Photoshoot Plan
For my photos, I decided to go to St Anne Port as there is a dynamic balance of rock, water and sky; the only three things I want to feature in my photographs. Inspired by Ansel Adams’ composition, I am going to shoot my photos with a shallow focus to include all elements of the landscape in view while making the large and intimidating rocks a focal point. This allows for elements of the sublime to continue to shine through into my pictures while having the influence of Ansel Adams still prominent in my work through the content in which I am focusing on. To emphasise this I am going to shoot my photos from a low angle, positioning myself on the ground and tilting my camera upwards to make the rocks appear larger and therefore more daunting. I will take these on a day which has prominent clouds in the sky to overall make the image more interesting, especially when it comes to editing.
Contact sheet
HDR Edits
In Photoshop Lightroom, I selected a few of my best images that featured the yellow aspects of the rocks and edited them to appear as HDR photos. I choose these pictures specifically because I wanted to really bring out the vibrancy and beauty of the natural elements of coastal landscapes. These edits helped to extenuate the colours of these photographs, bringing out the contrast between the blue sky and sea and the tense rocks. By toggling with the effects in the SDR Display setting, I was able to find a perfect balance in my photos where the highlights in the waves and clouds had great clarity while not removing depth from the shadows in the foreground. These effects were overall complementary with my work due to the colours and texture of my photographs being heightened to a level that allows for definition to really shine through.
Developing
Final Photos and Edits
When choosing my final pictures, I considered ones which looked the most like something that would come out of Ansel Adams’ work and finally edited them in black and white to make them appear as a collection while also furthering visuals that highlight my inspiration and intended goal. I edited my pictures with Adams’ technique of the Zone System in mind where he includes a tonal scale of 0-10 in his photographs; including areas where the brightest whites can be seen as well as deep blacks. I made a specific effort to incorporate all these tones in my final pictures and I guaranteed this by increasing levels of highlights and shadows as well as contrast when editing. With this in consideration, I still ensured that I would not lose clarity and texture in the focal points during this process in order to maintain detail seen within nature.