Places and spaces
Buildings and the landscape are explored by photographers in many different ways. When photographing buildings, Sebastian Weiss looks for abstract shapes, dramatic lines and contrasts revealed by camera angle and viewpoint. Candida Höfer produces series of detailed photographs of the interior of public buildings that have similar functions, such as museums and libraries. The street photography of Nicholas Goodden sometimes captures people in isolation from the places and spaces around them. The landscape photography of Ansel Adams uses small apertures to record fine detail and a maximum range of focus in the image.
Mood board
These are previous photographs that I took not long ago on a photography trip, these photos link to the theme and are a base point of this project.
Nicholas Goodden
Nicholas’ work is intriguing to me because I am interested in street photography and photos of people in isolation. I like street photography because I think it fully portrays the contemporary world that we live in. Goodden focuses on street photography, graffiti and street art, this is the reason why i have chosen to analyse him and his work.
Nico Froehlich
I am interested in Nico’s work and choice of photography because he focuses on environmental portraiture; places and spaces in his local areas including where he grew up- this type of street photography is important because it presents what life is like for people living in London. In particular, the third photograph above is interesting because of the way the light is falling onto the wall and then reflecting into the water. Within the photograph, there is multiple things that someone could focus on, the composition of the image is thought through yet is also quite busy, there is a-lot to pay attention to. The photograph is more naturalistic than abstract, due to it being a setting that is very normal for people and nothing has been added to make it abstract.
Whilst focusing on these two photographers work, I picked up on the differences between them. It is clear that Goodden’s style is black and white, which changes the colour and tone of the photographs. Whereas, Froehlich doesn’t edit his photos as much and keeps them more natural, he focuses more on the lighting and how it falls and creates patterns in the spaces he is photographing. Another thing I picked up on is that Froehlich focuses on keeping his images realistic to portray the real world, and Goodden seems to put more thought into making his images more unique and changing the contrast.
As a response to these artists, I am going to take a set of photographs that link to the theme and are inspired by the two artists. My main idea is based off of the topic of people in isolation, street photography and shadows. Above are the photos I have chosen where I tried to crossover my ideas of shadows and graffiti and link them into the same photo.
Experimentation: darkroom
I would like to experiment with removing the colour from these images and linking them back to Nicolas Goodden's work. I'm going to explore taking these from digital to non digital and would like to use the dark room to experiment with contrast and layering. This means i am going to create negatives of my photographs and turn some back into positives with the colour removed, this will alter the contrast of the photos which is my aim in this experiment that links to Nicholas Goodden. These photographs link to the theme of spaces and places and the artists that I am looking at because they focus on graffiti and street photography, mainly linked into the same photograph.
First experiment
This is my first physical response where i made positives and negative’s in the darkroom. I exposed photographic paper, which was layered with my image, for 5.5 seconds and put them through the chemicals. In my second experiment, I am going to try and make the results more clear and detailed by exposing the photographic paper to the light for an extra few seconds. I am also going to experiment with an extra few pictures, and try to overlap the acetate to see how the image will come out. I do think the results have turned out well but I also believe I can improve.
Second experiment
This is my second experiment working in the dark room, where I experimented with positives and negatives, and trying to better my work compared to my first experiment. I am happier with the outcome of the first image above because in comparison to my first experiment, it is a much clearer image and covers all of the details entitled in the image. To do this I exposed the photographic paper to the enlarger in the darkroom for 6.5 seconds, instead of 5.5, and better results were achieved
Third experiment
I continued with my experiments in the dark room by using different images that i have taken. I like the concept of having a negative and a positive of my images, I think it portrays the photographs nicely. Although it can take afew tries to get the negative perfect, I am happy with my end results of this experiment. In this experiment i differed from leaving the photographic paper under the enlarger for 5-6 seconds and instead only exposed it for 4 seconds, in contrast I think these results turned out well because the paper did not become over-exposed.
Contrast
In the photographs above i was experimenting with the contrast of one image and finding out how many different types of a photo i could create from just the one. To create this, I used my phone and edited the contrast, brightness and expose of each separate photo to differ the contrast in each. This is just something i wanted to play around with because from researching Nicholas Goodden i could infer that he edits the contrast of his photographs to adjust them to what he deems as perfection. By doing this, I learnt that editing a photo to perfection isn’t easy, and I found that some contrasts don’t benefit the photo yet seem to blur things which effects the composition.
Vera Lutter
I have taken and chosen a small selection of photographs that have correlation to Vera Lutter's work. For my first experiment using this method I am going to take these and convert them into black and white, and edit the contrast on photoshop.
Experimentation 1: photoshop
Experimentation 2
These are photos pf my local area. I wanted to use some of my photos from when I was abroad. They remind me of a particular time with my family. So I experimented with combining black and white images with the colour to see how it changed the images.
I was happy with the results below
I was happy with the results below
I wonder if I can take this further by layering more images together - or explore limiting the colour. I really like the surprise when you put everthing together without thinking too much.
I wanted to see how I could line up the different plants so that it felt a bit more connected. I think it works really well and I'm happy with this.
What next????
I want to go back to working in the dark room and playing wiht Cyanotypes. I love the unexpected outcomes. Maybe I could make another book, or experiment with folding. I know I want to do more stuff with colour and the dark room.