The photos that are selected are all the ones that are worth further editing.

These photos are similar to Ansel Adams because of the formal elements used. Ansel Adams’ photos were all about formality. For example the high levels of contrast and high tonal range that I have captured is similar to his photos. There is a lot of texture in the photos – the rocks and the sea are providing these natural shapes and forms not found in manmade architecture. I have deliberately used a high depth of field by setting the aperture to 16 or above, which is not only reminiscent of his images but also allows the camera to capture detail on all different ‘layers’ of the photos. This creates an effect where none of the image is out of focus. I also tried to keep my shutter speed over 1/250 so there was no camera motion blur and so the sea was crisp and frozen in time.

The place where I took these photos is what is known as an SSE in jersey which means “Site of Special Interest”. This means the area has some particular qualities or wildlife that the Jersey government wants to protect and preserve. I think that is a very good thing as we can see, throughout the rest of the island there is other beautiful landscapes like this that non-local millionaires buy and build massive, ugly houses on – that they don’t even live in most of the time, just for the sake of paying less tax. Sites being SSE’s protects it from this. I did this photoshoot with the intent of supporting this cause as I think massive development on rural landscapes ruins the environment and is actually extremely sad. I aimed to capture the beauty of these places to support this and show people why these places need to be protected.

Landscape photography has its roots in, like many other forms and genres of photography, art. Specifically, the romanticism movement of art that began around the start of the industrial revolution – as a sort of rejection and rebellion against the billowing smoke and ugly buildings. The romanticism movement focuses on the beauty of nature and scenery, and this is where landscape photography began.

The first landscape photo was taken around 1826, by an inventor.

Ansel Adams was a pioneer in landscape photography, taking photos of vast american landscapes.

Whilst photographers were taking photos of nature scenery, another type of person was inspired by the industrial revolution, seeing vast structures as inspiring and not ugly, and this was generally the beginning of urban landscape photography.

Countryside Daguerreotypes – these were some of the earliest types of landscape photos taken and were taken by american and french photography.

Western Panoramas – American photographers had a vast natural landscape to photoshoot, so they began to photograph their own landscape.

City photography –  suddenly images of the city started to appear – despite the difficulties of city photography due to long exposure shots being necessary, and photos would get blurred.

City portraiture – as tech improved, film became more sensitive and photos of hustling bustling cities became possible.

Industrial revolution – contrasting romanticism, early photographs of the grand industrial buildings began to emerge.

Romanticism in art and photography is about focusing on strong emotions, nature, and individual experience. It highlights beauty, imagination, and sometimes the mysterious or exotic. Think of dramatic landscapes, powerful moments, and emotional expressions. It’s less about strict realism and more about capturing the feeling of a scene. It involves romanticising certain things like nature or a certain lifestyle. For example, in photography, you might romanticise a landscape by capturing the best scenes only and perhaps putting a feeling of otherworldiness/ nostalgia. When you romanticise something, you make it seem better than it really is; in a way, everything humans think about is romanticised: the grass is always greener on the other side. An example of life being romanticised in our minds is thinking about the life of being an underground artist in New York (think Basquiat) is highly romanticised and the image of it looks really appealing/romantic, but in reality it is quite a hard life to live, and that feeling of romanticism that you get when looking at images isn’t necessarily how that person living that life might be experiencing it.

Romanticism placed particular emphasis on emotion, horror, awe, terror and apprehension. Emotion and feeling were central not only to the creation of the work, but also in how it should be read.​ Romanticism is meant to invoke strong feelings and really glorify the scenes of which it captures.

Romanticism can also have a link with landscape and nature . Landscapes became subjects in their own right and were often charged with symbolism. For romantic artists, nature is a source of inspiration and escape, a refuge from the tumult of the modern world. Landscape is often a key focus of romanticist artists because the nature the photos contain is often raw and places people don’t see very often – creating that feeling of longing for a different path or a different feeling towards life.

Who: artist William Blake and the Spanish painter Francisco Goya have been given the name “fathers” of Romanticism by various scholars for their works’ emphasis on subjective vision, the power of the imagination.​

What: an artistic movement marked by the emphasis on imagination and emotions ​

Where: romanticism started In western Europe around the 18th century at this time the artistic and cultural movement was being revived (Neoclassicism)​

How: With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, 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.​

Why: Romanticism was born as a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. The Romanticist movement celebrated rebellion, sensation, emotion, subjectivity, and individuality and it rejected tradition, reason, rationality, and authority.​

English romantic painter and water colour specialist , known for his romantic paintings that portray colourful imagery and imaginative landscapes. Joseph Mallord William born 23rd of April 1775 inspired modern art by incorporating a view of impossibility into his paintings by inviting unrealistic colouring and faded scenery to give a sense of romanticism

The Sublime

In the critical literature, “the Romantic sublime” refers to the mind’s transcendence of a natural and/or social world that finally cannot fulfil its desire. Revealed in the moment of the sublime is that the mind is not wholly of the world, but this revelation may be triggered by a particular setting in the world.

The sublime as defined by The Tate is : “Theory developed by Edmund Burke in the mid eighteenth century, where he defined sublime art as art that refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation.”

The sublime is in most creative subject areas; photography, fine art, film, writing, poetry and many more.

 

Ansel Adams is a landscape photographer and environmentalist, grew up amid the sand dunes of the golden gate. He takes photos of cliffs and vast open landscapes. When he was young the aftershock of an earthquake broke his nose. He took a big majority of his famous photos in the ‘John Muir Trail’. He grew recognition as a photographer in the 1930s, due to his beautiful photos and sheer commitment to the profession. He is now a world famous photographer who many say is one of the greats. He died on the 22nd of April, 1984.

Adams, along with Fred Archer, developed what is known as the zone system. The zone system is a method of relating and controlling exposure to the film, and development. This technique is copied very often, but not many people have mastered it.

F/64 was a group of west coast photographers including Ansel Adams. The group was founded in 1932. The name refers to the aperture in the camera being very small which made a very deep depth of field and the highest possible sharpness in the photos – the name relates to the groups philosophy. The group advocated for what they called “straight photography” which was pretty much photos which the deepest depth of field, the sharpest possible, a very rich tonal range and a sharp focus – without manipulation. The group was aiming to create a movement away from pictorialism. Pictorialism was the soft, painting style photography that was used by many early 20th century photographers. As a group they generally focused on natural landscapes, using national parks to achieve this (Yosemite etc).

Ansel Adams took photos because he wanted to capture what he saw. Originally, he took photos documenting his travels and his expeditions but he thought they lacked the soul and the power that he really saw in the scene. He developed a technique called visualisation to capture what his minds eye saw. The first time he did this, he used a strong red filter to darken the sky and create an unprecedented mood and atmosphere in his images. Photos with this much tonal range and such deliberate exposure had never been seen before.

I personally love his photography, it is inspiring and makes me feel small seeing the vast landscapes filled with huge mountains and wide, running rivers. The contrast is amazing, and the focal points really stand out. His photos have inspired me to look at the Jersey cliffs and think about how I can make my photos look like his, in regards of contrast, lighting and the vastness of his scenes. His photos often mainly consist of dark tones, often silhouettes, and it makes the scene look powerful, like there could likely be a thunderstorm, although it was likely sunny. Often the only midtones visible in his photos are in the sky. To conclude, his work really stands out to me.

Image Analysis

This is a film photo of a wide river leaving to a tall, snowy mountain range. The genre of this style of photography is landscape. The mise-en-scene presents the sky, filled with dark, dense and contrasting clouds sitting above some snowy mountains. The mountains are often a solid black, perfectly contrasting the snow. Below this, is a river that leads to the mountains. The colour/tone in this image very dark and ominous. For example, if you look at the base of the mountains, or the trees to left of the image, there is hardly any texture visible. However, contrasting this is the river and the sky, which both have mid and light tones to oppose the extremely dark tones of the rest of the image, and stand out. The photographer (Ansel Adams), has clearly used leading lines, which you can see: the river clearly snakes up to the mountain range. The mountain range’s edges also lead up to the highest peak. The use of light in this image is quite varied ranging from dark, to mid, to light. I have circled the most extremes of these points of light. The depth of field is very deep, the whole image is in focus.

This image using lighting with a very high amount of contrast – very deep blacks and very bright whites; the photo has a very big tonal range. The deep blacks present in the mountains provide strong negative space that almost frames the moon and the lit part of the image. The aperture was likely very high like f/22 because of the very wide depth of field. I would believe that Ansel Adams used his visualisation technique and zone system in order to achieve the high contrast and deep blacks – he probably used a colour filter. The ASA was definitely as low as possible to minimise grain, but since it was film it was likely quite tricky to decide which roll to bring on the trip – or he brought lots of rolls and decided for each shot. The amount of texture is astoundingly high because of the high levels of contrast he managed to achieve. There are lots of harsh lines in the image – like the cliff to the left that is solid black contrasts very solidly against the sky and the other quite bright cliff.

He probably wanted to capture the image with quite an air of mystery – the cliff on the left and the shadows on the right almost shroud the cliff in the middle and the moon. He probably felt a sense of awe and tried his best to capture that – capturing the size of the cliff and the detail on the moon. This was likely one of the first photographs that was thought out so clearly and captured so deliberately.

Exposure Bracketing

Exposure bracketing is a method of taking photos where you take three photos of the same scene. You use three different levels of exposure

• Underexposed
• Correctly exposed
• Overexposed

This method allows for a very high dynamic range as you merge the three images and the part of each image that is best exposed will be the most prominent in the image. This method is normally how vivid, perfectly exposed images are created.

Some modern digital cameras have AEB (Auto Exposure Bracketing). This feature basically does it all for you, taking three photos with different levels of exposure. Its usually a setting that you have to turn on.

For the studio portraiture I think my favourite outcomes are the coloured lighting ones, they have a fun feel to them and I like the way all the detail on the face stands out.

Here they are in a virtual gallery.

These photos will look nice together because they both share a common shade of blue, and also have a contrasting red and green next to each other. The high amount of detail on the skin in the photos I think looks really visually effective and high quality.

Final Images

Bigger Versions

My plan now is to create a zine of all these photos as I think that is the best way to tell a story with photos – since they are all edited the same way I think they’ll look really great as a well thought out and put together set.

I’ve got three really effective images in my environmental portraiture, and for the final piece I’m going to have them as a triptych, A5 and all one on top of the other. I think this is the best way to layout these images as they speak for themselves.

Evaluation:

The photos have a nice vintage effect to them and go together quite nostalgically. They almost have a dulled down saturation which resembles film. They are quite simple images that just capture a random moment of skateboarders just hanging out quite serenely.

Here they are in a virtual gallery

The photos I took at the skatepark are a genre called documentary photography – this is the perfect opportunity to create a magazine so the photos are all linked together and tell even more of a story.

Skateboard photography normally consists of hot summer days, shirtless, sweaty people and sweltering sun. I wanted to convey a time in skating unique to the UK – cold, winter night skating – only for the hardcore. Everyone is wrapped up, gloves, hats, big coats. Skating on winter nights is hard – everything hurts more, your legs don’t work as well, the cold bites your fingertips – and this is conveyed pretty well in the photos through outfits, positions, the way people are huddled up.

I want to convey this through body language, angles, and people emotions.

Evaluation:

I think the zine conveys a sense of cold, shivery happiness like I wanted it to. I had to make some tough creative decisions in order to get some of these spreads the way they are, for example, when an image that I like becomes more of a background it is hard to accept – but it is worth it when I can put framed images over these photos because they end up look much more thought through. Also, when a landscape image has lots of negative space on one side I find it works really well to use the space to put frames or text in it. Throughout making this magazine I realised that text almost always looks more professional when it is much smaller than you would initially think. Most of the text that is in the final edition is over half the size of how I originally thought it looked good. Overall I’m really happy with how the zine came out, the high amount of contrast in the photos, and the grainy look I intentionally shot it with at a high ISO in order to have a more lo-fi effect.

Big Prints

I also want to have 5 of these photos printed in large, matte A3 size – I think this will look brilliant with the heavy grain. I’m going to choose 3 darker portraits, and 2 much more heavily exposed photos of small details like clothing or objects. That way I can have them in such an order that its almost like 1 line of a checkerboard.

Danny Evans

Danny Evans is a jersey photographer who did a project on the skateboarders from the island. Capturing the grit, scars and tattoos. This has inspired to me to my own project on the skateboarders in jersey.

Danny Evans is a freelance photographer with over 18 years of experience. He focuses on commercial photography, especially advertising and fashion. His work has been featured in magazines and on billboards in places like Singapore, Australia, Europe, and the UK. Danny is based in Jersey, where he runs his own studio. His unique lighting and set designs make him stand out, and he’s also known for working on fashion shoots for Gallery Magazine in Jersey. In 2023, Danny created an exhibition called “FLUX” at ArtHouse Jersey. This project combined photography, film, and tech to show off sustainable fashion designs from local and international creators. It was all about mixing art and technology to explore modern fashion. Danny started out using old-school film cameras like the Nikon FM but has moved on to advanced digital equipment, including the high-tech Phase One camera system. He’s always upgrading his gear to make sure his work is top-notch. Overall, Danny is passionate about turning everyday settings into amazing photos and is super dedicated to his craft. This has made him popular with both local businesses and big brands.

Pete Thompson

Pete Thompson was a skateboard photographer for 13 years in the 90s – capturing the boom of a huge movement without realising. He worked for different magazines like Transworld Skateboarding and SLAP. He even got the role of Senior Photographer at one of these roles. His photography career began with a Konica Pop point-and-shoot 35mm in the 80s – taking photos of his friends at the skatepark.

He has compiled the entire experience of skateboarding in the 1990s into one nostalgic book called ‘93 til. (I own this book and this was how I was introduced to this photographer). A lot of the philosophy of skateboarding is the desire to capture and document the life – and this is true for photography as well. Pete Thompson was clearly motivated by this desire. His photos are full of friends and good times – just hanging out and skateboarding for the fun of it. He worked with pro skateboarders like Tom Penny, Nyjah Huston, and Tony Hawk – and many others. He travelled the USA and Europe with these pro skateboarders documenting their journey along the way. In an interview with him, he speaks about how they would use the main bulk of the film roll for taking skate photos, and then there would often be a few shots left at the end – he says after a while he felt guilty for wasting these, and begun to take random shots of his friends with the last few on the roll – and these turned out to be some of his favorite photos – I like this.

Photo Analysis.

This is a film photograph of a skateboarding doing an ollie at a skatepark. The genre of this style of photography is portrait/action/identity. The mise-en-scene presents a lot of empty sky – taken up only by a skateboarder doing a large air. The floor takes up probably half the image and has curved concrete which creates an interesting shape to look at. This all creates a simple composition, with the image split into the thirds.

The colour is desaturated, although the sky is vibrant. The musty, dry looking air makes it feel like midsummer, and you can tell its hot, and dry. For example, if you look at the trees they aren’t a bright green but more of a hazy washed out green. The use of light has an old school feel – being a bit washed out. It is clearly taken in the height of summer’s heat – the photo almost has a heat effect. The whole image is very bright and slightly overexposed which creates a vintage, washed out feel.

The focus distance is infinite – the whole image is in focus and there seems to be an extremely wide depth of field. I believe that the photographer has used the rule of thirds – the image is split into three sections vertically – the floor, the sky and the skater – pretty much exactly follow the rule of thirds. I believe that the ISO is 400 – due to the amount of grain, and I believe that the shutter speed is quite high – a minimum of 1/250 because that is how high it needs to be for an action shot to not be blurry. The shot probably has an aperture of probably f/5.6 because of the wide depth of field, and the high amount of light that the other two settings let in.

As Pete Thompson says “Driven by my curiosity of photography. I always just wanted to be shooting something;” I think this is great way to describe a lot of the culture of photography and especially skateboarding. His work has a lot of black and white (not this image) – this is representative of the era he spent most of his career skateboarding – I think he has chosen to make his whole “‘93 til” book black and white because it helps non-skateboarders to understand the cultural significance of the image – a lot of these moments were future defining for the sport and even sport photography in general, without the black and white, it does not convey as well that these are vintage images of a different time – and people may not realise the impact they had. I think this says a lot about the use of colour and tone in photography in general – you have to consider what you want your image to convey and how you’re going to do that. I really admire this work, not only because I am a skateboarder, but also because I can see the thought – and often the lack of thought – he put in while taking the photo and editing it.

PHOTOSHOOT PLAN

My plan is to go down to the skatepark and just talk to the skaters and take natural photos to truly convey identity. I will use a 50mm Canon lens. I love taking photos that tell a story and show life. I think to do this I should also take photos of small details of the people and also things like the scenery and architecture of the skatepark. I think I will go at night and use my flash and a high shutter speed to create a freeze frame effect. I think my photos will end up being more similar to Pete Thompsons’ than Danny Evans’.

Identity is the set of qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance, or expressions that characterize a person. Identity means different things to different people and everyone identifies themselves with something else – could be a job, a role, a parent, a sportsperson – e.g skateboarder, baseball player.

Femininity is described as the qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of girls. The stereotypical qualities for women are pretty much the polar opposite – kind, emotional, compassionate, nurturing, gentle.

The appearance of masculinity and femininity are represented in very different ways through photography. Masculinity is generally represented with sharp lighting, accentuating sharp, aggressive muscle lines, jaw lines and pronounced Adams apples – the sharp lighting also plays a part in making the skin look rough and weathered, which plays into the stereotypes of men being strong brave, hard working. On the other hand, femininity is represented with softer lighting, which places more emphasis on things like collar bones and gradual curves – and also plays a part in making skin look softer and smoother, which plays into the characteristic stereotype of women being soft, nurturing.

Photography captures the essence of individuality through portraits for example showing unique features emotions or objects in the image to tell a personal story.

Binary Opposites

According to https://hautlieucreative.co.uk/photo26al/2024/12/10/femininity-vs-masculinity-jac-2/, Binary opposition originated in Saussurean structuralist theory in Linguistics. Binary opposition is the system by which two theoretical opposites are defined and set apart from one another. Using binary opposites can be very helpful in getting inspiration for a photographic project.

Claude Cahun was born in 1894 and died in 1954. The was multifaceted – a French photographer, sculptor and writer. She is widely famous for her unique, revolutionary and rebellious self portraits that embody personas like weightlifter, aviator, and doll. In 1937 she moved to the island of Jersey with her stepsister and lover – Marcel Moore. She joined the resistance against Nazi Germanys forces during the islands occupation, and was imprisoned and sentenced to death in 1944 – however, the Germans never carried out the sentencing for fear of public outcry, so she narrowly survived. Many of her pieces and photos were seized and destroyed when the Nazis seized her home. The Jersey National trust holds the surviving collection of her art. Her health delined due to the imprisonment and she died in 1954 – her stepsister and parter commited suicide in 1972 – both are buried in St Brelades churchyard.

Her work wasn’t well known at the time – and it might’ve often been ridiculed, she was a cross gender person – and all her pieces challenged gender norms and general societal standards for photography and gender conventions. She used her androgynous look to her advantage by shaving her head and using this to create a sense of confusion and gender neutral appearances – this was almost never before seen.

IMAGE ANALYSIS

The mise-en-scene presents a multi-exposure image of Claude Cahun with a very androgynous, shaved, gender neutral appearance in two different positions – almost looking at each other. The background is dark and chalky. There are no clothes visible. The composition is central, the two faces being on either side of the centre, and the photo is well balanced.

She once explained: “Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.” This quote may lead me to believe that these two faces may represent different masks – despite them looking the same – therefore it could be linked to some sort of differing emotion, or mood. There is a deep personal tension in the photo – and the name of the photo: Que Me Vas Tu? (What do you want from me) could indicate that the two headed creature present in the image is some sort of metaphor for a splitting of identities. In her case she is presenting herself as gender neutral as there are no clear characteristics between male and female.

The photo is clearly taken on a film camera – as was the only method of the time. And has a high level of grain. There is a harsh contrast and the eyes are almost a solid black. Similarly, the whites are a sharp and crisp solid white, with not much texture in the lighting. The background however is rich in texture and almost appears to be some sort of chalk board or similar.

I believe in this image she could be trying to make a statement on some sort of duality – for example, the duality of personalities of identities, the duality of male vs female. This is backed up by other things in the image like the duality of the black background against the harsh white skin (binary opposition).

WWII Activism

During WWII, Claude Cahun and her partner Marcel Moore did some really brave resistance work against the Nazis who occupied Jersey. They used their artistic and writing skills to fight back by creating anti-Nazi leaflets. What’s really cool is that they wrote the messages in German so the soldiers could read them, and they left them in sneaky places like soldiers’ pockets or around the island. This made it seem like there was a big underground movement, even though it was just the two of them.

Eventually, though, the Nazis figured out what they were doing, and in 1944, Cahun and Moore were arrested. They were sentenced to death, but luckily the sentence wasn’t carried out. Still, they were thrown in prison, and the experience really messed up Cahun’s health. Even though their resistance wasn’t super well-known at the time, what they did was super inspiring. It shows how creative resistance can be really powerful, even if it’s just a small group of people standing up to something so terrible.

What’s really inspiring about Cahun and Moore’s resistance is how creative and fearless they were, even though they were basically on their own. They didn’t just sit back and accept what was happening—they took real risks to stand up to the Nazis. It wasn’t just about passing out leaflets either; their messages were psychological warfare. They wanted to make the soldiers question what they were doing, and that’s such a smart and unique way to resist. They didn’t have weapons or an army, but they had their words and ideas, and they used them to fight back. It’s honestly amazing that two people could cause so much trouble for the occupiers with just some paper and a lot of courage.

Cindy Sherman