Landscape

Definition and theory

Landscape: derived from the Dutch word 'landshap' meaning "region, tract of land". The first recorded use of landscape was in 1598, as a painters term when Dutch artists were pioneering the landscape genre. It was used in the artistic sense by the English to describe a picture depicting scenery on land.

Research of artist

Rut Blees Luxemburg is a German photographer born in 1967. Luxemburg's technique is to take pictures at night and to capture urban landscape. Many of her photography deals with nocturnal themes. Luxemburg studied at London College of Communication and further studied at the University of Westminster. She employs long exposures to allow her to use the light emanating from the street only, for instance from office blocks or street lights in her photos.

The following images are examples of Luxemburg's work:

Image bank

The following images show landscape photography all inspired by Rut Blees Luxemburg. The photographs show similarity to Luxemburg's work because the same techniques are used:

I believe that I will be able to capture photographs inspired by Luxemburg using the same techniques around Harlow. I will capture my images when it dark and adjust my camera to have the right settings. I will also use a tripod to take my photography. 

http://www.rca.ac.uk/more/staff/rut-blees-luxemburg/    

Selected images

Contact sheets

Best images 

The following 5 images have been selected from my contact sheet as my best images for 'landscape':

Images that need improvement

The main problem with this image is that it is very blurry, but this isn't due to the focus, it is because I didn't have a tripod at the time so I was holding the camera myself. It was cold at night so my hands were rather shaking, so after taking many photographs of this building, I decided I would revisit it another time with a tripod so that I could get it right. It is also not very central which usually wouldn't be such an issue as I could just crop it in photoshop to make it more central. However, That would make the image look more narrow than wide and the idea is for it to be a landscape photograph, so for improvement, I would move left so that I could get the building in the centre for the capture.

This photograph, along with many others of the same building, didn't turn out right; they turned out too dark so that the building couldn't be properly identified. This is because I handy realised I had the wrong camera settings for the whole duration of this shoot. The ISO value was at 800, which is correct for night photography. The shutter speed was at 1/250, which again is correct. The aperture value was at f22, which was completely wrong. I needed the aperture to be about f8 so that the foreground and background are in focus rather than either one. the reason I was capturing the images like this was because I was unsure of how to change the aperture value on my camera, so before I went out for my second shoot of the build (shoot with a tripod), I read the manual for my camera and adjusted the aperture value the way it said to. This made the second shoot a success.

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress
My intentions for 'landscape' were to capture walls and general streets at night so that I could interpret the work of Rut Blees Luxemburg into my photography.

With reference to my best images:

For the first picture, I was inspired by a photograph I had found in my research of Rut Blees Luxemburg (fifth in research). I had a lot of difficulty capturing the building in the way I anticipated. As I have briefly explained in 'images that need improvement', I went to the location opposite this building, which was a story car park, and went as high up as I could get so I could be level with the top of the building I was capturing. I didn't have a tripod the first time I did this shoot, but after failing to get a good focus, I came to the realisation that I needed a tripod for this, so I revisited the location another night with a tripod. The tripod massively helped because it ensured that the image would be focused and also not blurry from moving the camera by accident. Also, for the first shoot, I had the wrong camera settings, which were crucial for the picture to come out well, so for the second shoot, I had figured out how to adjust the camera settings so that they were correct and I used the settings to capture this image. Out of all of the images of this building I took, I selected this one because it was the straightest/centred image and it was the most focused, whereas others were slightly tilted or not as focused.

In the second image, I was generally inspired by a few of Luxemburg's photographs rather than just one (more specifically, second and third in research). I captured this when I saw the graffiti and the metal handrails which looked similar to Luxemburg's work. I didn't use a tripod but found that it looked well without the use of it. I will edit this picture in Photoshop later on to darken it and make it look even more like Luxemburg's photography.

I captured the third image in the same area as the previous photograph because I liked the handrails and decided that they looked like the same style as luxemburg's work. One side of the photograph is rather overexposed, so I will later edit it in Photoshop. I took this image on an outdoor stairwell by kneeling down at the beginning of the steps to capture the end of the handrail, just like one of Luxemburg's that I found in research.

The fourth image is very similar to the previous few images. My intention for this photograph was to capture the wall and the handrail from a different angle. It was a different wall and handrail to the previous images in best images, but in the same area. Although this was outdoors, there were lights hitting this area, but I intend to edit the image in photoshop to darken the photograph in areas of it that are needed.

The fifth photograph was specifically inspired by the second image in the research section. I was out looking for a wall that had graffiti on, bearing in mind that I wouldn't be able to find the exact same wall.By doing this, I would be able to capture 'landscape' using the same techniques that Luxemburg used. This photograph has a great shadow coming from the left side which adds to the effect of the image being taken in the dark/at night. I used a tripod for this image so that I could level the camera to capture the graffiti on the wall.

AO2 Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops
I used a Nikon D3300 to take all my images for 'landscape'. I used the zoom lens for all of the images I captured of the building because it was fairly far away. I used a tripod for most of the pictures to ensure that the images were straight and not titled/slanted. I took all of the images outdoors, typically on the streets just as Luxrmburg had done. I also captured everything whilst it was dark as this was the main technique that Luxemburg used. The camera settings I used were f22 for aperture value, 1/125 for shutter speed value and 800 for ISO value.

I edited the images from 'best images' so that they would resemble the style of Luxemburg's photography. I used Photoshop to make these edits. Before making the edits, I intended to darken the images that were overexposed by using tools such as the 'burn' tool.

I have taken screen captures of how I edited one of my best images in Photoshop:

I opened the image in the Photoshop application and made edits to make it darker in certain areas. The first edit I made was decreasing the brightness using the 'brightness/contrast' tool from the adjustment panel. I decreased the number from 0 to -67 because this is what I think looked best for the photograph.

The next thing I did was decrease the exposure from 0 to -1.29 because again, I thought this looked best for the image. I did this by selecting 'exposure' from the adjustment panel. If it were any lower, the left side of the image would be too dark and would look black.

Lastly, I used a tool named 'burn tool' which can be found in the toolbar. This tool allows me to darken ('burn') parts of the image that I select. I didn't want to burn the image too much, so I set the size of the tool to a large size and dragged my mouse over the areas I wasted darker. I went over it twice as any more would be too dark. The result of this is shown below with the other final edits.

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytic and critical understanding
I researched photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg to get inspiration for my photography on 'landscape'. Before researching Luxemburg, I viewed some examples of her work and decided to base my work on her work because I found the photographs interesting. I wanted to take my photographs in the dark as I have not done this before, which is the reason as to why I took such an interest in this photographer. In this research, I found out a lot about the photographer including facts about her lifestyle growing up, but most importantly, I found out about the techniques she used. This part of the research massively helped with my own photography as I was able to use the same techniques. However, the information that I found about her life didn't help when producing my photography. I found and selected several images of Luxemburg's work that helped me to visualise what I was aiming to capture.

AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections on work and progress
I initially intended to take photographs of typical streets and other similar places that would be considered to be 'urban landscape'. I would say that I was fairly successful in achieving this.  I also intended to capture everything in the dark. However, some images were lit up by other sources of light whilst being outdoors. I decided to still use these images, but darken them in Photoshop. After realising that some of the images hadn't turned out the way I had expected, I decided to do another shoot to improve the images by making changes such as using a tripod for the second shoot and adjusting the settings so that they would be correct for what I was capturing. Doing this second shoot helped me to progress towards producing a series of images that are similar to those of Luxemburg's work.

The following images show the final edits for my best images for 'landscape' :