The Environment

Our second brief for the term, 'The Environment'. For this one we have to pastiche one of the photographs below:

 Robert Adams, 'On Signal Hill', 1983

 Roger Fenton, 'The Terrace and Park at Harewood House', 1860

Jem Southam, 'Seaford Head', 1999

We have to 'imitate the photographic language of the image by researching and reproducing compositional form, camera setting, lighting conditions, depth of field and scale. Your work should recreate the aesthetic and feeling/mood of your chosen image'.

We also have to 'submit a set of images (minimum of three) based upon your personal conceptual approach to representing the landscape. There may be political aspects you may wish to consider, or investigate the relationship between human intervention upon nature'.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ansel Adams is no doubt one of the most famous landscape photographers, with work commissioned by the United States Department of the Interior which celebrates the country's natural heritage. This work allowed him to express his artistic flair and genius through technical and aesthetic inventiveness.

This image shows a great landscape that has not yet been overrun by man, Ansel Adams photographs it in such a way that it looks treacherous and untamed. 

The scale of the buildings shown here being overwhelmed by the natural landscape in which they have been made. This image shows quite well how Ansel Adams was able to capture the aesthetics of the land, he has caught the way that the rock is domineering over these tiny little buildings. These days people would not think how to photograph this area as they are generally tourists looking for a snapshot of themselves within this man made area rather than being in this vast significant landscape.

Stephen Shore

Fast forward about 50 years and we find ourselves looking at some very different landscape work

This certainly does not strike as the treacherous and untamed area of Ansel Adams

The image above shows a family in the great outdoors, the landscape is still very domineering but now has less of an impact of being this 'Great Beyond' like in Friedrich's painting 'Wanderer above the Sea of Fog'

Henry Wessel

For some reason I have been really drawn to these two images shot by Wessel.  The plants or crops  have almost created a prison wall, apart from a small opening for the owners to get in and out of their house. The house has been pushed into the background by these quite dominating crops, very nearly shutting this house off from the rest of the world. 

The 'nature' within this image is being dominated by all of the concrete, bricks, mortar and tarmac surrounding it. The composition of these two images is similar, there is the same amount of sky, same idea of having a building with some plants/trees in front of it and then the small amount of road in the foreground. The trees have been boxed in and placed to create better aesthetics for the people of the area, this also shows the interference of humans on nature.

Richard Misrach

This is a different style of landscape photography, it has become less about the area and more about who is occupying the area. It seems to me that all these people have looked at a generic landscape image of a beach with a beautiful sunset and thought about escaping for the weekend. But on arrival they have all discovered that everyone else has had the idea of escape. 

John Davies

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have decided that I want to pastiche Robert Adams ('On Signal Hill') photograph because the deadpan shot forces you to look at the frail trees grasping at the cusp of the hill, to me this shows how fragile the landscape is against the forever expanding Human race.

This is a test shot that I took on my DSLR mainly just to get a quick look at the composition and see how close I would be able to get to the original. I also took a few shots on my bronica so that I would eventually be able to go into the darkroom and print. If my 120mm shot of this scene comes out like the above image then I will still have a bit of dodging and burning to do as the sky is not bright enough and the land beyond the hill doesn't quite match. The composition is relatively close but I still want to go to a few different locations to see if I can get a better shot.

I have also shot a few test images for the second part of the brief, where I am looking at the invasion of human kind on the landscape.

I shot these images on an overcast day as I wanted to show the 'invasion' of man in a bad way. If I had gone and shot these on a bright and sunny day it would have given the images a warm look making out that this is a good thing. The colours would also have been brighter which again would have changed the way the images would have been viewed.

I have shot some more for this series on black and white as to stop any possible distractions and to give it more of a documentary style feel.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Had our environment tutorial today, found it very helpful as before it, the more I thought about my 'invasion' idea the more I disliked it.
At the weekend I went out to some woods to do some outdoor lighting tests, there were some concrete stairs down into the woods which I found to be quite interesting.

I went back the other day still with the notion of shooting a few frames for my original idea, I also shot the stairs because I think somewhere in my sub-concious I was thinking about how a decision to take a certain path leads onto something happening within your life. It didn't really make sense at the time and throughout the tutorial I was really struggling of a way of putting some words together that would suggest this idea.
Somehow through my mumbling of words we discussed a few photographers that I could look at to help me and I also decided that this piece of work would be a metaphor for the journey of life and how most people are not really sure where they are going.

Below is the shot that basically started this idea. I am a bit annoyed that I didn't get the bottom of the stairs in, but that could be relevant to the idea of not knowing what is coming next or even where you have come from.

With both these images the camera is very involved in the path and I have shot them specifically without anyone in them. The reason for not having anyone in the images is because I want the series to become about the viewer and how they took certain paths that lead to where they are now.

 Because we have been having seminars for another assignment where we have been deconstructing images a lot (even for the pastiche for this assignment) I have been trying to deconstruct my own work. The path that the camera is practically on is on a steady incline suggesting that 'things are on the up' as generally things going up are seen as a good thing (depending on a persons disposition this could instead be seen as an uphill struggle), the trees full of leaves again suggests that life is good and full. The wall is an obstacle and because the path goes round the corner says that there is uncertainty of what is next and how the obstacle will be overcome. It also looks like you are able to go off to the left into the open so at this crossroad you will have to make a decision, which life is full of.

One of the photographers that I was pointed towards was Adrian Ensor http://www.adrianensor.com/main.html

Nicholas Hughes
http://www.nicholas-hughes.net/

Paul Hill - White Peak Dark Peak

"Hill’s landscapes are produced within a tight tonal range of grays, whilst the skyline, invariably, has been removed from the image. The latter technique draws the viewer into a two-dimensional plane and as a consequence creates an invitation for contemplation of the very nature of the terrain itself."

http://www.artreview.com/profiles/blogs/paul-hills-white-peak-dark?xg_source=activity 

Test Shoot

I was lucky enough to be asked by two 2nd year fashion promotion students to do a test shoot for one of their projects, it went very well and we had a great laugh. I will be shooting for their actual editorial shoot next week too.
Here are a few images from the test shoot:

Between Frontier and the Back-Garden

Deconstructing an Environmental Photographer

I have decided to select Simon Norfolk and three of his images to deconstruct.

The images have been taken in Afghanistan where Norfolk has done a vast amount of work documenting the scenes in context of the ongoing conflict.

A home, made of shipping containers outside of Kabul.

A Government building close to the former Presidential palace at Darulaman, destroyed in the early 1990's.

A former teahouse in the Shah Shahid district of Kabul.

So the first image being of the containers has either been shot early in the morning or at dusk as there are no shadows and the image feels awfully cold due to the colours. The composition of this piece leads you from the containers on the right down 'the street' of other potential homes. Obviously all of these shots are set up as a documentation but they are also an outsiders observation, what I mean is that the camera isn't too involved into the subjects, it has taken a step back to view what is going on around it.

The abandoned ravaged Government building has a deadpan look to it because it has been shot straight on with nothing really around it and a blank sky, the vignetting does give it a sinister and uneasy look. The focus is solely on this building because Norfolk wants you to delve into it and evoke some emotions. I think this would have been shot quite late afternoon because looking at the shadows they are quite long and the sun is still very bright and hot.

The last image is rather dramatic due to the cloudy sky and almost desolate area apart from these ruins of a teahouse and balloon salesman. The fact that this man is in the shot kind of signifies a gain of hope within the country, under the Taliban balloons were illegal. But now there are many balloon sellers that sell there balloons to the kids which hopefully brings some joy in to there lives. 

We watched a video on Norfolk in a lecture earlier today where he said that he wanted to show the areas of Afghanistan as a disappointment because billions of U.S dollars have been spent on it but it still looks like squalor. He has, I think, achieved this within the first and last photo above due to the the cold colours in the first and the way he has captured the armageddon look of the sky and lone wandering balloon man. Both of these images make me feel pretty sympathetic towards the people that have to live in these places, which again is what Norfolk wants the viewers to feel. He is making a statement through his camera, which is similar to what Burke was doing in the late 19th Century but Norfolk is able to take a free rein and put across his own feelings and beliefs on the subject.

The middle image to me, is the one that stands out the most, this is because it doesn't have that same cold feeling to it or the sense of armageddon that the others do. Instead it almost looks as if it is a tourist attraction, shot to look like an appealing place to go (for a brochure) and then you look a bit closer and see all the bullet holes and destruction. It makes you think of the terror and hurt that most likely took place there.

Inductions

For the past few weeks we have been having inductions to the studios, lighting equipment and cameras.

We started using medium format cameras, black and white film and continuous tungsten lighting. We learnt how to put a small set together using various studio equipment like stands, backdrops and poly boards.

Standard contact sheet.

Followed by a light density step wedge, the first one was too bright so I dropped the aperture down a stop to let in more light. Then the last part was seeing the effect of using a different grade (changing the contrast)

The first print I did, I may have forgotten to check the borders and the frame wasn't quite in so there are black lines. 

So after going back into the darkroom and checking everything was how I wanted it I printed the two images below. The top image was set at grade 2 and the one below it set to grade 5. You can clearly see the difference in contrast between the two.

I then chose another negative to enlarge and also changed the border as to get used to using the easel.
The second picture of the hammer has been split graded, if you look closely you can see the slight difference in contrast.

I have used medium format cameras in the studio and on location and also printed quite a lot in the darkroom so it wasn't really anything new, but seeing as I haven't done any printing since the beginning of this year it was great to have a refresher and get to know how everything works at the Uni.

I was more interested in what was to come next, the large format induction! I enjoy shooting film so it is really good that this semester is based on film.
I have used large format once before but nowhere near as in depth as we have been going with it. It is not as daunting as you think but it does take a lot of patience as it is a long process. There are rather a few things to check to make sure you get an exposure, like making sure the lens is closed, making sure the darkslide is in or out depending what stage you are at and so on.

So firstly, black and white 5x4, we used this as a proofing method and to get used to all the dials on the camera. We looked at keystoning which is where the straight lines of buildings (or books) bow due to lens distortion or because the film isn't straight on to the subject. This did take a while to fiddle around with and make sure it was right, definitely something to be practised.

Moving onto colour, same principal as black and white, get the correct exposure etc. With this one though we were looking at perspective by using different lenses. This one was shot with a 180mm lens, creating depth between the two objects.

Colour printing! This was awesome. Enjoyed this so much and can't wait to print some more.
It is obviously quite similar to black and white printing where you take a neg shine light through it and make step wedges. There is one difference that you have to make and that is colour balance, if the image is too red then you have to add yellow and magenta to compensate the negative. This is what I had to do to get the correct colour balance, which can be seen in the last test strip.

Half way through my step wedges I printed this:

This happened because I was using older paper that already had some test strips in and one had been exposed to a little bit of light. So even though the colour looks good and balanced I had to do another because of uncertainty.

But eventually got to the full print stage and printed this:

It was great to see all the fine detail of the cows hair and the bright colours of the car printed on this paper from the 5x4 negative shot a few days before.

I made another print at the same exposure as the previous one but added another five seconds while waving my hand around to create some vignetting.

Have a lighting workshop tomorrow, should be fun.