Michael Jackson

http://www.mgjackson.co.uk 

Michael Jackson is a British photographer based in Wales. Jackson studied art at West Dean College and then went on to apprentice under landscape painter Christopher W. Baker.

A lot of Jackson's work is based on a single beach in Wales, Poppit Sands, where he has revisited numerous times since moving to Wales. Jackson has this to say about his work at Poppit Sands.

'This seems to be something that I am compelled to do as I have not yet tired of it. My goal is to keep on looking harder and hope that through studying a single subject I can find something new. The beach has an infinite complexity – it is constantly changing. Why would I ever tire of trying to understand and record the infinite?' (M.Jackson. http://www.mgjackson.co.uk/section399533.html [Accessed: 28/11/13])

Jackson's work has been exhibited numerous times, including at places like Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Berlin, New York and many others. As well as being exhibited his work has been featured in several magazines such as Lenswork, silvershotz, amongst others and has also been featured on many blogs including BBC News.

A child's landscape

A child's landscape is one of Jackson's studio based projects. Jackson has this to say about this particular project: 

'I create these landscapes in my studio using sketched notes of the Pembrokeshire coast. I imagine these views through a telescope. I imagine pirates and explorers. I imagine swooping gulls and terrible storms, shipwrecks and stories of adventures and heroism. Overall I remember my childhood.
The landscape in a child's mind is not filled with exact facts. It is filled with excitement, with adventure and is unreal.' (M.Jackson.http://www.mgjackson.co.uk/gallery_572612.html [Accessed: 28/11/13])

The images from this series are quite abstract, they are still life shots taken in a studio environment. The images appear to be of cliffs along a coastline, when in fact they are images of rocks submerged underwater in a fish tank. The aesthetic of the images make them look they were created using some historical photographic technique long past, but really they were made using quite a modern method utilising medium format cameras and bread crumbs in the water to get that scratchy, used, dated look within the sky. 

I included this project within my research because it fit in so well with my idea to create landscapes within the studio, and shows how other photographers have gone about doing the same thing. 

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson

Bruges, Belgium

A couple of nights ago I went to Bruges to start shooting for this project. I went for some urban cityscapes, and to do some location scouting for future possible shoots. I only went for two nights, traveling throughout the days, so there wasn't a great deal of time available.

The weather throughout the day wasn't great, it was completely overcast for the most part, and then rain in the evenings. I found the best time for shooting was late evening, when the rain had stopped and when the lights came on outside the buildings to light them up. The best locations were around the canal and around the squares where the streets opened up for a wider view, and so you got the reflections of the lights in the water.

I chose Bruges as a possible location for one of my shoots for this project because I thought a city location would work well to show how man-made things are part of the landscape. Using a urban location to show that this is the new 'natural', this is the norm of our day and age.

I also chose a city for the architecture. Buildings are man's home, and people are part of nature, so what they create must be part of that nature too? Buildings are just a modern day cave. Using the buildings as a subject within this project shows how these mad-made things have become part of the landscape, there not something separated from it, but something part of it.

In the two colour images below you can see 'nature' within an urban environment, the moss on the bridge, the trees, the water and the swan swimming along the canal. This just goes to show how 'nature' doesn't fight against the man-made structures but rather works around them or with them to prosper, in the images they are one together, both natural elements. 

Jaimie Golby

Jaimie Golby

Jaimie Golby

Transformative Studio Task

Initial thoughts and ideas

As this sub-project needs to relate to the larger negotiated project I needed to think of ways to bring a landscape into a studio environment. My first thoughts of how to achieve this was to recreate a 'model' landscape, but this would be too time consuming and likely wouldn't be worth the effort. I then thought of using items that looked like things you might find in an outside environment. I tried something like this before using walls and bedsheets, I used a blue wall as the sky and a brown/orange sheet and used the folds to create mounds, when looking at it from the right perspective, and using the correct lighting I was able to make the blue look like the sky and the sheets as a desert with the folds looking like sand dunes, using a wide aperture I was able to make use of a shallow depth of field so the details of the wall and cloth had a soft focus, making it hard to see they were just fabric, I then introduced some objects to the scene to make them a bit more interesting and to try and make them look like structures in the environment.

Below you can see my images from a previous project mentioned above. 

Jaimie Golby

Jaimie Golby

Jaimie Golby

Jaimie Golby

Another idea I had for bringing the landscape to the studio was to create a scene using things found, such as plants, branches, pencils, litter. This idea is much like the above but utilising more objects and being less abstract, I think the above idea requires the viewer to have to imagine the scene as a landscape and not see it for what it really was, just a pile of sheets and a wall. 

After a bit of research I found images of artists using food to recreate a landscape. Some of the scenes looked quite believable and were very effective. The idea of using the texture, colour and likeness of foods work really well to create an abstract dream-like landscape. http://www.moillusions.com/carl-warners-food-landscapes-or/

Carl Warner

Carl Warner

Carl Warner

Carl Warner

Although I like the two ideas above and think they will work well with my project I feel there both quite colour dependant, and this transformative studio project is a black and white film project. Although the above images don't look like they will work in black and white, perhaps a starker landscape will. Such as a single tree in a field (much like the landscapes by Michael Henson). 

Using black and white would increase the realism within the images, making it potentially harder to differentiate between a created scene and the 'real thing'. Black and white would mean the focus was more on the texture, shape, form, light and shadows within the image, and if all were executed correctly perhaps the image could pass for an actual landscape. 

Hilden & Diaz

Hilden & Diaz

When researching another idea came to me for this project. I saw this project called Forms in Nature by Hilden and Diaz and thought it would be quite fun to recreate something similar, using the shadows of 'nature' cast indoors. I did a project last year using silhouettes of cutouts which which could be used to create the shapes needed to cast the desired shadows. Simply by putting the cutout in front of a light source, closer to the light for bigger soft focused shadows, further away for smaller and sharper, the shadow the cutout will be cast across the room. I think this idea would work quite well with black and white as the shadows would standout quite a lot and there isn't much colour in a darkened room anyway. 

Light Sculpture by Hilden and Diaz http://piodiaz.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/forms-in-nature/

On their blog Hilden and Diaz explain that their light sculpture was inspired by Ernst Haeckel's drawings. It works by using a intensifying light source within the sculpture that casts off the shadows of the roots, brighter light creates stronger and larger shadows. The sculpture creates 360 degrees of shadows, which when used in the centre of a room, fills it entirely of these tree-like shadows giving the deception of a forest indoors.(T.Hilden and P.Diaz. http://piodiaz.wordpress.com/about/ 15 Nov 2012 [Accessed 16/11/13])

Aesthetic Approach

Susan Derges - Under the moon

At first glance the images from this series by Susan Derges look like quite simple photos, but under closer examination its noticeable that they are not. There appears to be a few possible processes used to get aesthetic seen in these images, photogram, camera-less image recording and collaging.

When looking closely at the images you can see water ripples and movement, suggesting the images taken are reflections on a pool or river looking up at the moon. The images could also be made using a camera-less method of laying light sensitive paper under some water and leaving it to expose, the branches and leaves would be silhouettes, just shadows of an over hanging branch. The ripples could be created by disturbing the water in some way, perhaps by dropping something in moving the container with the water it in, or by sending in vibrations.

I think this process makes the image more part of the landscape, the image becomes one with it, instead of having the camera recording an image from afar, it cuts out the middleman (the camera) and records whats there.

As the aesthetic is quite different to a 'usual' photograph, it makes the viewer stop and look at it, bringing questions as to how it was made, why it was made, it plays on the viewers curiosity and gets them intrigued. Recording the image in this way adds more elements to the image, it adds layers, making it more complex and more interesting, the texture from the ripples makes it more than just a photo.

Dan Mountford

Double exposure processes can be done either in camera, post-production in photoshop or in the darkroom. To do it in camera you simply expose the first frame then wind the film back and expose again on the same frame, ofcourse its more complex than it sounds to correctly expose so that the final image is well exposed. To do it in photoshop simply layer the images into the same document and set the layer blending options to get the aesthetic required. To get the effect in photoshop its much like the in camera method, but instead you expose one image from a negative on to some paper, then using the same paper and a different frame on the negative, you expose again to get the same effect.

The process of double exposure gives this abstract quality to the images achievable by no other means. It gives a dream-like quality to the images and the extra layers make them quite appealing and gets the viewer to stop and look at them to see both scenes within the image. The effect it can have ona portrait like this is one that shows several perspectives at once, one of the person in the image, and the other of the possible scene the person can see. Making it seem like the person is at this place in the image, when in actuality they could be very far away when the images were created and not related to the scene at all. 

Julian Calverley

http://www.juliancalverley.com

http://juliancalverley.wordpress.com

Julian Calverley is a Hertfordshire born landscape and advertising photographer. As well as being a keen photographer Calverley also showed an interest and skill in drawing and painting from an early age. Calverley attended an art college, but soon left as he realised photography was the most effective way he could express himself. Instead of studying photography at a college he instead worked for several studios where he acquired the skills necessary for what he wanted to do. In 1988 he opened his own studio, complete with a darkroom.

Calverley has a endless list of clients he has worked with and is still doing work for, recent clients include; Argos, Aston Martin, BT, Honda, DIVE Magazine, Marks & Spenser, and many many more.

As well as getting commissioned work, Calverley also spends his time doing his personal projects, a few of which included underwater shoots in the red sea and Cayman Islands. (J. Calverley. http://www.juliancalverley.com/biography/ [Accessed: 8/11/13])

Calverley's cinematic style really capture moments in the landscape and have led to great success throughout his career. His work has been featured in several publications such as International Photography Awards, Association of Photographers Awards Book, and many more. As well as the publications his work has also been exhibited in several gallery’s and due to increased popularity of his work, many of his personal landscape images have become available in editioned Large Format Archival Pigment Prints. (J. Calverley. http://www.juliancalverley.com/biography/ [Accessed: 8/11/13])

Calverley's images are often similar locations. He revisits the same places regularly as the land is constantly changing and is never the same from one day to the next. He shoots in the different weather conditions as the different weather changes the atmosphere of the area completely and provides very different images. Calverley shoots all over the world but seems to prefer locations closer to home, a lot of his work is shot in the UK, prominently in northern Britain, Scotland. 

'Preferring the qualities of autumn and winter light, Julian often works before dawn and after dusk.

In all weathers, he captures the atmosphere of the scenes before him, often returning to the same remote locations time and time again.

Landscapes can look so different, almost unrecognisable, from one moment to the next that Julian considers it vital to experience them in their varying weather conditions and sea states.

His tenacity in revisiting these locations enables the apparent orchestration of truly unique moments.

In those moments, when the grandeur of the landscape combines unpredictably with the elements, the stage is set and Julian feels huge excitement in connecting with his surroundings.

The finished pieces command a theatrical air; so wonderfully crafted, as if each facet to the image has been summoned into place at the click of a finger.

It is this feeling of being there, experiencing nature and the elements in all their breathtaking glory that Julian conveys so effectively in his work.'

Quote taken from ... (http://edition-prints.com/process/ [Accessed 8/11/13])

Julian Calverley

Julian Calverley

Julian Calverley

Julian Calverley