Assignment 4 Preliminary Work

Spent the last week or so researching material.  Chose Robert Adams as the subject. Not really sure why other than his photography appealed more to me than the other suggested subjects. 'Liking' or 'disliking' particular works seems to be a gut reaction probably triggered by other memories. Sometimes it is an error to over-analyse a reaction because to do that we have to rationalise something that by its nature is irrational. We are left dissecting the image to the point that it no longer exists as a whole  or we allow ourselves to be persuaded by the views of others. It is a noticeable element of current photography that what is seen as acceptable is remarkably narrow and is often little more than todays fashion.

It is highly unlikely the photographs produced by Robert Adams, if a newcomer, would be exhibited today as landscapes went out of fashion a few years ago and only just are being re-considered. I recall a lecture by Peter Paterson a landscape photographer whose work, for me was brilliant and at times breathtaking. He showed examples of his earlier work and then by progression his latest work. There had been a noticeable shift in style. When asked why this had occurred he said that he found that, in order to get his work accepted for exhibitions, he had had to change to a 'modern' style using all the tricks of the software available.  Personally I felt that this was a great loss.

For someone who is so well known there is very little external assessment of his photography. (It is interesting that the Wikipedia entry is is seen as something that needs external input as most of the material is considered to have been entered by someone close to the subject). Maybe this is because he is a living artist or possibly because he is an accomplished writer who you would take on at your peril. Whatever the cause one is left with the task of trying to build a picture from his own utterances and writing. Fortunately there is a mass of material as he is a prolific writer of books. Instead of scratching around trying to find something some one said or did for clues the task is to sift through the mass of material.

Two of his books "Beauty in Photography" and"Why People Photograph" seem to offer a lot of information about the influences that bear upon his work yet contain no examples of his work. As he argues it is unreasonable to be a critic of his work if one does not look at his photographs and that is my next area of work.

Another shot at Sky/Clouds

I was browsing through some photographs that I had taken within the past few months and came across this set taken at Wicken Fen Cambridge. They were all taken on the same day and I was struck by the variation in cloud formations across a period of about 3 hours.

Looking at the shots and using the land as a clue I took these by looking in different directions. To state the obvious sometimes the best shots are just over your shoulder. I would like to take credit for having thought of this at the time but  I was more interested in the landscape at the time and the cloud formation  variance was a matter of chance. Hopefully I'll think about this next time I am out and about.

I also took the opportunity to include more of the land so that the images work as landscape images as required by the Course material. I rather ignored this in my last blog as I was more interested in the cloud formations. I guess at the end of the day it is a matter of personal judgement as to what works best in any particular image.

Project 24 Clouds and Sky

Here are a variety of images taken at various points over the past few months. The frequently changing weather has offered plenty of opportunity to vary the cloud formation and where this has been unusual I have concentrated on the sky and in part ignored the instructions to make them truly landscape. It would have been easy to create a landscape picture by combining images but this, to me, seemed not to be in the spirit of the Project.

Landscape Assignment 3 Theme

Posted my assignment to my tutor today. Chose 'water and man' as the theme so had to make choices about what part of a vast subject I should cover  in 8 photographs. Eventually decided on recreational use but varied it by one shot of a canal basin and one shot of the way that we manage to destroy the thing we go to see.

I await the verdict.

Project 22 positioning the sun

The exercise seemed to be a review of the obvious -  if you shade the sun by varying degrees you will get a different amount of light reaching the camera. At present I am unsure how this would be used in a practical way. Shooting into the sun is dangerous and in this exercise I had to be very careful not to catch the full glare as there was a relatively strong wind blowing the leavers and branches to hide and reveal the sun without me changing position.

Project 19 - Choosing the Moment

This is the first in a series of images taken as the sun was setting. The whole series was taken in a little over 14 minutes. This particular image was taken at 20.24.19.

Taken just 34 seconds after the first image it was this particular image that made me decide to take the series as there was a noticeable change in the sky which made me think that the results could be good.

Time elapsed is 34 seconds during which time the sky has changed significantly but the sun can just be seen over the edge of the hills.

A further 32 seconds has elapsed. I have aimed the camera slightly to the right of the previous images as can be seen by the position of the tree on the brow of the hills. I did this because I wanted to record a greater area of the sky which was enabled by the shape of the horizon line that dipped down to the right.

50 seconds has elapsed. I was using a 70-300mm lens fitted with a polarising filter and here I have panned back slightly to include the trees to the extreme right and again shoot more sky

Just under 2 minutes have elapsed. Here I have cropped the image to take advantage of the tree on the brow of the hill. During the shoot I had not really noticed this feature as I was concentrating on the light as it changed but 'discovered' it when processing the images. This shot is my particular favourite.

The time now is 20.38.33 (the value of EXIF data!). Fourteen minutes and 14 seconds after I began taking the images. The sun has gone down below the hills and the sky is at its most dramatic.

All images were RAW shots and have been enhanced in exactly the same way - they were all cropped to be of the same size and sharpened to the same degree. There was no saturation or vibrance added.

It is worth noting that the drama of the sky was not so noticeable to the naked eye and it was not until I enhanced them using Camera RAW that it was as evident as in the final images. 

The location of the shoot was Seathwaite in the Duddon valley in the Lake District. The day was glorious throughout and the evening was a special gift. Earlier in the morning I had tripped and like all good photographers decided to save my camera rather than myself with the result I cracked a couple of ribs. In addition I failed to save the camera although the damage was restricted to the 50mm prime lens I was using at the time. I then got into trouble from my wife for failing to save myself! These shots and the others I got during the day made it all worthwhile.

Project 11 - The Colour of Daylight

I have read through the material several times but still cannot work out what I am supposed to do. I realise that it is about film use and I use only digital and that changing the colours in the original image with the use of filters can be mimicked in Photoshop or Lightroom with no difficulty. As I also use Silver Efx Pro when creating black and white images where the software provides a range of filters the material was interesting but not directly applicable.

Project 14 Changing Light Changing Views

Early Morning

Mid-morning

Noon

Mid Afternoon

Evening

The first image was taken about 6.00 a.m. and the whole valley was shrouded in mist. I chose the shot shown because I was able to include some detail as provided by the gate and trees. As to be expected the light was very soft and in most directions including towards the sun were bereft of detail. The conditions dictated the direction in which the rest of the shots throughout the day would be taken.

The second image was taken at approximately 9.00.a.m. and I chose almost the same shot as the earlier one although I had zoomed back from the gate to provide foreground and give a better sense of scale within the image. The third image was taken at noon. There was some loss of detail and colour in the image compared with image 2 but less than I had thought would be the case. The only marked difference is in the visibility of the wall in the bottom right of the image as the sun moved and took away the shadows in that area.

The mid-afternoon shot was taken at approximately 3.00.p.m. I decided to change the viewpoint and to use the light at that time and the shadows created to give some sense of the hills beyond the field shown. It is shot to the right of the preceding images to include the part of the wall in the  foreground and the trees at the end of the field.

The final image was taken at approximately 9.00.p.m. I took a number of shots over a period of about half an hour as the sun sank slowly behind the hills. The original image was taken to include all the hills  shown in the early images but when processing the image I decided to crop closely to make the tree the focal point. I had switched lens at this point and was using a 70 - 300mm lens that 'cut-out' the valley between me and the shot. The sky did not appear this colour to the naked eye and it was only when I was working on the image did the colours shown become obvious. No saturation was used and the colour is  how the camera 'saw' the image. I had a polarising filter on the lens and I presume that this helped in capturing the colour in the sky.

I had done a similar exercise in The Art of Photography Course but with a fixed spot for the camera. I found this exercise more interesting because of the challenges presented and the questions asked. There seemed to an infinite number of variations on a theme and the choice at the time of individual shots and subsequently of those to be in this blog forced to me think. No bad thing!

Project 29 - Photographing a well known image

I chose for this project a photograph taken by T Leslie Hawkes in 1989 of Seathwaite Church in the Duddon Valley in the Lake District. The particular print was on a wall in a cottage that we had rented for a few days which was located in the Duddon Valley approximately a mile from the Church. Its attraction lay in part in the connection the cottage had with the Church - the cottage was the home of the rector -
 but also in the composition used by the original photographer. He has used the house on the left and the wall on the right to draw the viewer into the image and in particular towards the door of the Church. The Church forms approximately a third of the image but is the dominant feature. Hawkes chose not to take a photograph that contained more of the Church building and its surrounds (easily attainable by going round to the other side of the Church) but to provide just enough information for the viewer to know that it was a Church.

In taking this image I used the same house and the wall to position the camera, using a 24-70mm lens to zoom in to capture the same composition as the original. The two differences are the 'round' hedge at the corner of the house and the wall on the right from the foreground to the gate is higher by three courses of stones. The windows in the house have been replaced but with similar sash type windows. The only other discernible difference is the foliage behind the Church which was more abundant in the original photograph.

Why do I think Hawkes chose this particular viewpoint? I would suggest that he wanted to find a balance between the main subject - the Church - and the surrounds so that both were seen in context. A larger view of the Church from the other side of the Church would have taken it out of context as it would have been impossible to include anything but trees. It was important to link the Church with the community it served and this was achieved by including just a small part of the house on the left.

I took the following image approximately 75 yards from the Church using the 24 - 70mm wide angle lens to include as much as possible. The road behind the photographer after this point begins to bend and a reasonable view of the Church became more difficult. Further the inclusion of more buildings both on the left and the right would have diminished the impact of the main object evidence of which is beginning to show in the following image.

What did I get from this project? I visited a number of sites in the Lake District of areas that had been photographed (which is most of it) and it was a learning experience to try to work out from where the image I had in front of me had been taken. It was difficult to find the exact spot, sometimes because of changes, but also because by the use of different lenses and later cropping the image could be achieved from a surprising number of positions. For me the more interesting part was walking round the object and trying to establish why that shot from that position. Sometimes it was obvious but on other occasions I would have chosen a different shot no doubyt because of my particular preferences.

Photographing the Lakes

Had 3 days in the Lake District 23 - 25 May in superb weather taking lots of photographs. Had my next assignment in mind and the need to work on some of the projects in the Course material. Reasonably successful particularly with the Assignment Images (the connecting theme being 'water') and some material for the projects. Spent the last week including today sifting through all the photographs taken to select suitable ones to meet the various needs.

I have to admit that I am still struggling to make sense of the projects. Not because I don't understand them but because they are, naturally, all weather dependent. For example there is the one where there is a requirement to take shots of the same general area at different times during a day. The need here was for a good day weather wise. O.K. I was lucky but I had tried on several occasions prior to this to get the photographs without success. For some reason (?my age) I cannot remember all the things I am supposed to achieve in one project. I have yet to find an workable answer. The Course book is way too bulky to take on the actual photo-shoot and I tried making cards with a precis of what was required. Worked to a certain extent but then when re-reading the Course material I sometimes found, within the general text, some requirement that I had missed. I don't struggle so much with the assignments because they are contained on one page and are usually succinct. Unfortunately you cannot say that about the projects. Never mind I will get there eventually and its all good practice.