Introduction to the 'Natural World'
The Natural World is photographing anything natural for example the landscape, plants, animals and anything else to do with the earth. Lot's of people take pictures of different things such as Jem Southam takes pictures primarily lakes and rivers in forests and a very green environment and rarely or never shows people in his images. Images of eyes, plants, the sky and different shapes and unusual landforms. You can set the mood of your image by using lighting some people use dark lighting to set a dull and grimy mood or people use very bright light and stand out colours such as reds, yellows and blues to make a summer/happy feeling.
Jem Southam
Jem Southam is a British photographer and takes pictures of the natural world and the environment. He started photography in the 70's so the camera he uses back then gave the images a very vintage grimy look which I think worked very well with the images that he takes and are a very unique style. His photo's are usually focus on landscape and are taken in woods or lakes with lot's of tree's and grass he has no pictures with people in them. I like his photo's because the vintage look which make the colours look a lot more dull and it looks very peaceful.
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This photo by Jem Southam is taken by a river and the colours are not very varied they're all browns and some dark greens. This sets a washed out and stale mood but when you find out what he does in his photo's you'll understand why because he takes photo's at the same locations over months or years to show the gradual changes in the landscape and most of his photo's are taken in the 80's to the present in the countryside in the South-West of England hence why there's a lack of buildings and housing but only forest and lakes in Jem Southam's work. He uses a vintage camera which makes the images darker and more unique.
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The Natural World Pinterest Board
Kilian Schoenberger
Kilian Schoenberger is a German photographer that takes pictures of very unusual landscapes and old vintage buildings such as castles and houses. I heard he is colourblind so he mostly focuses on texture and depth in his images. He must travel a lot to get images of these fascinating landscapes. All of his photo's are taken from a great distance and show a very wide area so the framing is very wide. None of his images are taken at a angle all are straight on pictures with a very clear angle of the subject. These photos's are very good looking and do relate to the natural world however, it would be very hard to use inspiration in my own pictures as it is really hard to get anything similar to the subjects used in these photos without travelling to these places.
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My own images related to The Natural World (Inspired by Jem Southam)
I took these photo's at a woodland across from my house in Chislehurst. I used my iphone to take this images and it was quite late when I took them so the lighting is pretty dark and this creates a natural look. The photo's are taken pretty far away from the subject which is similar to Jem Southams photo's which are also taken in a similar way. I took pictures of lakes and woods because this is what Jem Southam usually takes his photo's of. The first image I used the lake to reflect the image of the plants and tree's.
Further Experimentation
I took the first photo in a classroom while sitting down and it turned out to be very effective.I liked how the bottle was transparent and the drops of water on the inside with the different textures in the background made the photo eye catching and there is a lot to look at . My intentions were to get similar photo's but implement element of nature to make them relevant to the topic so I got the bottle of water and took it out to to take similar image and edit them in iphoto to get similar bold and bright colours that Kilian Schoenberger would also implement into his work. I took the bottle to natural environments around the school to add the elements that are needed to be part of the topic 'Natural World'. I think these photo's came out well. However, could experiment further with these types of images in photoshop which I think is a next step to make my work even better as I have had lots of experience with photoshop and can possibly put my other skills and implement them in this style of photo's
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Artist Research: Karl Blossfeldt
Karl Blossfeldt gets natural things such as flowers, seeds and other natural forms. He takes close ups of these natural things with a white background and really pays attention to the unique details that the objects have. The framing is quite basic and just has the subject in the middle of the screen. He also has repetition in his images as he uses two very similar plants on the outside edges and a different one in the middle to make a pattern. I could do similar things to this using the dark room and developing images with negatives and a enlarger with plants I find and perhaps I can maybe try this in future as experimentation.
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Stephen Gill
Stephen Gill is a example of a very experimental Natural world photographer. He takes a picture and then prints it off and puts various objects on top of it such as flowers, vegetables, paint and many more then takes another photo on top of the old one with the objects on top. He first started off with a plastic lens which didn't have exposure and focus controls which made his photo's look more vintage and bland with not much colour.
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Anna Atkins (Cyanotypes)
Anna Atkins is a British photographer who made photo's around 1843 after her friend invented a photographic process called Cyanotype. She used this process herself in her work and made a photography book of different types of algae mostly seaweed. The silhouettes of the various shapes of algae used is interesting with the bright blue background makes it stand out.
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Photograms
Today I used the enlarger to make photograms of various objects related to the natural world I found. I then used a circle cutter to cut out a circle which I put on top of another piece of photography paper and repeated the process. I think these photo's were very effective and had a very unique look to them that you can only get through photograms.
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What I intend to do from now on
From now on in preparation for my controlled assessment. I will finish and refine my coursework in order to get the best grade possible out of the 60% of the gcse that comes from coursework alone. I will then start to prepare myself for the controlled assessment by planning what I will do and how I'm going to get it done, what resources will I need etc. I will also look at other artists work similar to mine to give me an idea of the quality and techniques that I should be showing in my work also in order to get the best marks. For my photograms I made a few A3 sized photograms and I am going to cut them out using a circle cutter and other shapes and re-gram them on another A3 piece of photogram paper. I will use a combination of elements used from both Man Ray and Anna Atkins as inspiration for my work. I need to finish my artist researches on all 5 artists for my project. I also need to then evaluate the final pieces and the unit as a whole. I need to speak about which things were successful, how I can improve and how I got inspiration from other artists.
'Natural World' final outcome
The photographic paper I used is AGFA
Signum Paperwhich is matte and glossy
photographic paper sized A3.
Signum Paperwhich is matte and glossy
photographic paper sized A3.
Final Outcome Evaluation
I used A3 pieces of photographic paper to create 2 different photograms using the enlarger in the dark room. The photograms consist of other photograms re-grammed in the shape of circles using the circle cutter tool and objects I found which are related to the natural world such as plants. leaves and sticks. I made a total of 8 photograms and I chose the 2 most effective ones that are also used with the same type of photographic paper which was AGFA Signum matte and glossy photographic paper.
The outcome has been mounted on a large mount board with the original paper. When I done the photogram I exposed the imagine with the enlarger for 2 seconds as I found out this was the best after testing many times. I also used a sheet of acetate to put on top of it to make sure the objects stayed in the correct place I came across a problem where the acetate had many scratches and finger prints which came up on the paper after I had developed it. I had to use a different piece of cleaner acetate in order to fix this problem and start over again. I got inspiration from Stephen Gill in a way because he experiments layering in his photography and I did the same when I did a photograms and then photogrammed it again on top of another piece of photographic paper in the same way he puts photo's and natural objects on top of his other photo's in most of his work he is also a artist I researched. I also got inspiration from Anna Atkins although she only does cyanotypes and not photograms they are still very similar in looks as she does cyanotypes of leaves, moss and other plants she finds in the same way that I done in my outcome. LEAVES TWIGS PHOTOGRAMS COLLAGE ENLARGED ABSTRACT |