To best make it discernible to the viewer of the sequence of photographs how quickly and profoundly the changes were taking place at Lewisham roundabout, I adopted as spatially as similar a viewpoint each time as I could. To do this I used reference points so that I was standing at a similar position each time I visited the vantage point. Then I used the same or as similar as I could manage framing from the vantage point to the roundabout which was changing. I used a distant house and road markings as my reference points to make sure the framing was a similar as possible. However, this was not entirely straightforward as some of the reference points (the road markings) changed a bit as the roundabout was developed. I revisited the roundabout from the vantage point roughly once a fortnight on average to show the changes, which only were perceivable over greater periods of time, taking place. Of course by taking the photographs from as similar as possible a vantage point and with the reference points as similarly as possible lined up to each other, the resultant series of photographs did not match in composition identically. However, because they were pretty close in terms of the vantage point stood from and the reference points lined up from photograph to photograph quite well, I was able to utilise Photoshop’s auto-align feature with photographs I’d taken and imported into Photoshop as layers. The reason I used the auto-align feature of Photoshop on the photographs was so that the land features surrounding the roundabout (which hadn’t changed) lined up better, therefore making the changes themselves more perceivable to the viewer of the photographs.

Some points I would make concerning my photographing the changes taking place:

• 3/5/2016 was for me the highlight date because visible change was occurring inside the photograph as well as having ramifications for future dates I photographed the roundabout
• it took me a few weeks to get my reference points spot on for the handheld shots of the roundabout
• I found the change of the landscape feature of the roundabout was more obvious if you looked at different points of the frame when observing the change by flicking through the sequential photographs. This was because the roundabout was so big it filled the frame and different parts of the roundabout changed over time in different photographs.

My aim for this assignment was to show change taking place at Lewisham roundabout through a series of photographs, each one very similarly composed but with the land features gradually changing throughout the photographs. Lewisham roundabout is in my local area and so I was familiar with the roundabout, having lived nearby to it for a lot of my life. My target audience would be primarily people who were affected by the roundabout’s development. I knew the roundabout’s development to be quite a contentious issue because the whole flow of traffic had been altered, as can be seen in my series of photographs incidentally. This was in addition to the alteration of the public walkways around the perimeter of the vast roundabout. Both these alterations meant people travelling through Lewisham and in and around Lewisham had to cope with the changes. This included heavier traffic near to the roundabout and longer, less direct routes in and around the roundabout for pedestrians. The other, more positive side to this was that in my opinion the developments were necessary for Lewisham’s continued development. Either way, I chose to adopt a high, objective viewpoint from which to record the changes in order to remain as unbiased about the developments on the roundabout in my photographs as possible.

While it would have been possible to photograph Lewisham Roundabout without the inclusion of people and moving objects, I felt it was more accurate and overall better to include these within the frame. This was for the reason that it showed that life still did go on around the roundabout, albeit in a more restricted manner for the residents of Lewisham in the immediate area, while all these works were being carried out. The works being carried out were still largely visible behind the inclusion of people and moving vehicles in the frame either way so I didn’t feel this distracted too much from the obviousness of the change taking place. However, I was also of the opinion that a lot more character was added to each scene through the inclusion of these people/objects.

I chose to employ a high vantage point, inspired by the work of Simon Roberts in particular but also John Davies, in order to better show the change taking place over time. Specifically I looked at Simon Roberts’ Pierdom (2010-2013) series and John Davies’ Agecroft Colliery, Salford 1983 (1983) photograph. As well as showing the change taking place more clearly, I felt the high vantage point depicted the change more objectively. Had the viewpoint(s) been lower down amongst the activities the effect would have been much more involved and subjective according to the people in the frame and how they related to the changes. I wanted to approach the potentially contentious changes taking place to Lewisham roundabout in as ambivalent and unbiased a way as possible, to allow the viewer to make their minds up about the (vast and drastic) changes themselves. Choosing a high viewpoint seemed the obvious method for doing this.

References:

Davies, J. (1983). Agecroft Colliery, Salford. [Photograph] London: Michael Hoppen Gallery.

Roberts, S. (2010-2013). Pierdom : Simon Roberts. [online] Simon Roberts. Available at: http://www.simoncroberts.com/work/pierdom/#PHOTO_0 [Accessed 30 Aug. 2016].

My lasting concern with landscape photography has been that the landscape’s land features often remain largely unchanged and so the landscape photographer has to ‘make do’ with what they are finding in these settings. This is regardless sometimes of how ‘clever’ the photographer has been with composition and lighting. While the landscape changes according to weather and light constantly, the land features change incrementally and usually at a relatively slow pace compared to the weather and light.

The Bechers utilised a typographical approach a as way of altering our concept of the landscape without actually altering the land itself through photomontages of similar objects. ‘Through photography, we try to arrange these shapes and render them comparable. To do so, the objects must be isolated from their context and freed from all association.’ – ‘The Photographic Comportment of Bernd and Hilla Becher’, Tate Papers, no.1, Spring 2004 (Stimson B., 2004), found at: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/01/photographic-comportment-of-bernd-and-hilla-becher#footnote11_iq6fd88 accessed on 21/7/2016. I saw this typographical approach as being a particularly successful method of drawing attention to the objects; often displayed in grids to accentuate their similarities as in: Fig. 1 (Becher and Becher, 1974).

Fig. 1: Pitheads 1974 Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher 1931-2007, 1934-2015 Purchased 1974 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T01922

However, what interested me particularly was that ‘The Bechers were fascinated by the speed at which technology evolves, leaving old innovations in the dust, often to be destroyed.’ – INSTANT EXPERT: BERND AND HILLA BECHER – (Hamilton E., 2011), found at: http://www.americanphotomag.com/instant-expert-bernd-and-hilla-becher accessed on 21/7/2016. I established that while the Becher’s grids of photographs offered no trace as to the monumental change taking place on the land features evident in them, the uniformity on display belied the seeming impassivity of the structure’s photographed.

Included in part was work by the Bechers in the New Topographics exhibition which took place in America in 1975. The photographers documented how man had altered the landscape on a collective level – the photographers doing this with a detached and unbiased-as-possible methodology. An example of this detached style can be seen in the work of Robert Adams/George Eastman in Fig. 2 (Adams and Eastman, 1974).

Fig. 2: Tract House, Westminster, Colorado (1974)
Photograph: Robert Adams/George Eastman House collections/Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

This altering of the land was on an indirect, collective level brought about by ‘the steady creep of suburban development in all its regulated uniformity’ – O’Hagan (2010) that was taking place in America in the 1970s. Although I was interested in the aesthetics the New Topographics photographers chose to employ to depict this change of land features, I was more interested in influencing the land features through direct, personal intervention.

I think I was largely successful at subverting the ‘problem’ of the landscape itself largely dictating how the final photograph appears to the viewer, when I came up with Photographs 8, 9 and 10 for Assignment 2 (Fig. 3), on my landscape course. Here I made myself ‘see-through’ as a kind of frame for the landscape by printing photographic representation of the landscape immediately behind me on a t-shirt I wore. As well as questioning the frame of a photograph, this otherwise brought up issues of permanence as some of the landscape features on the t-shirt photographic representation had of course since changed. This was compared to the ‘present’ landscape features shown behind me.

Fig. 3: Photograph 8 – Assignment 2 – Landscape

In a way, not dissimilar to my Photographs 8, 9 and 10 for Assignment 2, there exists the work of Richard Long, with his Earth Art. My t-shirt idea was not dissimilar because it was a form of Earth Art in its loosest sense. Long installs his own art, in the form of abstract sculptures and structures onto the usually natural landscape itself; thus changing how it appears before the photographs are taken. Whether the eventual photograph of the Earth Art is paramount to Long as Art is another matter. Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (n.d.) – available at: http://www.ngca.co.uk/home/default.asp?id=189 suggests: ‘the walk undertaken is itself the artwork – as a kind of performance over time – and anything else only evidence or documentation.’ However, I would propose a type of interesting paradox is formed nevertheless, whenever Long (or another person) photographs his Earth Art. This is where, in my opinion, the Earth Art takes the role of Art within Art within the eventual photograph. This is because the photograph is naturally indexical to the environment it was made in and by simultaneously including something within the landscape (the Earth Art), Long thereby creates an indice of the indexical, each time he records it in a photograph. I suppose my Photographs 8, 9 and 10 for Assignment 2 worked as a portable version of these installations on the landscape.

The problem with directly altering the landscape, for me, has been integrating this usually obvious discrepancy in the landscape (the altered parts), as realistically part of their surrounding environment, without it appearing forced or pointless to the eventual viewer. This natural inclination to perceive the landscape ideologically simultaneously implies the landscape is similar to a photograph itself because it is decreeing the same treatment by the user as that of a traditional photograph. I would consider a ‘traditional photograph’ as one that is not trying to alter the land features. You could argue keeping the altered parts of the landscape appearing realistic defeats the point of altering the landscape in the first place. This would only apply however, if the photographer intended to apply meaning visually in the photograph. However, keeping the landscape realistic and yet altered, I suggest could make the indexical bond between land and photograph stronger. This would be while adding potential meaning to the landscape/photograph through visualisation of concepts. For example, by placing a group of buoys in an urban park, meaning could be implied about this juxtaposition but also it might seem rather contrived, while placing the same group of buoys on a beach in a certain manner, (a different, albeit less profound) meaning could be gathered by the viewer but without losing visual credibility. Perhaps getting the balance right between implied meaning and credibility is paramount in achieving a ’successful’ photograph via altered landscape. Here, visualisation of concepts would be key, for the reason that the concept would have to be strong, in order for the landscape and the meaning implied by the alterations to make visual sense.

The degree to which the landscape is altered also affects meaning, although not necessarily in correlation that the larger the earthwork, the more profound the meaning. The visual impact and how permanent an effect the alteration has upon the eventual landscape would be two factors to take into consideration, when comparing the work of Long and Smithson, for example. The typical scale of the alterations to the landscape and their permanence on the landscape between the two artists, I would consider major; however both instill powerful, if different meanings. Concerning ‘Spiral Jetty’ – Smithson (1970): ‘the fact that it is done at all is often what constitutes its significance’ – Chianese (January-February 2013) – available at: http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/spiral-jetty. An example photograph of ‘Spiral Jetty’ – Smithson (1970) is Fig. 4.

Fig. 4: Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970. © Holt-Smithson Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York. Photo: George Steinmetz

In contrast, because Long’s work is in such a state of transience, where the earthwork usually isn’t very durable, the question would seem to be: in which way does his work exist to the viewer, when according to Long: ‘It [his art] is simply about making a line of stone in a particular place at a particular time.’ – Long (2009), In. The Guardian – O’Hagan (2009) – available at: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/may/10/art-richard-long. An example of Long’s Earth Art is Fig. 5 (Long, 1967).

Fig. 5: A Line Made by Walking 1967 Richard Long born 1945 ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/AR00142

There are admittedly, arguably subtler ways of altering the landscape from a human perspective. These include long exposures to direct the viewer’s attention to certain objects in the scene through composition and the composition itself. While these methods do indeed alter the landscape in a sense, they have been used profusely in landscape photography and I wanted to research looking at changing the landscape in a more direct and potentially innovative way or perhaps in combination with these techniques. With clouds moving overhead in a long exposure for example, the sky is always altered, while instilling some sort of order to the photograph.

The reason I have become a bit preoccupied with changing the landscape in a way more intrinsic than composition and lighting, I would say, is because this allows for finer meaning to be applied to the photograph before the photograph has been taken and potentially easier application of this meaning.

Of course, by ‘interfering’ with the natural landscape like this before the exposure, the photographer is starting a whole other topic of debate, concerning ethics of altering Nature. This can be applied to earthwork artists, utilising photographs as the way of documenting their work. Notably, Gussow (1972) remarked that: ‘earth-work artists … cut and gouge the land like Army engineers’, to which Smithson, a prominent earthwork artist, responded Gussow: ‘fails to recognise the possibility of a direct organic manipulation of the land devoid of violence and macho aggressiveness.’ – (Smithson, 1973). This implies that Smithson saw the implementation of Earth Art as potentially harmless to our perception of reality, because it could be part of Nature. However, in response to the vantage point that ‘photographs should depict reality’; illustrated by Barthes (1980) in Camera Lucida: ‘The necessarily real thing placed before the lens, without this there would be no photograph.’, I would argue that photographs are like an alternate reality anyway and at the very least, give an inaccurate rendering of reality. For instance, Szarkowski (1966) indicates: ‘the factuality of his pictures, no matter how convincing and unarguable, was a different thing than the reality itself’. By having a subject, which has altered reality within the photograph itself, I might in turn subvert these ethics of altering Nature, because of the inherent implications of reality surrounding photographs. An example of this is Fig. 6 (Rousse, 2003).

Fig. 6: Rüsselsheim 2003 © Georges Rousse / ADAGP

While the effects of directly intervening with the landscape and its ethics are likely contentious, this is rarely carried out in a disruptive manner. Meanwhile, photography popularly concentrates on the picturesque or even more mainstream: the beautiful. This, I would argue can also have (less obvious) ramifications for the environment, because this type of photography is so oversaturated, especially nowadays. Side-effects of this include inadvertent damage to the environment because of erosion – the ‘most worthy’ picturesque locations are revisited so many times nowadays – ‘[new ‘leisure’ time] was an industry whose very success in encouraging masses to visit these places, in turn, became precisely the activity that threatens to ruin the picturesque quality of those views.’ – Bate (2009). A couple of examples of detrimental impact to the environment because of tourism can be found at: http://www.fixthefells.co.uk/files/4013/5901/9528/path_erosion_factsheet.pdf (accessed 2/8/2016) and http://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/why-tourists-ruin-the-places-they-love/. (accessed 2/8/2016). Conceptually too; the direct altering of the landscape beforehand conflicts modernist approaches to photography because of photography’s inherent indexicality. Altering the landscape and thereby directly interfering with order in the landscape may disrupt photography conventions. However, altering the landscape can potentially provide more meaningful discourse, whereas only photographing the beautiful can lead to less meaningful discourse.

A contentious debate has been whether photography is an Art form since soon after its invention. Historically; Greenberg in the 1960s asserted that ‘painting, was the salvation from a culture that was contaminated with, as he saw it, the lowly ‘kitsch’ values of the marketplace – including photography.’ – as suggested by Greenberg (1961) in Photography: The Key Concepts – Bate (2009). I would say this ‘not being able to change the landscape before the photograph has been taken at risk of being unrealistic’ is a central factor behind this feud. Paintings, for instance, can be altered and modified (which is often painstakingly carefully the case) to suit the artist’s desires/mood. This is a reason why painting has always been seen as an Art form. It seems to me photography has to contradict its very nature – that of a rendition of reality – in order to be considered as Art. This may be because photography came after painting in time (chronologically) and so photography is often associated with imitating painterly traditions in landscapes. Ironically for me, painting, while possessing the innate ability to be whatever the painter’s imagination wants it to look like – that is; no clear restraints on depicting reality – often does depict a rough semblance of reality anyway – ‘painters usually included in the Surrealist canon, who seldom imagined the canvas as other than figurative’ – Sontag (1977), Chapter 3. An example of this would be Salvadore Dali’s ‘The Persistence of Memory’ (1931): Fig. 7.

Fig. 7: The Persistence of Memory 1931 © 2016 Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Here, although he dithered from reality substantially, the objects depicted were all recognisable. Perhaps the reason paintings often depict reality, even though they could feasibly depict whatever, is because the subconscious (at least the subconscious for the majority of viewers) needs for paintings (and indeed Art) to have some attachment to humanity apparent. This could be to familiarise the viewer or let them see into the artist’s eye or even (or as well as) to prevent the artwork from becoming ‘boring’ because there is no human element to relate to. I would say this is very true of photography as well; if not more pertinent.

It is possible to observe this from the viewpoint of the sublime. The sublime tends to play upon our notions of reality – ’the harmony of the sensus communis is structured, that is, around … a Sublime idea that can never occur in reality but which must be presupposed if reality is to cohere’ – Zizek (1989) in The Sublime (The New Critical Idiom) – Shaw (2005). I believe this is why its relationship with photography can be so powerful and yet fragile. If a photograph needs some semblance of reality, even if it is from the past to function as a photograph within the viewer’s mind, then the sublime being present in a photograph naturally twists this concept to breaking point. This can be observed in the following pdf found at: https://blantonmuseum.org/files/american_scenery/sublime_guide.pdf (accessed on 2/8/2016).

Therefore, one way of challenging the notion that the landscape features largely remain unchanged, could be to approach it from the perspective of photography having little boundaries on what is included in the frame, similar to paintings and the work of John Pfahl, with his twist on photographing the American West. Pfahl ‘intervened in the actual landscape … drawing attention to pictorial geometry, and thereby disrupting it.’ – Wells (2011). He cleverly admits one thing (the landscape changes so little usually that he can carry out these interventions) but simultaneously introduces another (the optical illusion (as direct consequence of his changing of the landscape) altering our perceptions of reality) – ‘Pfahl comments that through his work he realised that you could show one thing (optical illusion) in dealing with another (landscape pictorial).’ – Wells (2011). One element Pfahl presumably intentionally leaves out of his landscapes, is the inclusion of people within the photographs, although there are traces (his own traces) evident within the frame. I would suggest he left people themselves out intentionally in order to keep his concept simple: altering landscapes also alters reality. However, Pfahl could have conceivably used people instead of or as well as objects and in a more natural way to alter the landscape without altering reality.

People interact with the landscape and indeed photographs so it seems clear to me that they could be seen as part of the landscape and therefore are transient as intrinsic components of an altered landscape. Moving forwards with my own photography, I could see myself incorporating people into landscapes as a sort of non-permanent way of altering the landscape but one that is permanent within the photograph. Semiotically, this suggests an indexical mode of relationship between land and photograph as always but also an indexical mode between people included in the frame and the photograph itself. Therefore, the people exist temporally on the mostly impassive landscape, although paradoxically altering it for the duration of the photograph. This relationship, I would say runs parallel to the transient state of photographs themselves nowadays, where they are rarely material objects but instead constantly changing – ‘transient photography centres on virtual, changeable elements … not printed, but viewed on screens’ – Bull (2010). Therefore, photographs only appear in the landscape for the duration of the gallery exhibition and potentially mimic the transient state of people in photographs.

Word count:

With quotes and figures: 2826 words

Without quotes and figures: 2197 words

References:

Adams and Eastman (1974), Tract House, Westminster, Colorado [Photograph] Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2010/feb/08/new-topographics-landscape-photography#img-4

Barthes, R. (1980), Camera Lucida, Vintage, Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 2SA, Page 76.

Bate, D. (2009), Photography: The Key Concepts, Bloomsbury Academic, 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP UK, Page 94.

Becher and Becher (1974), Pitheads [Photograph] Retrieved from: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bernd-becher-and-hilla-becher-pitheads-t01922

Blanton Museum (2012), Sublime, Picturesque, Beautiful, 1st Ed. [pdf], Austin: The University of Texas at Austin, Available at: https://blantonmuseum.org/files/american_scenery/sublime_guide.pdf [Accessed on 27/8/2016].

Bull, S. (2010), Photography, Routledge, 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN, Page 28.

Chianese, R L. (January-February 2013), Changeable, perhaps even erasable, by time, how permanent should Earth art be?, American Scientist [Online] Available at: http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/spiral-jetty [Accessed on 31/3/2016].

Dali, S. (1931), The Persistence of Memory [Oil on canvas]  Retrieved from https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/1168-2

Greenberg, C. (1961), Art and Culture, Beacon Press, Boston, In. Bate, D. (2009), Photography: The Key Concepts, Bloomsbury Academic, 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP UK, Page 130.

Gussow, A. (1972), In. King, E A., Levin G. (2013), Ethics and the Visual Arts, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., Page 222.

Hamilton, E. (2011), INSTANT EXPERT: BERND AND HILLA BECHER, [Online] American Photo. Available at: http://www.americanphotomag.com/instant-expert-bernd-and-hilla-becher [Accessed on 21/7/2016].

Long, R. (1967), A Line Made by Walking [Photograph] Retrieved from: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/long-a-line-made-by-walking-ar00142

Long, R. (2009) In. O’Hagan, S. (2009), One Step Beyond, The Guardian [Online] Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/may/10/art-richard-long [Accessed on 26/3/2016].

NomadicMatt (2013), WHY TOURISTS RUIN THE PLACES THEY VISIT (AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT) [Online] Nomadic Matt. Available at: http://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/why-tourists-ruin-the-places-they-love/ [Accessed on 27/8/2016].

Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (n.d.), Walk On – 40 years of art walking from Richard Long to Janet Cardiff, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art [Online] Available at: http://www.ngca.co.uk/home/default.asp?id=189 [Accessed on 2/4/2016].

O’Hagan, S. (2010), New Topographics: photographs that find beauty in the banal, [Online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/feb/08/new-topographics-photographs-american-landscapes [Accessed on 27/8/2016].

Rousse, G. (2003), Rüsselsheim 2003 [Photograph] Retrieved from: http://www.georgesrousse.com/en/archives/article/georges-rousse-in-ruesselsheim/

Smithson, R. (1970), Spiral Jetty [Photograph] Retrieved from: http://www.diaart.org/visit/visit/robert-smithson-spiral-jetty

Smithson, R. (1973), In. King, E A., Levin G. (2013), Ethics and the Visual Arts, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., Page 222.

Sontag, S. (1977), On Photography, 1st ed. [ebook], Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London, WC2R ORL, England, Chapter 3.

Stimson, B. (2004), The Photographic Comportment of Bernd and Hilla Becher, [Online] Tate. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/01/photographic-comportment-of-bernd-and-hilla-becher#footnote11_iq6fd88 [Accessed on 21/7/2016].

Szarkowski, J. (1966), The Photographer’s Eye, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Page 3 In. Cornell University [Online] Available at: https://blogs.cornell.edu/art2103/files/2015/09/Szarkowski-The-Photographers-Eye-1z0fzej.pdf [Accessed on 2/4/2016].

Wells (2011), Land Matters – Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 6 Salem Road, London, W2 4BU, Pages 92 and 93.

Zizek, S. (1989) In. Shaw, P. (2005), The Sublime (The New Critical Idiom), Routledge, 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN, Page 138.

There were a few more subtle changes made to the photographs based on suggestions my tutor made regarding the discernibility of the tourists, in the night time shot (Photograph 4 – Assignment 3) as figures. ‘Perhaps a stronger element of crowd in the foreground they really are more like shadows from the people above.’ I agreed with my tutor here but luckily I had a couple more exposures where the people were more distinct and so I blended them in using layers and their respective masks until there was more activity visible in the lower half of the frame and in my opinion they appeared like figures passing by rather than ‘shadows from the people above’.

Photograph 4 – Assignment 3 – Landscape

Photograph 4 – Assignment 3 – Landscape – Amended

Then there was the issue my tutor picked up on: ‘The rickshaw image is the first one that has a little of the superimposed feel about it. This is the one that I would pick out as the most obvious user of a layering technique.’ for Photograph 7 – Assignment 3. I looked at this image for a while because I agreed with my tutor that the tourists around the rickshaw riders looked ‘superimposed’ through the use of layering, which was indeed the case! I came to the conclusion the reason it looked superimposed in part was because of the people’s legs, which I’d superimposed right at the bottom centre of the frame below the rickshaw riders. I still had the layers and layer masks for Photograph 7 – Assignment 3 saved in Photoshop so I painted back out those legs in the bottom centre of the frame which I felt made the photograph more realistic overall.

Photograph 7 – Assignment 3 – Landscape

Photograph 7 – Assignment 3 – Landscape – Amended

The most drastic change I decided to make to Assignment 3 – Landscape however, was the incorporation of split-toning into my workflow for the processing of the photographs. My tutor commented in my tutor report that while ‘the print quality is good they have a slightly split tone feel to them’ and while this was quite subtle in appearance for the viewer of the prints, it didn’t match the screen images I’d uploaded to my blog. My tutor also subsequently pointed this out in the tutor report: ‘I think the prints are so much better than the screen images. Its subjective but the onscreen ones are a lot cooler and more calculating. The prints have a much more human – analogue -non digital feel.’ Firstly I wanted the screen images to be as similar as possible to the prints, it was my opinion that consistency was quite an important factor for different mediums of presentation. I discovered my printer had only one black ink and actually used colour cartridges for the black and white printing. The source for this discovery was: ‘Because the Epson Stylus Photo 1500W doesn’t feature dedicated monochrome inks, it has to blend its colour inks to great shades of grey.’ – Hawkins, M. (2012) found at: http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/peripherals/printers-and-scanners/printers/epson-stylus-photo-1500w-1079586/review/2 accessed on 16/8/2016. I would assume this is where the ‘slightly split tone feel to them’ came from. Also I decided I wanted to embrace this ‘split tone feel’ in both the screen images and the prints. By purposefully going for a split tone look I would be able to keep the prints more consistent with the screen images as well making the screen images appear slightly less digital to match the ‘much more human – analogue -non digital feel’ of the prints. In order to produce the split tone feel I used Adobe Lightroom’s ‘Split Toning’ feature in the Develop module. I experimented with different values for the hue of the highlights and shadows, the saturation of hue for the highlights and shadows and the balance of highlights and shadows split toning. I eventually arrived at the following values (consistent with each photograph for Assignment 3 – Landscape) through my own taste of the onscreen images and also printing a few times the different combinations of split toning until I was satisfied. The values I arrived at were: Hue and saturation of the highlights: 45 and 42 respectively. Hue and saturation of the shadows: 232 and 29 respectively. The balance between the  highlights and shadows was +23 to the highlights. For me this produced a more ‘human’, less ‘digital’ feel to both the onscreen images and the prints.

Finally my tutor noted there was a lack of information on my blog regarding my inspiration for  the ‘ghosts of the city’ as tourists for Assignment 3 – Landscape and the reason for this was I had inadvertently produced a few photographs where it appeared there were ‘Ghosts of the city’ evident in the frame. My most obvious example of this was in Example Photograph 1 where in the middle of the frame ghosts appeared to be residing in the city, caused by the long exposure of 5 seconds which was incidentally the exposure time necessary to expose at f/11, ISO 100 during the blue hour. The reason I chose to expose with these settings was because it allowed for minimal noise in the image and so resulting for my tastes in better image quality compared to if a higher ISO had been used. So really my inspiration for ‘Ghosts of the city’ was accidental! I had subsequently decided to incorporate this discovery of long exposures rendering people as ‘ghosts’ into my workflow in producing the photographs for Assignment 3 – Landscape.

Example photograph 1

References:

Hawkins, M. (2012). Epson Stylus Photo 1500W review. [online] TechRadar. Available at: http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/peripherals/printers-and-scanners/printers/epson-stylus-photo-1500w-1079586/review/2 [Accessed 30 Aug. 2016].

Overall I feel I produced a good body work for Assignment 5 and had begun to find my own personal voice within the landscape practice which featured including human figures in the landscape settings, thereby adding meaning through observing the indexical relationship between them and the landscape. I was also able to explore issues of impermanence in the landscape which was brought about either by the presence of these temporal figures or their indirect human intervention on the land; leaving traces of their use visible on the landscape photograph. To establish these issues of impermanence I returned at night to photograph all the same scenes as the daytime counterparts with similar composition and framing which in my opinion made this trait more powerful. A lot of my project was built around the idea of a lack of permanence through human presence in the landscape around my area. Although the people were permanent for the duration of the photographs, they were largely transient outside of this and so the landscape as a consequence was transient as well, something I tried to reflect through the use of corresponding day and night shots. Not only did the human presence change but also often the physical use value on the landscape itself changed. I felt the night shots were the obvious way of portraying this change, which otherwise would have been lost on the viewer.

By researching other artists and styles of photography; most notably Stephen Shore’s work: Uncommon Places (1974-79) and then ‘Drift Photography’ – (Luessen, C., 2012), found at: http://arthopper.org/the-flaneur-psychogeography-and-drift-photography/ (accessed on 14/7/2016) respectively, I was able to draw upon some of their techniques which helped me to overcome some of the problems I’d been having with the project. The main problem included photographing the banality of suburban areas effectively. The way I overcame this included the use of colour in landscape photography and the signs of wear and physical use present in often overlooked elements of land features and how this can affect how we view the values of an area. In fact, I found this enabled me to photograph the less suburban (and so less banal to my eyes) parts of my local area more incisively in terms of human presence, either direct or indirect, inducing meaning on the photograph.

I found by looking at the landscape in a new way; through signs of physical use and impermanence rather than just what looked most picturesque, my visual observational skills improved a lot. I noticed the way the land was utilised by humans more and what effect this had on the landscape and then I had to use my awareness skills to draw attention to these factors through composition and the placement of people in the frame effectively to suggest use of their surrounding landscape. My techniques ranged from handheld to tripod use and I discovered shooting handheld allowed for much more spontaneity for including people in the frame in the daytime shots. With the nighttime photographs in contrast I reverted somewhat necessarily back to a more deliberate approach of tripod use.

I felt the presentation of the project was of a good quality with interactive maps on the website but I felt the overall creativity was lacking a bit. The approaches taken to arrive at the eventual photographs were appropriate in my mind with good sources of inspiration. However, there wasn’t too much variety within individual photographs compared to the creativity for the themes of the project. On the other hand this made the project consistent and more obvious to the viewer the themes in play. Lastly, I did indeed feel I discovered something more about myself through these landscape photographs and I would suggest my target audience of people living in the area might also.

References:

Luessen, C. (2012). The Flâneur, Psychogeography and Drift Photography. [online] ArtHopper. Available at: http://arthopper.org/the-flaneur-psychogeography-and-drift-photography/ [Accessed 15 Aug. 2016].

Landscape for me is a journey not only through the land but also self. Through my observations on other people’s transience in the landscape as well as their intervention upon it, I feel I am able to portray a realistic interpretation of the landscape before me. In doing so I find out more about myself in the process. By photographing this, I am creating slices of the world around me which my audience and I can later look at for the duration of the photographs’ life.

Recently I have been discovering the immediate landscape around me in order to gain further insight into my local area. Because it is my interpretation of my surroundings, my audience learns something about me and so provides an accompaniment to this Artist’s statement!

I am currently a student with the Open College of Arts and as I progress with my studies I am becoming aware of the importance people and their intervention on the landscape can have to my photography’s meaningfulness.