Evaluation

Evaluation

Overall I think this project went quite well, I was able to get a series of images of what I set out to achieve, even after initial struggles at the start.

The biggest problem I found was transport, I had to rely on other people to get me to and from locations and so this meant I had to go to the places at times that suited them and not when I would of liked to ideally go, such as times around dusk and dawn for the ‘golden hour’ mentioned in my research. This meant I couldn’t go to shoots on some days that were planned, I could only stay a certain amount of time at the location, and so had to rush what I was doing, or go where they wanted to go.

The other major problems I found was keeping with the chosen aesthetic of a minimalistic style. I found it quite difficult to find locations where my subject could be portrayed with all the desired empty space around it. I found the scenes were often quite cluttered and contained more than I wanted to show and struggled to find compositions which isolated my subjects in such a way that I wanted to portray them.

It took a lot of research and going to many different places to shoot but in the end I was able to come up with some relevant locations where I was able to capture my subjects in my desired style while keeping everything within the brief and intent I set myself.

When it came to editing the images I tried to keep things as simple as possible, for most of the images the only changes I made were small adjustments to correct exposures, boost contrast and adjust the highlights and shadows when needed. Two of the images however I did make quite dramatic changes, both to composition and even the scene itself in one of the images. The image containing the bridge was the first to undergo a major change to composition, for this one I flipped the image so it led in from the right instead of the left. I did this because I felt it made a more interesting composition than how I originally took the photograph, I think it was much easier to follow and more pleasing to the eye.

The other major change I made was with the image of the tree in the field, with this image I adjusted the path so that it led towards the tree instead of away. With the original image the path was a leading line that led the viewers attention away from my subject, and I needed to stop this, so I flipped the path to lead to the centre drawing the viewers attention straight at my subject. I think editing the images in these ways could be quite questionable to my project, but I think I needed to make them in order to make the images stronger and portray my point more. As it was more of a fine art project and not documentary I think the changes are justifiable.

Overall I’m pleased with the images I produced and think the project went quite well. If I was to do another landscape project again though, I would look into alternative transport methods that are more reliable, and ones that mean I can get to the locations at the times I wish to be there instead of been dictated by others.

Artist Statement

Artist Statement

I am an aspiring landscape photographer who works currently exclusively digitally with my Canon 60D. I find this medium suits my style best because it's a solid camera that allows plenty of flexibility with attachments such as gradient filters, tripods, shutter release and strobe lighting. I find working digitally suits me best as its convenient medium that allows quick transition into Photoshop to enhance and alter the images I capture, to give them more of a personal touch, generating my preferred aesthetic, which is generally a black and white minimalistic approach.

Each shot I take involves a sort of ritual. I arrive on location, assess the area and look for places that offer the best composition on my subject. I then set the tripod up and take a light reading, dialling the settings into the camera. I then add the required filters, checking composition, focus, ect, and stand back to take the shot with the shutter release. This gives me the time to think about ways how I want to depict the scene, how I want an image to look. A lot of the time I use a 10 stop filter which grants me the time to stand back to reflect on how I want the next shot to look, or how to improve the previous. I like to use long exposures as I love aesthetic it gives, especially when water is involved, and so a lot of my images utilise many filters. I think long exposure is quite important to my work as it offers a timeless feel to the photographs, it portrays a world we can't see, but it is there.

This recurring theme of long exposure and black and white images help portray this idea of capturing a moment. You can snap away with a camera and take many pictures, but I feel this method of standing back, reflecting and using long exposures to capture chunks of time, instead of just a split second, helps take the images away from the world we live in, and into something else, something more. I feel its a more creative method that can really drive the viewers imagination.

Sequencing and final image choices

'Natural' Landscape?

When landscapes are thought of, an ideal comes to mind. A scene full of 'natural' elements. Trees, grass, rivers, mountains, etc. are the subject and contents within the frame that make up this landscape image. A scene with no human interference, a wild environment if you will.

In my photographs I want to be able to show that humankind and its creations are part of this natural landscape, that they are not something separate, not something different, but one.

The natural world we live in now has adapted and changed, its not what it once was. The day has long past when this ideal landscape was an accurate representation of the land. The natural landscape of the modern world contains these man-made structures. Cities are as much part of nature as forests and lakes.

Wildlife could appear within the frame and the image would still be classed as a 'natural landscape' photograph. But when something man-made is depicted with in the scene, such as a telegraph pole, a building, something as simple as a fence, the image seems to loose its 'wild' characteristic, it becomes artificial. But people are natural too, and its within their nature to build and create these structures within the land, so why are they not natural as well? Why do they carry this artificial label?

People are part of the world just as much as any other animal, yet when an animal such as a bird creates a nest, a structure, a home, it is deemed natural, but when humans do it, it's artificial, why?

My 'Natural' Landscape project will be a running series of images following a fine art style. They will have a black and white minimalist aesthetic and depict a progressive amount of human impact on the environment as the series goes on, starting off quite subtle and getting more aggressive and obvious towards the end.

Within my images I won't be trying to show the ugly, grotesque side of man's impact on the earth, instead my images will try and illustrate the beauty within these structures within the land.

Jaimie Golby

Jaimie Golby

Jaimie Golby

Jaimie Golby

Jaimie Golby

Editing

Editing steps and Study Task 7/8

The following page will be a short walk through of some of the post processing steps I go through when editing my images.

The before and after example image can be seen below. 

Before 

After 

RAW File Processing

RAW Processing

After selecting the images to be edited in bridge I then open up the RAW file in Photoshop's RAW converter.

I make necessary changes to exposure, boost the contrast and increase or decrease shadows and highlights when appropriate. In some of the images I go further and create a gradient across the sky so I can make further changes to adjust the exposure of only the sky if it needs to be darkened or lightened, depending whether I used gradient filters on camera or not for the image. Once I'm happy with these basic changes I then open the image up in Photoshop. I make sure the images open are set to 300DPI and and 16bit for optimum quality while editing.

Dust and Scratches

Dust and Scratches

This particular image contained a lot of dust and scratches, especially noticeable in the sky, it took several different steps to remove them all.

The first step I did was to use Photoshop's filter used for removing dust and scratches. As this blurs the image I only wanted it used on the sky. To do this I used the pen tool to create a path so I could make a selection of where I wanted the filter applied, this can be seen as the red line in the image above. This step removed some but not all of the dust/scratches.

Clone Stamp and Patch tools

A further step I took to removing them was to use the patch tool. Selecting each individual imperfection and removing it this way took time, but was much more effective.

Again I wasn't able to remove all dust specs this way accurately so I had to use another step, this time I used the clone stamp tool to manually remove. The highlighted areas are where the density of the dust was most prominent.

Reducing Noise

Reducing noise

This particular image featured a lot of unwanted noise that I wanted to get rid of. To do this I simply applied the Photoshop filter used to reduce noise. Due to the previous steps done to the sky I only wanted the filter applied to the foreground. To do this I simply made the selection by using the inverse of the previous path selection I made. 

Black and White

Black and White

To make the images black and white I created a new adjustment layer and selected black and white. Then using the given filters I selected a red contrast filter. I used this filter because it darkened the sky and made the foreground brighter, an aesthetic I quite liked. I was then able to adjust the colour sliders if I didn't like part if the image.

Crop

Crop

I wasn't quite happy with the crop of the original image, so thought I would make an adjustment. To do this I simply selected the crop tool and made my adjustments. I tried to apply the rule of thirds to the images and I tried to keep the most interesting parts of the images on the intersecting lines of the grid.  

Sharpening

High pass sharpening

Once I was happy with all the changes I sharpened the images ready for printing. To do this I simply flattened the image and then copied the layer. On this new layer I used the high-pass filter which turned the whole image grey and left a feint outline of parts of the image. These outlines were the parts of the image that would be sharpened. The final steps were to make this over-pass layer a overlay so the original layer underneath could be seen while overlaying the new outlines created using the filter, resulting in the image becoming sharper. The last step was to flatten the image once again. 

Final image

I avoided any major changes in Photoshop. The processing was just small adjustments to correct exposure and contrast, converting to black and white and a general clean up of the images.

Island Tree, Welwyn. 14/03/14

14/03/14

From the start of the project I was always looking for an 'island' tree to start the series off, just never finding the right one. I was looking for one in complete isolation, so that when I photographed it, I only got the tree and the surrounding field, I wanted nothing in the background so the focus of the image was completely on the tree and the field it sat in. I tried many many places looking for a tree suitable, but never finding anyway. Until one day when coming home on the train I spotted this tree in a far off field. I was actually on the Welwyn viaduct when I spotted it, so knew roughly where it was and quite annoyed that I had been so close to it before and just not known about it. Well anyway, after spotting it, I decided to go and find it.

The contact sheets from the shoot can be seen below. 

After walking around the village for a while and not finding this field I was about to give up and drive off, but a passing glance as driving away I spotted a small secluded, discreet ally leading between two houses, so I pulled up to have a look. And sure enough it was the right place, and there was the tree sitting at the top of the hill! After looking and looking I was quite relieved to find this location, and it being so close to another shoot location as well.

For this shoot I relied on using the graduated filters, I think I picked one that was a little too strong however, resulting in some of the images being a bit too dark, this was easily adjusted in Photoshop however.

I wanted a single tree to start the series off because it was a simple, subtle element that people don't think twice about. It's just a tree in a field. But its the story behind it that I was after.

There are these island trees all over the place. They are the last remaining tree of a woodland that once stood there before the rest had been cleared away to make room for other things, in this case to make room for fields in the agricultural business. I think this is a great start to a progressive series about man's impact on the environment.

As seen below I did make quite a major change to the image, flipping the path to move the leading line into centre of the image. I did this to draw attention to the tree not away from it. Although this does raise questions whether I should of made changes due to the nature of the project. 

Jaimie Golby

Primrose Hill, London. 10/03/14

10/03/14

For the finale of my series I wanted to end on a cityscape, I thought this would be an appropriate end as its one of the biggest impacts people have on the environment. I have chosen London for my cityscape as local and just an ideal place to visit. More specifically I have chosen to shoot from Primrose Hill. I have chosen this location because it offers an elevated view across London and should allow me to get the shot I'm looking for, I will also be able to photograph in Reagent's park for more landscape gardening as its on the way to the hill.

The contact sheets for this shoot can be seen below. 

Initially this shoot didn't look like it was going to work with the weather, but I carried on with it anyway and so glad I did. The shoot turned out to be quite successful and ended up giving me another final image for the series.

Initially I struggled with composition for this one, I didn't know how to frame the image so that I could keep everything as minimalistic as possible. From the start of the project I knew I wanted a cityscape to end on, but I couldn't work out ways to present a cityscape of London in a minimalistic aesthetic. It wasn't until during the shoot when I figured out a way.

As I was so elevated over the city I was able to frame the shot so I could avoid most of the foreground and have the city sitting on the base of the image, and have sky taking up all the other empty space.

I think the shoot might of gone better with different weather conditions, there does seem to be a lack of contrast in the images, and could maybe benefit from being shot in the evening with more directional lighting to give nicer highlights and deeper shadows, but overall I'm quite happy with the images produced in the shoot after some editing. I did remove some of the buildings in the foreground so that it was all trees along the base, I did this to remove distractions and make the images more pleasing to the eye. 

Jaimie Golby

Jaimie Golby

Ashridge Estate 08/03/14

08/03/14

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ashridge-estate/

As I couldn't get into Knebworth or Hatfield house, and because Hertford Castle wasn't very successful, I decided to look for other estate houses with grounds where I could document the landscape gardening. During my research I found Ashridge Estate.

Much like Knebworth house this estate is acres of landscape altered and maintained by people.

Again I chose a estate house because of the maintained landscape gardens and the grounds which may look like natural woodland but is maintained with deforestation to control the trees.

The contact sheet from this shoot can be seen below. 

The first shots of this shoot are of the woodland, I quickly realised this wasn't what I was after and so had to head for the house and its gardens. Unfortunately the house and woodland weren't close and so it took time to get the house by foot, so by the time I got there I didn't have much time left to shoot.

As shown in the contact sheets I went for compositions were the gardens could be seen but with leading lines into house. I felt the gardens were too bare, so I didn't shoot much here. This would be the same pretty much every where because of the time of year. I think the compositions worked well, and the photos would have been successful if taken in the spring or summer, when there was leaves on the trees and flowers growing, because as it was the flowerbeds were just full of stalks of flowers and not a lot else, there was no colour going on, and nothing exciting happening in the images. 

Jaimie Golby

In the image above I think it's quite obvious that it would benefit from having some flowers in the frame to make it more interesting. The composition works, but its just to bare and boring. The time of the year is all wrong for hots like these, ones that depend on the foliage to make the image interesting and to bring it to life.

Jaimie Golby

This above image is more interesting as it gets closer to the subject. But once again it suffers from the same as first, its too bare and boring and is lacking elements and colour within the image. 

Jaimie Golby

I really like the composition of this image, I think it works really well, and has a great sky in as well. The image just doesn't work for the series though. Perhaps it would benefit from being a quicker exposure, the long exposure used created the interesting sky, but sacrificed sharpness, the blur of motion can be seen in the trees, I feel its a bit too much, perhaps it would work in another image set. It also looks like composition could be improved by shooting from a higher perspective, and maybe using a wider angle lens to get more within the frame.