Practical Brief
For my practical response I am going to attempt to question people expectations of landscape photography and attempt to capture the contrasts between people and landscapes, urban and natural landscapes and modern and decomposing landscapes. I will also develop the theme explored in my curatorships task, that of the surrealists and the idea that an image can be projected upon by the viewer and reveal inner sub-conscious meaning. This can further be elicited by the photographer seeking to evoke a mood within the photograph as in the work of the photo-scessionists. To do this I am going to explore with different forms of photographic technology including filters and Photoshop. The genre of landscape photography lends itself well to photographic challenge - given the relatively static nature of the subject. I am looking for rich, evocative and atmospheric images.
In London there is a enormous contrast between urban and natural areas. For my first set of observations I am going to challenge peoples expectations of landscape by combining these completely opposite types of landscape photography.
Landscape Photography- National Geographic
Landscape photography took off as a genre in the 1850's when photographers started to explore the world with their bulky equipment. They initially took inspiration from the world of Art with regards to subject matter, view point, composition and lighting. As photographers battled with the elements and exposures, they included elements of landscape as a 'biblical' background which in turn evoked a powerful response in the viewer . A good example of this genre in Art is Rubens 'Fall of Phaeton' . No where is this more evident that in the work of American landscape photographers such as Ansel Adams where landscape meant wilderness. This theme continues in the work of National Geographic landscape photographers today.
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In this image the soaring, slender trunks of these trees draw the viewer's eye to the central pin point of sun from which the enhanced and extraordinary beams of light emanate. Referencing Baroque artists such as Rubens and at the same time also evoking the "tunnel of light" that near death survivors talk of. The sun is deliberately placed in the center of the image to reinforce the spiritual mood the photographer seeks to create in the viewer
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A similar composition in this image which places the trunk of the tree central to the image, I have chosen this image for it's attempt at defining the textures in the landscape.
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Response - Coldfall Woods.
I went to Coldfall Woods aware that the wide vistas of landscape photographers would not be available to me, but hoping to explore light , patterns and textures that are made by the surrounding vegetation. I was blessed with sunny weather that day, but it was intermittent and as a result I spent a lot of time changing the aperture on my camera to compensate for this. I found keeping the aperture at F4 and F6 , and maintaining a shutter speed somewhere between 200 and 400 the most successful.
Final select
In this image I sought to adopt some of the centralising composition by placing the path in the centre of the image. Your eye is automatically drawn to the light pool around the base of the tree, which I enhanced in photoshop. I distorted the focus around the edges to give the image more depth of field and to give you the sense of being drawn into an image. The darkness of the picture gave the image a sense of foreboding which I was pleased with, but I feel the lack of vista and drama in the picture means it is not as evocative as I had wished.
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I played with texture and light in this image through the leaves of the tree canopy in the woods. There are so many layers to the image, that it becomes more about the pattern than the actual tree. I enhanced the light effect with photoshop.
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Urban Photography
I was encouraged by my initial landscape photographs, but felt they lacked the drama of big vistas and so looked to urban landscapes to see if that would provide more material .
Celebrated Magnum Photographer Dennis Stock, worked at Magnum from the 1950's to today. He describes himself as a photographer of themes, large and small - a painter with a camera rather than a news photographer. He produced a series of photographs in Tokyo called ' the window washers of Shiodome' in 2005. He was there because he was being interviewed about a series of photographs he had taken of James Dean but was captivated by the extraordinary beauty of the steel and glass structures whose name means ' where the tides end'. What Stock captured were the layers of images the glass offered in its multiple reflections.I went to two locations to explore this - one in London, the other in Barcelona.
Response to Urban Landscape - London
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I walked around London bridge and the Barbican to capture the patterns and textures made by the buildings, but I also wanted to capture the faces of building which would look interesting when a natural landscape was superimposed on it. These pictures where captured mostly around the Barbican. The Barbican is an area that was devastated during world war two and has now been developed into a residential estate with lots of extra attractions. Around the residential estates there is the Barbican Arts Centre, the Museum of London, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama etc. but all of these buildings come under the general name and area of the Barbican.
I am very pleased with the composition of this image and the use of light and shadow, The shadows cast by the balconies have an architectural definition that is the same as the actual building. It is a powerful image. I looked at it in black and white, but felt that the original blue of the balcony is an important enhancement. I didn't have a tripod when I took this picture and realised how important the stability of the tripod is in these images. As a result the framing is slightly askew.
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My second image captures something of the vista of landscape photography - the wilderness of Ansel Adam's images with a vast sky - something that is quite hard to capture in London, but which when juxtaposed against the curve of the building gives the illusion of a wide sky. The curve almost gives the impression of an image that has been taken with a fish eye lens. I altered the colour gradients a little to enhance the sky.
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Artist research - Rui palha
My shots from London and Barcelona reminded me of the work of Rui Palha a Portuguese street photographer, in her series 'street Moments' a lot of her shots concentrate on the contours and patterns made by the architecture of the city, which i find similar to my intentions when capturing the city.
The figure is the main feature of this shot and the first thing your eye is attracted to, almost like a silhouette wearing all black, it contrasts against the reflected patterns on the floor, it takes a second for the viewer to decipher the rest of the image surrounding the figure.
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The way Palha has composed this picture draws the
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±Urban Landscapes - Response - Barcelona
I went to Barcelona in Autumn 2013 and photographed the extraordinary structures and designs by Gaudi as well as observing street and market life. The designs of the buildings were so unique and powerful, that I felt it was possible to take classic landscape images.
Barcelona Selects.
This is an image of the Gaudi cathedral which towers 170m over Barcelona. The angle and slight tilt shift effect to the image makes it seem as though the cathedral is quite small. I used HDR to bring out the details of the sunny blue sky and the juxtaposition of the crane coming out the middle of an ancient 19th century cathedral
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The vast industrialization of this area in Barcelona was extraordinary, it is one of the largest mega yacht shipping bays in Europe, I found one of the most interesting part of this bay, from a photographic point of view, was the vast array of different vibrant colours.
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Barcelona - textures
After my work in Barcelona, I wanted to explore further the idea that contemporary landscape photography lends itself well to modern techniques of manipulation to enhance the mood and meaning of an image. Research for this included the original photo-secessionists from my exhibition who fought to show that photography could be art and that the purpose of a photograph was to evoke a mood in the observer, and the contemporary photographic artist Christoffer Relander.
Artists Research - Christoffer Relander
Christoffer Relander was born in Finland 1986 and is best known is most known for his multiple exposures images between man and nature, which he does in camera while shooting with a DSLR. His images have an extraordinary fragility about them. I think it is the translucent effect of the overlaying that gives them this quality. I wanted to capture this double layer effect and to do double exposure images with a 'black devil' 35mm film camera, but the results were not good, so I used my images shot with the Nikon D70 and used photoshop to overlay the images. Instead of taking human forms, I chose to juxtapose the urban with natural landscape.
ARTISTS RESEARCH - BORIS MIKHAILOV
Boris Mikhailov is a Ukrainian Fine Art photographer. He created a whole series of images called ' Yesterday's Sandwich' during the 1960 - 1970. The title refers to the technique he used which involved 'sandwiching' two negatives to create one final image. He initially devised this technique to avoid the fierce censorship of photography that existed when the Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. When nude photographs of his wife were fond by the KGB he lost his job. He developed this technique to hide to the overt nudity by overlapping colours and forms in two unrelated images. His work became famous for developing a personal language through double exposure. He explores the time/s pace dimensions of his photographs to create an imaginary, surreal almost ethereal realm. Critics describe his work as an extraordinary double world of soviet drudgery juxtaposed with sex and beauty. His pictures remained undiscovered for 50 years as they were banned under Soviet Rule. He is now considered one of Russia's most influential photographers.
Response - Natural and Urban double exposure
I think this strand works well but its a bit inconsistent, I like the individual pieces I have produced and I think they work well individually but each piece turn out quite unique making them look kind of inconsistent when put together. In the top and bottom pictures on the right I think I managed to create a very interesting piece by imposing a picture of nature onto an industrial landscape, I took inspiration for these two images from a technique called double exposure, originally created on film cameras where you expose the film to two different images and the second exposure imposes itself onto the constraints of the first exposure. In both pictures you can clearly see the contrast between the man made industrial landscape and the natural landscape, I imposed the industrial landscapes onto the natural landscapes to make the industrial landscape follow the contours of natural shapes and patterns
In the other two images on the left I manage to integrate natural landscapes into a normal, industrial, urban day. In the image on the bottom left its almost as though I managed to make the buildings look like a window into a fantasy natural world and the exterior, with the train passing and the rail tracks, is the urban reality, this reminds me of my first impressions of David Keochkieran's work, who features in my exhibition. I find the top left image the most interesting as it seems as if the plantation has taken over the building yet the builder on the balcony is continuing to work on the building as if that is how it is meant to be. This gave me my next idea for my project, of going out and taking photos with the intentions of capturing urban landscapes where nature and vegetation has started to take over the industrial structures, and has hindered them unusable or abandoned, but made them more beautiful.
In the other two images on the left I manage to integrate natural landscapes into a normal, industrial, urban day. In the image on the bottom left its almost as though I managed to make the buildings look like a window into a fantasy natural world and the exterior, with the train passing and the rail tracks, is the urban reality, this reminds me of my first impressions of David Keochkieran's work, who features in my exhibition. I find the top left image the most interesting as it seems as if the plantation has taken over the building yet the builder on the balcony is continuing to work on the building as if that is how it is meant to be. This gave me my next idea for my project, of going out and taking photos with the intentions of capturing urban landscapes where nature and vegetation has started to take over the industrial structures, and has hindered them unusable or abandoned, but made them more beautiful.
Next you have to drag the image you are imposing on top of the image you are imposing onto and change the layer mode, i usually try out a few different modes to see which one fits the picture best but the main few i use are, soft light, overlay and lighten.
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To create one of the superimposed pictures you start by importing both pictures into photoshop, for my project I am using a picture of the Barbican tower black and imposing a shot of tree leaves on to the facade of the building
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The next step i did was to cut away the imposed leaves from the sky so it was only overlaid onto the building. To do this I used the pen tool (the tool on the right that looks like a pen), the pen tool is a very useful tool in photoshop that I use often, it lets you place anchors and draws lines between, you can curve the lines or keep them straight, this means that you can very accurately draw around something that has curves and angles, like the Barbican tower block, to cut it away I just make the selection and cut the shape of the tower block into the layer of the leaves.
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Response - additional explorations of reflection and double exposure.
Gueorgui Pinkhassov is a Russian photographer. His work involves exploring individual details through reflections or particular kinds of light, often approaching abstraction. The image on the left was taken in Venice and shows the reflection of a building in puddle with leaves. It is a very disconcerting image because you have to study it for a long time to work out what the image is. In that respect it echoes Steichen who wanted his images to induce a state of reverie in the viewer. My response is in a similar image I took in North London as part of an exploration about nature and urban landscapes.
The flatiron, 1904. Steichen photographed the iconic and extraordinary flat iron building in New York many times. Using the technique he learnt from the Lumiere brothers in Paris, Steichen managed to mimick the colours used by a contemporary of his, Artist James Whistler who worked in a similar way to produce oil paintings that evoked a dreamy and pensive mood by his use of colour. Steichen mimicks these 'Nocturne' paintings by brushing layers of pigmented gum bichcromate over platinum prints. The juxtapostion of the resolutely modern subject matter with the signature 'dreamy' colour scheme designed to evoke a mood of contemplation and stillness. I explored the juxtaposition of nature and urban in a similar way. The underlying shot is of an abandoned warehouse which I photographed with the Nikon. I created the cloud effect by spraying talcum powder as I took the shots with varying degrees of success. On auto-focus the camera struggled to determine whether the focus should be on the talc or the background and often froze. I then photo shopped the winter trees I had photographed outside on the same day. I think it is an interesting idea, but the monochrome effect is flat and less evocative that the work of Steichen.
My next development therefore is to experiment with filters and colour.
My next development therefore is to experiment with filters and colour.
Artists research - Infra Red David Keochkieran.
David Keochkieran creates fantastical landscapes that look like they have come from a children's book or a Tim Burton movie by manipulating colours using a colour altering technology called infrared photography. Keochkieran depicts several landscapes in a wide variety of colour combinations, as a result is almost impossible to tell what season the pictures are taken in. I chose these pictures because they look like a setting from a fantasy story, like there from another world with bright colours, dramatic skylines and beautiful natural landscapes. The definition of surrealism is an art movement sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, i think Keochkieran successfully creates surrealism in his pictures. When looking at the pictures the viewer gets draw into this fantasy world and could find themselves looking at the picture for a long time letting there imagination create a story for this landscape.
Response - Infra Red Photography
As far as we know the first infrared images in print were taken by Professor Robert Williams Wood and published in the October 1910 Photographic Journal of the Royal Photographic Society. I used a Holga infra red lens attached it to my Nikon 70D, a camera which can override the infra red filtering system. I discovered quickly that the longer exposure times meant that a tripod was important to keep shots in focus. I like the way it emphasises the detail of the landscape and literally reveals something our eyes cannot see. Leaves look like snow. the sky looks like it is on fire. It is revelatory and fantastical at the same time, My images need stability and framing to create something like Keochkiran. I am not sure that I will pursue this idea.
Nature invading urban landscape.
This picture is where I first got the idea for the next strand in my project. This is platform 2 and 3 at the Barbican tube station, as you can see in the picture platform 2 is a refurbished functioning platform where trains come and go. Whereas platform 3 is closed and over time has been hindered unusable by natural causes, you can see the building is old and dirty compared to the new refurbished building on the right. There is vegetation growing all over the tracks on platform 2 which is what gave the idea, the platform is closed and cannot be used for the tube service but the nature bursting out of the cracks in the train tracks makes it somehow more beautiful. the composition and gloomy colour reminded me of a series shot by Bruce Davidson on the subway.
Bruce Davidson is an American street photographer for Illinois. The pictures above are from his series called subway where he shot his journeys around Harlem and Illinois on the subway, at that time in the 1980's the subway was poorly run, poorly lit, covered in graffiti and was considered quite dangerous. Davidson went out to capture the gritty nature of the subway with different filters, flash and many other technical methods; making every picture unique in its own way with a story behind them
Nadav Kander - Half Life
Navad Kander is a London based photographer, known for his portraiture and landscape work. His work is on display in some of England's most prestigious galleries such as the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The series by Kander that most interests me is Half Life, where he enters the post - nuclear soviet city, Chernobyl. To mark its 20th anniversary since the explosion, Kander took a series of shots of the city once home to over 40,000 people, whom all had to be evacuated after reactor No.4 at Chernobyl's nuclear power station exploded making the city uninhabitable for many hundreds of years. What I find most interesting in Kander's Half Life series is the absence of life in such an industrial area. I think the title Half Life explains the series perfectly in just a couple of words, it explains how Kander captured images of a city once filled with thousand that is now completely empty.
In this picture Kander captures the desolation of the post apocalyptic city, yet the image says something about hope. The picture is taken in a gymnasium with a football goal still in place more than 20 years after the explosion. It is as if the world has stopped still and yet nature has found a way to push through all the decay. In both images, the positioning of the tree in the composition is key. It holds the promise of life and the promise of life holds a central position .
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I think the title of the picture relates to a lot of his pictures, like in this picture where the tree looking tired and lifeless is the only kind of life in the city yet not a whole life form, a half life. Half life is also a scientific term in Physics. Radioactive substances give out radiation all the time, regardless of what happens to them physically or chemically. As they decay the atoms change to daughter atoms, until eventually there won't be any of the original atoms left, half life is the time it takes for half of the radioactive atoms to decay.
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Nadav Kander response
I first sought images of plant life emerging through buildings and abandoned sites in London. I took pictures on a Nikon D70 and looked for images on streets and in an abandoned site where mechanical objects like cars and domestic objects like baths had been abandoned and plant life had grown through them. I think they are an initial step - they are experimental - some of the images are quite interesting, but they lack the purpose that Nadav Kander's images have.
Response : Totteridge Factory
I sought out a location which may offer more meaningful images in terms of nature invading man made environments. Totteridge and Whetstone is home to a large abandoned paper factory where I aimed to capture how nature has changed the untouched factory over time. Nature has caused the walls to be covered in vines, trees growing from the floor and roofs caved in from weather condition, hindering the factory unused for decades. The factory has become a canvas for graffiti artists, the walls, floor, and even some of the broken down machinery are covered in graffiti. I think the images are interesting and powerful, but still do not capture
Following Nadav Kander's composition techniques, I took this image through disused shelving systems to the light source and nature beyond, placing them in the centre of the image. The light fitting hanging from the ceiling draws your eye further to the light in the centre. To reinforce the tunnelling effect of the shelves I used a wide angle filter with a slight fish eye effect, screwed on to the end of a 56mm lens. This concave effect pulls you into the centre of the image. I continued to explore this idea with a series of shots using the same wide angle lens and full fish eye lens.
I took additional shots trying to frame light sources and include more elements where nature is conquering the abandoned factory.
Totteridge Re-visit
I returned to the location another day to experiment with composition and evoking an atmosphere in the images. The sun was not shining, so I struggled a little with light sources. In some images I used talcum powder to try and create a diffuse effect, in others I experimented with framing and focus, using grids and architectural features in the foreground.
Outcome
Final piece preparation - landscape vistas in london
I aimed to capture images where the buildings add depth to the picture and theres multiple layers of buildings from the top to the bottom of the frame. So i went to the top of the Tate gallery and the captured the images with a Lumix GH3, I experimented with different settings on the camera that edited the photos automatically, it had settings like high contrast, greyscale, tilt shift etc. this meant i could capture the kind of images I wanted without having to edit them at all.
edits
My idea for my final piece is to create a double exposure effect by printing images of urban and natural landscapes on different sheets of acetate and superimposing them on top of each other. Each image will hold the urban and man made - sometimes invaded by nature as in the work of Nadav kander, sometimes in harmony. The acetates will be mounted in light boxes to enable us to see through the images. Like the scuplture of Anish Kapoor, the boxes will mounted to create a 3 dimensional tower, symbolsing the many towering structures I have photographed throughout this project. But each face of the tower will contain nature and man made together, and like the extraordinary early works of Kapoor 'Sky Dish' and 'Cloud Gate' where the sky is drawn into the man made environment, symbolic of female form, but inviting the viewer response and participation. Kapoor is said to be interested in dualities real and imagined and in polarity. Cloud Gate is in Chicago and reflects and distorts the skyline and at the same time dwarfs and increases the city's architecture. I would like my final piece to explore similar polarities between nature and man made and through the use of perspex invite different perspectives on both.
ARTISTS RESEARCH - ANISH KAPOOR
ARTISTS RESEACH - CHRISTO AND JEANNE-CLAUDE.
Husband and wife team Christo and Jeanne Claude are renown for 'wrapping things' up. In 1997 they produced 'Wrapped Trees' which consisted of a number of swiss trees wrapped up in thin fabric. It is a beautiful piece, breathtaking in scale like all their work, but at the same time appears to criticise man's intervention into nature. I would like my final piece to evoke similar thoughts and be beautiful at the same time.
final piece
I am pleased with my final piece i think the light box created the effect i wanted, clearly illuminating the acetate and creating an aesthetically interesting instillation. I overlaid two different acetate images on to every facade of the box and left the inside empty, i thought this could represent an abyss where the viewer can place their emotional response.