Landscapes

Landscapes

Theory & Definitions

Derived from The Dutch word landschap meaning "region, tract of land”.

Image Bank 

Artist Research - Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore has had his work being exhibited for the last forty five years. He is an American photographer who is known for his photography of banal scenes in the USA. He is also well known for his use of colour within his photos.  

I will be looking at a landscape photographer called Stephen Shore. He takes photographs of American landscapes and a lot of the photos involve cars which I believe could represent the flow and movement of everyday life in America. I specifically like the image that involves the Chevron petrol station. This is because he has taken this image whilst standing on the pavement which makes the photo taken at eye level. This means that it represents what he can see which I like because it gives the photo a familiar feel. I also feel as though the photo is taken looking directly down the road and looks like the road is never ending. I really like this because it gives you the feeling that the landscape is never ending. The fact that all of his photos are of everyday landscapes makes them very accessible for me to try and relate my images to his. Another photo that I really like is the image of the cars parked in a car park. I really like the way that there are elements if colour within this photo. The foreground stands out due to the bright colours however I like the way that there is a subtle element of a natural landscape. Also the sky stands out a lot because this photographer uses a wide depth of field to make all of the image clear and crisp. This means that your eyes are drawn to the entirety of the image. I would like to use a wide depth of field in my photos. I would also like to try and use elements of colour to make the landscape more aesthetically appealing to viewers. I  feel as though I would like to try and use the idea of everyday life to create these images and try to look at how different locations can create different atmospheres within the photos.  

Contact Sheet - first shoot

My intentions for this shoot were to use Stephen Shore's images as inspiration. He takes photographs of city landscapes in America. My shoot relates to his work because I have taken photos of a town in Essex. Instead of representing landscapes in America I have looked at landscapes that are more accessible to me. I have annotated my contact sheet by ticking the images I feel initially look successful and I have crossed the images I feel were not as successful. I also made small labels on some of the photos as to why I crossed or ticked them. 

My best images 

This photo is slightly different to the rest of my best images because it is of part of a church. This gives the image a mysterious atmosphere. This photo was taken on an ISO of 200 because there was a lot of shade covering the area by trees which were positioned behind me. Due to the shade I altered the ISO from 100 to 200.

When taking this photo I had to lower the shutter speed because the sun was shining directly into my camera. Originally I had the shutter speed on 1/200 however I needed to alter this to 1/125 so that there was a slightly shorter exposure time. I really like the harsh shadow that the direct sunlight creates within this image.  

This photo is slightly over exposed because the sun was directly in from of the lens however I like the different colours within the leaves and the grass. I would like to edit this in Photoshop. I feel as though this photo represents the season autumn and the winter period in England. This directly relates to my photographer research because he takes photos that represent America and I feel as though this image represents a certain time of the year in England.

I like the way that there are details within the background and foreground of this image. This makes the entire image very interesting to look at. I also like the brightness of the sky because the blur contrasts with the green of the grass and the trees. This image has a lot of different contrasts between the colours. 

This image is slightly different to the rest of the portrait images however I really liked the intricate detail of the green gate and by turning the camera portrait I was able to capture the entire gate in the frame of the image. 

This image was taken using a shutter speed of 1/125 to create a clear image with a wide depth of field. I like the harsh shadows that have been created by the trees and the sun directly shining behind them.

Images that require improvement 

The first image that I have chosen as needing some improvement is due to the exposure. When photographing this I had the camera in manual mode however I did not have the correct camera settings. The aperture was set on an f/stop of f/20. This meant that the camera did not allow enough light into the shutter when the photo was being taken. 

The second image that I have chosen as needing improving is due to the photo being over exposed and I also did not like the composition. The shutter speed was set on f/5.6 which meant that the camera lens had a large opening. Due to the light being directly facing the camera these camera setting let too much light into the camera, leading to an over exposed image. I also felt as though the composition was slightly slanted. This would have been because I did not use a tripod to take this image as I slightly rushed it. To solve this problem I altered the camera setting and then used a tripod to capture the correct composition. 

A03: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.

I have gained a lot of inspiration for this shoot from the photographer that I analysed, Stephen Shore. He takes photos of city landscapes in America. Due to this not being accessible to me I decided to take photos of landscapes that I believed represented towns within England. The photographer Stephen Shore includes a lot of cars within his images and I believe this is a connotation for the business and constant movement of the town within America. I wanted to incorporate trees and leaves within my landscape images because I wanted this to represent the season of Autumn which is something that represents a part of the country England. This is one way in which my photos link to the photographer research that I have conducted. The idea of creating a city landscape was also inspired by my image bank that I created. This is because when researching landscape photos I realised that the stereotypical landscape was a scenic field landscape. This made me want to create something that was slightly different to the stereotyped landscape image.      

A02: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

When taking these landscape images I had the camera in manual mode. I had to slightly change the settings based on the weather conditions and whether the location was in direct sunlight or in the shade. For example when  my aperture values ranged from f/10 to f/14. When photographing some images they came out slightly blurry. To solve this problem I made the aperture slightly higher which created a wider depth of field. When the sun was shining directly into the lens I increased the shutter speed to allow slightly less light into the image and this balanced out the light and darkness to create a good contrast in the different colours. I kept the ISO at 100 during my entire shoot because I was only photographing outside in day light and did not need a higher ISO. 

I have edited my images using multiple tools on Photoshop. Firstly I have used the curves, brightness and contrast and levels tools to enhance the colours within the images and to make the contrast between the tones slightly harsher. I have also tried to put a tone over one of the images that I have taken. I did this to make the autumnal colours stand out. How I completed this is displayed below. 

Colour fill effect 

Firstly I selected the 'solid colour' tool located in the tool bar.

I then selected the colour that I wanted to fill the image with. In this case I have chosen an autumnal colour to bring out the colours of the leaves. This links to my photographer research because Stephen Shore's images use pastel like colours to represent the American lifestyle. This is what I have tried to do.

I then lowered the opacity so that the colour slightly covered the image. 

My final images 

I have created a series of images that I feel represent a small town in England. This is because I have photographed different areas which may be found in a town like a church and different roads leading to different places. Also due to the autumnal colours and the trees that I have included in all of the images this series may also represent autumn as a season in England.

 

Victoria Siemer - second artist research

After editing my images for this shoot I decided that I wanted to develop my project by editing my photos in a more creative way. I did some research and found a photographer names Victoria Siemer. She uses the idea of broken reflections throughout her work. She uses a technique called geometric reflections to create her images. She photographs mountains or beaches and then flips them on themselves by adding a shape floating in the sky with a reflection of the image within it. Below are some examples of his work. 

Siemers takes photos of landscapes and makes them look surreal by reversing the image and making it look down on itself as if god were holding up a giant mirror. The natural landscapes also look as if they are going against gravity which could imply the power of nature. I like the city landscapes because by adding the surreal effect it makes the photo look as if it is from the future. These landscapes have been man made however by altering this I feel as though Siemers could be trying to show people that there is a greater strength in the world that can alter things.  

Experimental Edit 

I edited this photo using the same technique as Victoria Siemers. I did this because I want to plan my second shoot carefully and in order to do that I need to ensure that the photos that I take will be appropriate to edit in this style. From completing this edit I have found that there needs to be a clear space somewhere in the image. This is because the edit is not noticeable in the example above as the image is filled with trees. By doing this edit I now know that I need to take images that involve sky or a clear space in order to edit them in this style successfully. 

Contact Sheet - second shoot

My intentions for this shoot were to capture photos that had landscape at the bottom of the frame and a clear space nearer to the top of the photo. This was because when completing an experimental edit on a photo I had already taken I realized that this needed to be done. I have annotated my contact sheet by ticking the images I feel initially look successful and I have crossed the images I feel were not as successful. I also made small labels on some of the photos as to why I crossed or ticked them. 

My best images 

I chose this photo as one of my best because I wanted to express the city through my photos and I feel as though using the London Eye shows a landmark in London that everyone will know about. 

I chose this image as one of my best because there is enough sky space to edit the photo in the way that I wanted. I also liked the different tones that are in the buildings.  

I chose this image because I liked the fact that bicycles and cars are in such close proximity to each other. I feel as though this could represent how much technology has advanced from bicycles to cars. The fact that there are a lot of cars could also represent how much pollution there is in the world and right beside the issue is a solution, the bikes, however people do not care.  

Images that require improvement 

I feel as though this image is slightly dull. I believe that when taking this I used an ISO of 100 however this meant that the camera was not sensitive enough to the light and therefore the image came out dull. I should have used an ISO of 400 due to the cloudy weather conditions.

This image is under exposed. The street is very dull. 

A03:

I was inspired by the city images that Victoria Siemers took. I wanted to reflect this within my work therefore I decided to take basic city landscape images and use the geometric reflection technique editing technique. I found Victoria Siemers work very interesting because it gave landscapes a slightly surreal effect. I was not sure if I would be able to use this technique successfully so I read step by step instructions on how to create this effect in photoshop. I then made some notes and tried it myself. Once I did this I discovered that this was possible for me to do. I took photos of city landscapes rather than a natural landscape. This was because I had access to a city a lot easier than I did to nature landscape. I also really liked the way that the Victoria Siemers photos of city landscapes looked as if they were futuristic. I also gained inspiration from my first artist research that I completed, Stephen Shore. He photographs classic American city landscapes and I wanted classic London landscapes to be reflected in my work.

A02:

To shoot these images I used a canon eos 500d. I also used a tripod to take the photos. This allowed me to angle the camera correctly to receive the correct composition. This also helped me to keep the camera steady ensuring that the image was fully in focus. Due to the fact that I was taking landscape photos I used a large aperture of f/16-f/22. This gave me a wide depth of field meaning that the entire photo was in focus. I also used an ISO of 200 and 400 during the day. This was because it was a cloudy day however during some moments of the day the sun did come out and I had to alter the ISO. I used a shutter speed ranging from 1/125 to 1/160. By using this shutter speed it allowed me to freeze motion. Also the image was all in focus rather than having certain parts blurry from the anything that was moving during me taking the photo. 

Edits

I edited all of my images in the same way. 

Firstly I opened the image that I wanted to use in photo shop. I then used the brightness and contrast and curves tool to edit the image and enhance the tones and colours within the photo.

I then clicked cmd+J which duplicated the background layer. This created the background copy layer.

I then clicked on the eye on the background copy layer. This made it not visible to me. 

I then clicked back on the background layer and created a new layer. I named this shape.

I used the shape tool to draw the shape that I wanted to use onto the image. Once doing this I held down the shift key and clicked on both the background layer and the shape layer. By holding down the shift key it enabled me to have the two layers selected at once. 

I then clicked the 'align horizontal centres' at the top of the page.

 I clicked off both layers that were selected. Then I clicked on the background copy and made it visible again by pressing on the eye. 

I then right clicked and pressed create clipping mask. I then clicked edit , transform, flip vertical. 

Once completing this I clicked on the shape layer and reduced the opacity. I then clicked on the background copy. This allowed to move the part of the image that was inside the shape. I moved this around until I was happy with what it looked like. 

I then clicked on the shape layer and created a layer mask. I then clicked on the paintbrush tool and made sure that the default colour was black. I then painted over the area of the shape that I did not want anymore. 

Photos edited in the style of Victoria Siemers 

Further Experimentation

To develop my work I have tried to go beyond the artists concepts. I used photoshop to experiment using geometric shapes. Below are the different experimental edits that I have created and how I created them.

Experimental Edit - Using different geometric shapes

All of my original edits for this shoot used geometric reflections using circles therefore to expand upon my edits I decided to use other shapes rather than just circles. Above is the final outcomes of these edits.

Re-Edits of my original images

Once editing my original images and trying to use different shapes when creating geometric reflections I did not feel happy with the final look of the images. When looking through the final images I created I decided that I felt as though there was not enough space at the top of the image to create the geometric reflection. Below I have written a step by step explanation of how I attempted to re edit my images with this in mind.

1. Firstly I used the original images that I took and opened them up in photo shop. I then clicked 'edit' and then clicked on 'canvas size'. I selected 'percentage' as the measurement of the height and width of the photo. I then altered the image height to '130'.  

2. I then selected the part of the photo that I wanted to drag into the extra space that I provided. To do this I used the rectangular marquee tool. I then clicked cmd+C to copy this section. I then clicked cmd+V to paste this section. I did this as many times as I needed to fill the space.

3. Once I did this I moved each section to where I wanted it and then I merged all of the layers together by clicked cmd+E.

4. To smooth the edges of the different sections that I moved into the space I used the spot healing tool . I did this step by step and gradually got rid of the seams between the different layers.

5. Once I did this I used the same steps that I originally used to create the geometric reflections.

Below are the final images that I created.

The next three images are examples of the original photos that I created. I feel like these look slightly clustered at the top of the images.  

Experimental Edit

Firstly I used the shape tool to draw rectangles over the top of the image. I then duplicated the layer 6 times and moved them all into the correct place on the image.

I then held down shift and selected all of the rectangle layers. This allowed me to edit all of the layers at the same time. I lowered the opacity to 56%. I then clicked off of the selected layers and selected the background layer. I then used the black and white tool to edit the image to black and white.

Below is the final outcome. This relates to Victoria Siemers work because I have used geometric shapes on top of an image.

Experimental Edit

For my third experimental edit I decided to use the geometric reflections technique but instead of using one shape I used two. To create this I used the same steps as the first edits that I completed and then I repeated the exact same steps using the same image which created geometric reflections in two shapes rather than one.

For this image I used two circles and placed them in two different place within the photo. I then created a layer mask to remove certain parts of the circles that I did not want.

To create this image I used two pentagons. When drawing the second shape I pressed cmd+T to flip the pentagon and place it underneath the second shape. The photographer that I looked at,  Victoria Siemers, only ever uses one geometric shape to reflect the image in to however to go beyond the artists concepts I used two different shapes to flip the image into.

Experimental Edit 

This is the final experimental edit that I completed. To create this image I used the technique of geometric reflections and the placed rectangles with a lower opacity over the top of this. I did this because it links to my photographer, Victoria Siemers, because it uses many different geometric shapes. I also did this because I wanted to try and bring some of the ideas that I thought of beyond the artists concepts together to see what it created. I do not feel as though this is very successful because by adding the rectangles over the top of the geometric reflection it becomes unclear as to what it is.   

My final images