Phoebe Mills Unit 3 Photography Investigation into abstract landscape Abstract photography, sometimes called 'non-objective, experimental, conceptual or concrete photography, is a means of depicting a visual image that does not have an immediate association with the object world'* and that has been created through the use of photographic equipment, processes or materials. For my first project for A2 1chose instinctively the project 'abstract landscape' even though landscape has always been an area in photography that I have always lacked interest with. But It was the word 'abstract' that intrigued me and something that I wanted to pursue. It added a dimension that I hadn't really explored, and so I started by searching for a photographer that I personally liked, someone that would get me inspired to work in this area. After searching through hundreds of photos of the worlds take on this theme I came across Frances Seward. His work really stood out to me because of the way his photos almost mimicked the famous paintings of of J.M.W. Turner's work, which I was fond of and it showed me how much I could manipulate my photos because they were so heavily different from what the actual photo would of looked like. I then started looking at long exposure photography to get this sort of painting effect. I loved working with my camera at a long duration shutter speed because every photo that came out was unique and wasn't an exact replicate of the view you already see beyond the lens. My new interest in photo manipulation led me to look at the idea of painting onto a picture. I came across the photographer Mathew Brandt who used chromogenic colour print paper that allowed the ink of the photos to run into unique patterns when using water. I tried this for myself, but my experiments did not work out in the way I wanted, I used bleach, and white spirit and different types of paper, some of the effects work but did notgive off the style I was looking for. Manipulating photos was now something I sought out to do, burning, bleaching, printing on acetate, heating acetate. I searched for a method that would be exciting to the eye. Personally, I found that sometimes when I manipulated the photograph it would become messy and I wanted to find a way of clean modifying or editing. Micah Daners influenced me to start working in this way, his work was almost futuristic. He cut out a part of the monotone picture and replaces it with a block of soft colour. The idea of cutting out a part of a picture added a dimension to the abstractness of the photo, and was new to me. Abstract photography, for me is about being experimental, I wanted to create something that not immediately associated with landscape. This is why I was fond of creating layers. Photoshop was also new to me but I wanted to try this layered effect without physically editing the photo but digitally editing it instead. After physically editing photos I now wanted to produce photos that would have a cleaner cut feel to them. In figure 1 1used the overlay feature to merge both my portrait photo and landscape and was careful about the composition and my using to tools such as pologon, earser, margue, and screen mode all to create the multi-image photo. I then looked at changing the landscape as well, instead of adding a portrait, I added on top more photos of landscapes and then edited this by cutting out shapes and curves using the laso pologon tool. The overlay feature 'difference' added a subtle purple tone (shown in fig2.) which I really liked and added an abstract atmosphere to the image. So I went and
Figure 1
Phoebe Mills Unit 3 Photography developed this kind of experimenting with physical editing taking pictures of the same landscape but cutting different shapes and layering new images on top. When I was looking for an artist to inspire me further in this theme, I came across Meredith Earls shown in fig3. She displays her photos by cutting them up and making a new photo, almost symmetrical. It created a new picture and this really appealed to me because it was so minimalistic, but very effective. I then went and took photos of the landscape, cut Figure 3 them up into mimicking shapes of mountains. The outcome of this was almost a planet-like montage of photos (fig 4). The colours for me where important to help the image flow, I think if I were to do this again I would focus more on getting pictures that complimented each other but also allowed there to be a two district sides, so that the image simulated more of a landscape impression. However this helped me to think of new ways of cutting up my photos and re-arranging them in innovative ways.
Figure 2 Figure 4
My work became more abstract as I tried new ways of distorting the image. Photographers like Kate Shaw, and Victoria Siemer influenced me to cut up the image but this not with the scissors but with a mirror. I took the mirror and made some symmetrical looking photos and then took past experiments with ink and overlay the images on top. This for me was too colourful and looked a bit chaotic in some parts, I was looking for a more subtle effect. So I re-took the photos, this time taking a mirror out into the country side and placing it making sure the composition was just right so no unwanted reflections where shown. It was here when I took an image of a tree with a mirror at a direct horizontal angle (fig5). This worked really well as the sky was pure white that day and the shape of it almost outlined the shape of my Figure 5 studies into Meredith Earls work. I loved how abstract it was. Then I went and took more images in this way, and used the overlay to merge some of my previous work on top of this image (fig6).
Phoebe Mills Unit 3 Photography Figure 6
Over all I don't think I would of come to this conclusion of images without going through and constantly refining my experiments. Through the amount of area I covered I was able to get into the insights and picture out all the possible outcomes t could of got too. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the different areas and techniques of abstract landscape as well as finding out more about other photographers and artists who also share this interest into this topic.
Bibliography *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract photography Frances steward
on google.
J.M.W. Turner http://www.william-turner.ora/bioaraphv.html
Mathew Brandt found on Pinterest Micah Dangers
Meredith Earls https://www.instagram.com/meredithearls/ Kate Shaw http://www.kateshaw.org/
Victoria Siemer found on Pinterest https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/412572015842282955/