(AO1)
10. Evaluation and Critique (AO1+AO4)

Photo Literacy Matrix