Personal inquiry: landscape photography
lamdscape photography is what got me into photography just trying to take pictures that look nice but as ive grown as a photographer ive realised there are much more angles to come from when looking at landscape photography. to start this project off then i have selected two photographers with different work styles to try to base my own work off.
the first photographer i am looking at for this project is jem southam whos work isnt neccisarly appealing in the same way a sunset on a beach is appealing but instead it is of places that would be impossible to capture in other meduims with nearly as much detail. this is an interesting idea as it shows specifacly why they chose to work in this meduim instead of painting or drawing. this is in my opinon one of the main reasons photography is unique to painting.
i chose these three in particular because of how intense they are and how theres so much going on you have to strain your eyes to look at the image. to me this shows something that could only be captured by the photographic meduim
These are a few photos i took while shooting attempting to photograph what me looked un paintable or something i wouldnt be able to paint. i like the images i took however i do feel in two the green is very oversaturated but this may be due to the fact i dont often shoot in colour but challenged myself to this project to work on it and also because thats what the photographers who i researched did.
The second photographer I am looking at is Henry fox talbot who was the first photographer to really use the medium
As a way to capture objects that others is couldn’t be recreated accurately in other mediums such as painting and drawing this is very simialr themes to what Jem
these photos I feel also kind of show those ideas especially the one with a bush close up as it would be hard to get that level of accuracy in the bush and the grasses the photos by the river also are very complicated when looking at the trees with the branches something very hard to replicate in a painting.
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I am pretty happy with how these photos turned out and will carry on shooting in colour in my next project as I want to get as strong as possible as I feel it really can add to some projects even if I do personally prefer shooting in blakc and white. The composition of the images I find interesting and I find the ideas I’ve explored about taking photos of something hard or impossible to paint very interesting as I used to struggle with landscape painting especially from my own reference photos that I took in winter as the branches of trees or brushes were too small to possibly paint accurately so I would have to use other methods to capture it as best I could but could never capture it the same way as the photo I had taken I think this will definitely be something I start to look into more as I develop my ideas around landscape photography in future projects.
Personal inquiry: Documentary
For this part of the personal inquiry we are looking at documentary photography. this can be documenting alot of things including places and events but usually it is documenting people and the place they exist in when deciding what photographers i wanted to research for this project i chose the two whos work i found the most interesting but also quite different to each other. as we only have two weeks to complete this personal inquiry i will struggle to work in their style however i can still take inspiration for my project in the second year of my course that i will have had alot longer time building up my work.
The first photographer im researching is Richard Billingham.
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part of his work that i find so intresting is how it captures his relationship between his mom and dad. but one of the things that interests mea alot is the wallpaper which is one of my strongest memorys from when i was at my grandads and the general clutter of the house. his work is so interesting as it shows how he expiernced life when at his parents exactly how it was and not as a romantasied idea. He also didn’t hold back while taking the photos or try to portray them as better or different he just took photos of them
And this is a major idea in documentary photography in taking photos exactly as they are and portraying things exactly how they were something I find interesting as maybe not in this piece but in other pieces of documentary photography the photos capture a thing that won’t be there forever which gives the work importantnce the longer it has been around as a reference to how things were. This is true in this project aswell but is much more personal to the photographer making the work.
