Exam theme: Obscured Idea 2
Intentions for idea 2 For this idea I would like to do something completely different to my first approach and photograph bleak landscapes because I think it would give me a chance to photograph a wider range of things, broadening my photography skills. I will be using Matthias Heidrich’s work of bleak landscapes as inspiration.
Initial photographs
Artist evaluation
Matthias Heiderich
This image is from the ‘White noise 1’ collection of Heidrich’s, which I found to be very serene because of the natural subject matter without there being any man made structures getting in the way. The eyes are instantly drawn to the prominent trees which are surrounded by a thin cloud of fog perhaps making it look almost angelic or religious. As I was unable to find any information on this artist my analysis will be purely on a visual basis. I think Heidrich wanted to create this sort of image to draw viewers in on their natural surroundings which people these days tend to ignore. By creating this tranquil imagery he has made the audience want to stop and look at the image of natural beauty. Heidrich’s work has inspired me to go out and photograph landscapes early in the morning to get the feeling of the mist and fog. Not replicating his work exactly but using it as a starting point for me to work further and push myself to create something stronger.
Developments
Final developments
Evaluation of idea 2 Overall I am very pleased with my initial and developmental images because I think both sets of photographs were quite strong and the composition of the developments were really thought about and I think they have a strong aesthetic appeal to them. I was a bit disappointed with a couple of the developmental images because I felt like they weren’t detailed enough and didn’t highlight the flowers properly and looked a bit flat. However I did try and correct this slightly using Photoshop. I think for this approach I pushed myself a bit more and developed my images as far as I could in the amount of time that we had. I think the idea of using the dried flowers worked really well because even as I developed my initial photographs I kept to the idea of keeping it about nature, like Heidrich, and also keeping to the theme of being obscured. I think experimenting with the selective colourisation on Nik’s Silver Efex helped me produce stronger developments because it helped make the images look more natural and made it look like the flowers were part of the background image of the trees.
I think Heidrich’s work has helped me a lot in this approach as it gave me a starting point in my work and inspired me to go beyond that and produce images which were much stronger than that of just my initial photographs. I really like how he captured images of bleak landscapes and made them into something people wanted to stop and look at because of the way he got the composition and lighting right. I feel on the whole my final outcomes were quite successful and reflected the work I was doing and I think my Photoshop and Silver Efex skills really helped me develop these images and develop the quality of the images which made them that much more effective and helped draw in the viewers attention making them more visually appealing. If I had more time to further develop these images I think I would go in the opposite direction of what I was doing now and take close up images of things such as buildings and roads which take over natural spaces. This would show the link between obscurity as the natural earth is being obscured by these big, polluting buildings. I think by de-saturating all the colour from the images of the building would contrast well against the light colour in the flowers. One artist I would look for inspiration in the next step would be would be Margaret Difford, who works in black and white in many of her photographs. I really like how she makes the subject matter seem very prominent, focused and detailed even though they are in black and white.