special techniques
urbanlandscape.
&
planning
ideas
idea one When I thought urban landscape I thought the obvious with was buildings. I’m lucky to live in such a
big city that is full of tall, interesting buildings to photograph. For my first idea I thought I would take a walk around the city and get some different views and perspective of the buildings from different angles and see what I could come up with. I will look at old buildings and new and get a different range of photographs. I will look at other urban landscape ways, such as photographing the landscape as well as portrait. Then I am going to look at other things found around the city centre such as statues and sculptures that are in front of buildings and historic.
idea two I didn’t want to just photograph buildings for this part of the project and theme I wanted to look at another way around it still keeping the landscape and the urban theme, so I thought about ‘concrete jungle’ so based around the same idea. I like, when going round cities, the dark, dank, abandoned sort of areas that no one particularly wants to go, graffiti, I find them alot more interesting than newer buildings, I like abit of history to shots to do with urban themes. I will look at alley ways, sighs, and bridges, under neither bridges and down the side of buildings, where hardly anyone would go.
special techniques
I want to look at filters and changing the whole concept of the image. I’m going to be playing around with black and white, sepia, colours and filtering images, on the camera and on Photoshop. I want to maybe come up with a different filter for each of the images I produce so i have a really good range of images to present for this part of the process.
exp eria nce eva luat ion how did the shoot go?
leeds city centre
When setting off to do my urban landscapes shoot I went with the idea of looking at buildings and this that are within the urban environment with the theory of ‘concrete jungle’ so I wasn’t just looking at the obvious, tall skyscrapers and new buildings in the city centre that people see all the time, when I comes to photographing urban things I like to go with the idea of back alleys and backstreets and place that are dirty where no body really wants to go or aren’t really seen by the public much, forgotten places in a way. I found that walking around places that were just outside the city centre or behind all the buildings that can be seen I could find places like this. I looked at photographing from all different angles, but most of all I found that to me my images looked best in the portrait form when it came to the buildings and how they were formed. Although I was still getting a landscape they were just framed in portrait. I took images of buildings, houses, sighs, alleys, streets, sculptures, statues and some that were framed together. I needed to photograph with different filters to gte many different effects. I used black and white and sepia tones along with different colours and changing apertures and shutter speeds to get different effects, I wanted a different effect for each image so not one looked the same. I came up with many images to brightness in colour to siloettes of statues. Overall the shoot went really well. If I was to do it again I would defiantly go to different cities and research into more hidden away places that I could take my time and travel to get a better collection of images. For each of my final images I tried to pick out a range of very different images to present so all of them had a different technique used to show my understanding of this part of the project. I will say that there are some images that I preferred to others and some that I think came out amazingly and some that were OK. I really enjoy photographing in black and white so I thought this would be a really opportunity to bring that forward and show some images in black and white as well as colour, again to get a range. I really did enjoy this shoot and the editing process, I would say that overall this shoot that has been the most successful and has had the strongest outcome. If I were to do this shoot again I would come up with more ways to produce filters on location and collect a varsity of them also to put onto my camera lens.
speical techniques
Black & white, Hue: 0 Saturation -50 Lightness -16 Shadows 20% Highlights 0%
black&white
image one
The black and white image of a road with a lot of old building on full of cars. I made the image very gray and black and not too dark as I didn’t want the detail taken out of the image. I think the different proportions of buildings in the image look really effective as well as there being in a way a vanishing point at the end. I like how there is some sky in the image to give it a brighter effect and not too dirty and dreary with it being black and white. I like the balconies on in the frame as I feel they give the buildings more depth and make them look far more interesting. I enjoy photographing older buildings as I find they have a lot more character than newer ones, with the oldness of the bricks and the wear and tear as they have been there for many years. At this part of Leeds there was quite a lot of building like this converted into shops and apartments. I enjoyed this area; the streets were very narrow and often full of cars.
image two
This was one of the more simpler images that I decided to include. I pointed my camera in the direction of the sun to get a silohette of this statue. I chose this image, not for the statue, but mostly for the sky, using a blue filter I made the sky look really effective, I think what the statue adds if good as well, the fact it is a silhouette and not in detail I feel makes the image look asif it was shot toward the end of the day when in fact it was the middle of the afternoon. Theway it is edited filtered and shot tricks the eye.
silhouette&
blue filter
blue filter colour balance, levels 12 + 1 +95
image four
black & white
black & white
black & white exposure +80
Another black and white image. I was going for more of a darker look in this image, with the idea of this back of a house looks very lonely and in a way depressive. I love the contrast of the darkness of the surroundings and floor to the bright, white of the back of the house with the light from over the wall shinning on it causing most of the house to light up and pop out of the image. I wanted to show black and white in this part of the project as I enjoy shooting images in black and white. I quite like this image and I feel it gives the effect I wanted.
vibrance -100
vibrance image five
I like the angle that this image has bee taken from and the perspective of it. The old houses with the stairs to the entrance are always interesting to photograph with the textures of the bricks and how they are all the same in a row I find this would be a good example to show for the perspective aspect. To get the effect on the image I put the vibrancy all the way down to, not very well but I in a way, make it look a bit old fashioned and have a kind of lilac/orange tint to it. The sky is just white on this image as I didn’t want the focus to be about the sky but about the buildings and I feel that this is what the focus is.
photofilter photofilter hue -6 saturation +53 Lightness -6 photofilter: densiry, 23% Levels 39,1.00,255
image six
This image is defiantly one of my favourites. I find that graphitized parts of the city are some of the more intresting and effective parts of the city to photograph. I find they can be unpredictable and are often found in older more, abanadoned parts that give effective surfaces to photograph along with them/ the thing I like most about this image is the colours of the images on the walls and the grit box off to the side. The vibrant colours make the image pop and stand out a lot more than it would have done without the filter. The viewer’s eye goes straight to the pinks and yellows that are seen in the image.
Going with my idea about a ‘concrete jungle’ I decided to not just photograph buildings but also look at other things found in an urban environment and use them as part of the landscape process. I liked the sign and how it has all the different textures and colours of the ripped posters. Using, again the perspective aspect and photographed the sign from the side but also had a tall building and many other things in the background with the subway in the distance with I thought was a good effect. I put a sepia filter to this image with the shadows emphasised, I think it makes the time of the day look as if the sun is about to go down which I like and worked really well.
concretesepia jungle tone
image seven
sepia filter
image eight
Taken at the same location as image five but from a completely different angle and for a completely different effect. Using colour filters to change the colours of the windows, building, bike and road I wanted to show the range of different things that I can do to an image to make it look completely different from a filter. I quite like the colours I choose, the yellow and lilac, I feel they worked well together and gave an interesting image. Again I like the perporations and perspective of this image and the angle it was taken from. With a fast aperture to get a lot of light in for the time of day. The filter on this image was done, obviously on Photoshop, but like I said, I wanted to show a range of techniques.
colour
colour filters, exposrue -0.0236
filters
back alley
Cyan -135, blue:-160 Magentas:80 black and white, red:83, Yellow:60 Green:101,
black & white
image nine
Another black and white image but different from the other. I think the sky is very effective in this image as well and the angle the image was photographed. It is also slanted quite a bit which, ill admit, wasn’t on purpose but I think worked out pretty well. I like the double yellow lines and how the go off into the vanishing point of the image. I like the tight alley was as they are some of my favourite places to photograph and places I tend to find more interesting. I also like the darkness of one side of the street to the white building on the other side, which I think gives more depth to the image and makes it look more effective than it just being completely dark.
levels levels levels
levels: 56,0.84,201
image ten Again to head away from the building idea and look at other aspects of the city I looked at different sculptures I found throughout the city. I found this birds in flight sculpture outside a hotel in the centre of town. The hotel was new and had a lot of glass with a green tint to it. I didn’t want to just photograph the sculpture head on as it was, I decided to get it from a different angle and I thought that from the bottom looking up on the birds would look the most effective and I was right. I brighten the colours with a filter to make it a lot more vibrant and make the greens completely stand out. Im really happy I got the statue from the angle I did I think it made the image a lot more intresting and effective
effect of the image
changing the
image eleven
I think this image im going to name ‘there’s a storm coming’ just because it looks to gloomy and dark with the clouds over heard and the darkness of the surroundings. I think this image is really good. I used a really small aperture so not to get much light is, and it was miday so it wasn’t dark at all, I like how the street light looks lit up. It looks very gloomy and asif it is going to rain and the clouds overheard are moving really quickly. I really like the filter and effect this image gives expecially as it was a clearish day and sunny. Filters can make an image look the complete opposite
exposure
camera settings: 18mm, f/11, 100m exposure, +0.73 offset, -.0079 Gammer, 1.45
back alley
image three
The same alley way as image eight but from a different point of view and in colour. I think that in colour this is one of my favourite images from the eleven I picked for overall I think the orange tint of the buildings really come out in this photo with quite a large exposure. All the colours look really well in focus and shot expecially the yellow of the double yellow lines and the left hand building. I like how part of the image is pretty bight where as the other side is really dark. The fact that the newer building is really bight and the old part of the street with the rough, tacky buildings is dark is pretty effective and obviously by conscience but makes a really good effect and adds to the image.