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.