For the theme of 'constructed landscapes', I first decided to explore making a collage using landscape photos of cities and nature. I like how this turned out because the combination of the modern buildings merged into the images of mountains and trees make for an interesting combination. To further explore this idea I turned it into negatives and positives by developing them as well as a cyanotype; this completely changed the feeling of the photo which I liked because of how it turned the photograph from an image of the scenery to a foggy image of the city surrounded by trees.
However, I decided to stray away from collages and explore out of focus landscapes. I really enjoyed this topic because it provided interesting results; by making regular landscapes blurry it really makes you focus on the photograph and see things you may not normally see such as interesting patterns or discreet lighting sources within a photograph. To make these photos, I used the camera app on my phone and held down on the screen which made the camera focus on something other than the main subject, then photographed regular places either in my local area or on my way to school to make them more personal to me. Whilst reviewing the images, I decided that I was able to further refine these photos by possibly amplifying the blurriness using the camera app on my phone and also cropping the images to centralize the main object of a photo. Whilst doing this topic I researched the photographer Uta Bath; her photos were fascinating to me because of how she captures photos of everyday life such as crossing the road or walking in the park but by purposely making the image out of focus, she manages to make her images extremely compelling. In particular her use of light is impressive as normal day lighting sources such as traffic lights become amplified and take control of the photo in comparison to them usually being a minor detail within a photo. I think I possibly could have further developed this theme by using light more in my images and also just by taking more photographs in general as I didn't fully explore this idea.
Coming back to the idea of collages, I researched Dionne Lee who made interestingly made a video out of the process of making a collage by tearing, cutting and placing different photos together to make different combinations of the compositions in the collage. To respond to her work, I decided to make something similar to her by making a collage but photograph each step of the way. I printed out many images from the national geographic placed them together whilst ripping or folding them to explore different combinations of how they would fit together. I don't think I was able to develop this idea further. However, I do believe that it would have been interesting to have made a video rather than a collection of photographs as it would have been closer to the original of Dionne Lee.
I then switched to the Idea of photograms. To do this I first printed out images of the national geographic because of how interesting and chaotic their images are, I thought they would be a good fit for this theme. I cut out what I thought was the most important parts of the image and then (using the photocopier) turned them into an acetate to which was then developed inside of the dark room. The first attempt at this wasn't great because of how much of the photo was cut out and was also developed too much. To refine this idea, I used a new image which I thought turned out well. In my opinion, the absence of a subject makes the viewer focus on the empty space so they use their imagination to wonder what would have been there or to try and fill in that space. It also makes them look at the grass in the foreground of the clouds in the background. After researching Liz Nielson, I possibly could have further refined this idea by even using a blank paper to make the photograms by cutting out parts of the paper to make the main object and leaving what would be the background instead of using a pre-existing image. With more time this would have been interesting to make as it would be extremely simplistic but also very appealing to view.
Using the out of focus landscapes, I made projector slides by photocopying them onto a sheet of acetate and cutting them to size to fit inside of the slides. I used the out of focus landscapes because I thought it would fit this idea as it may just add blurriness to the photo and amplify the disruptiveness. I tried putting them into the projector however they didn't look great so I decided to disrupt them even further. To do that I used a scalpel and cut them up into different pieces or scratched over them to give the effect of natural damage over time. This seemed to work but I still wasn't happy with the results so I used coloured transparent sheets to add more colour to the photos. I think these photos turned out well because it made the images look old and vintage as if they had been worn out over time. However, I believe that these could have been explored this theme even more by perhaps using more techniques to distort the slides and maybe thought more about how the outcome would look on the wall rather than thinking of how they looked inside of the slides. I also believe it would have interesting to incorporate the use of negative photos or changing the contrast of the photos to alter the light coming out of the projector.
For the final constructed landscape piece of work I decided to research Mandy Williams who uses monochrome landscapes of interesting places in nature such as tall mountains or the sea and merge multiple photographs together to expand the view of that location, as well as disrupting the images by cutting up the images and using blank spaces in the image instead of filling it up. I was really fascinated by her work so I attempted to respond to her work by taking simplistic landscapes of the nature I could see whilst walking around. After that I turned each photo into black and white inside of photoshop and grouped together the photos that I thought were similar to each other. Using those groups I merged the images together by lining up one object such as a tree which gave the effect that is one tree in the middle but different backgrounds. Similarly to Mandy Williams I also tried to use blank space within the photo which I felt gave the images more space and made sure they didn't look like a collage with many photographs packed into one image; I wanted to spread out the photos to give the viewer space to look around. I liked these results but I decided to further explore this theme to see where I could take it. I tried using a landscape of nature and taking small parts of it that would reflect what the image was about but without the unnecessary details; the opposite of the photograms. Though this came out a bit bland so used black shapes to disrupt the photo as well as adding contrast to it. I didn't quite like how this photograph turned out though as the cut out shapes look a bit random and not thought out and overall it might be a bit too simple and bland to look at. I still enjoyed responding to Mandy Williams though so decided to make new images with more going on inside them. I captured more landscapes of a field of grass and turned it black and white again to match the theme. For the first attempt, I placed black leading lines from the outer edge of the photo pointing towards the middle to try and guide the viewers eyes throughout the photo whilst also disrupting it. These lines provide a nice contrast which helps to bring the photo all together. Though this photograph was still a bit boring so I tried again but instead attempted overlapping a landscape on top of another by turning down the transparency of the top layer inside of photoshop. Then I used more lines to help divide the image up into sections and accidently it actually allowed the transparent layer to shine through helping you see more of what's happening. I really like this photo because it appears to be simplistic due to the lack of colour but when looking closer there actually is a lot going on, with the background layer full of trees you are able to view a simple landscape but on top there are houses and roads. I like how this photo represents the area around me as you are able to see multiple locations that are important to me all at the same time. Nonetheless, this idea still could have been further refined by perhaps using more than two images merged together or by using colour in some parts to highlight something in the photo as there isn't a main object to look at but rather just a scene. I would've also liked to disrupt it to a greater extent by covering more of the image up or similarly to the slides, use tools to manually make the photo look older.
However, I decided to stray away from collages and explore out of focus landscapes. I really enjoyed this topic because it provided interesting results; by making regular landscapes blurry it really makes you focus on the photograph and see things you may not normally see such as interesting patterns or discreet lighting sources within a photograph. To make these photos, I used the camera app on my phone and held down on the screen which made the camera focus on something other than the main subject, then photographed regular places either in my local area or on my way to school to make them more personal to me. Whilst reviewing the images, I decided that I was able to further refine these photos by possibly amplifying the blurriness using the camera app on my phone and also cropping the images to centralize the main object of a photo. Whilst doing this topic I researched the photographer Uta Bath; her photos were fascinating to me because of how she captures photos of everyday life such as crossing the road or walking in the park but by purposely making the image out of focus, she manages to make her images extremely compelling. In particular her use of light is impressive as normal day lighting sources such as traffic lights become amplified and take control of the photo in comparison to them usually being a minor detail within a photo. I think I possibly could have further developed this theme by using light more in my images and also just by taking more photographs in general as I didn't fully explore this idea.
Coming back to the idea of collages, I researched Dionne Lee who made interestingly made a video out of the process of making a collage by tearing, cutting and placing different photos together to make different combinations of the compositions in the collage. To respond to her work, I decided to make something similar to her by making a collage but photograph each step of the way. I printed out many images from the national geographic placed them together whilst ripping or folding them to explore different combinations of how they would fit together. I don't think I was able to develop this idea further. However, I do believe that it would have been interesting to have made a video rather than a collection of photographs as it would have been closer to the original of Dionne Lee.
I then switched to the Idea of photograms. To do this I first printed out images of the national geographic because of how interesting and chaotic their images are, I thought they would be a good fit for this theme. I cut out what I thought was the most important parts of the image and then (using the photocopier) turned them into an acetate to which was then developed inside of the dark room. The first attempt at this wasn't great because of how much of the photo was cut out and was also developed too much. To refine this idea, I used a new image which I thought turned out well. In my opinion, the absence of a subject makes the viewer focus on the empty space so they use their imagination to wonder what would have been there or to try and fill in that space. It also makes them look at the grass in the foreground of the clouds in the background. After researching Liz Nielson, I possibly could have further refined this idea by even using a blank paper to make the photograms by cutting out parts of the paper to make the main object and leaving what would be the background instead of using a pre-existing image. With more time this would have been interesting to make as it would be extremely simplistic but also very appealing to view.
Using the out of focus landscapes, I made projector slides by photocopying them onto a sheet of acetate and cutting them to size to fit inside of the slides. I used the out of focus landscapes because I thought it would fit this idea as it may just add blurriness to the photo and amplify the disruptiveness. I tried putting them into the projector however they didn't look great so I decided to disrupt them even further. To do that I used a scalpel and cut them up into different pieces or scratched over them to give the effect of natural damage over time. This seemed to work but I still wasn't happy with the results so I used coloured transparent sheets to add more colour to the photos. I think these photos turned out well because it made the images look old and vintage as if they had been worn out over time. However, I believe that these could have been explored this theme even more by perhaps using more techniques to distort the slides and maybe thought more about how the outcome would look on the wall rather than thinking of how they looked inside of the slides. I also believe it would have interesting to incorporate the use of negative photos or changing the contrast of the photos to alter the light coming out of the projector.
For the final constructed landscape piece of work I decided to research Mandy Williams who uses monochrome landscapes of interesting places in nature such as tall mountains or the sea and merge multiple photographs together to expand the view of that location, as well as disrupting the images by cutting up the images and using blank spaces in the image instead of filling it up. I was really fascinated by her work so I attempted to respond to her work by taking simplistic landscapes of the nature I could see whilst walking around. After that I turned each photo into black and white inside of photoshop and grouped together the photos that I thought were similar to each other. Using those groups I merged the images together by lining up one object such as a tree which gave the effect that is one tree in the middle but different backgrounds. Similarly to Mandy Williams I also tried to use blank space within the photo which I felt gave the images more space and made sure they didn't look like a collage with many photographs packed into one image; I wanted to spread out the photos to give the viewer space to look around. I liked these results but I decided to further explore this theme to see where I could take it. I tried using a landscape of nature and taking small parts of it that would reflect what the image was about but without the unnecessary details; the opposite of the photograms. Though this came out a bit bland so used black shapes to disrupt the photo as well as adding contrast to it. I didn't quite like how this photograph turned out though as the cut out shapes look a bit random and not thought out and overall it might be a bit too simple and bland to look at. I still enjoyed responding to Mandy Williams though so decided to make new images with more going on inside them. I captured more landscapes of a field of grass and turned it black and white again to match the theme. For the first attempt, I placed black leading lines from the outer edge of the photo pointing towards the middle to try and guide the viewers eyes throughout the photo whilst also disrupting it. These lines provide a nice contrast which helps to bring the photo all together. Though this photograph was still a bit boring so I tried again but instead attempted overlapping a landscape on top of another by turning down the transparency of the top layer inside of photoshop. Then I used more lines to help divide the image up into sections and accidently it actually allowed the transparent layer to shine through helping you see more of what's happening. I really like this photo because it appears to be simplistic due to the lack of colour but when looking closer there actually is a lot going on, with the background layer full of trees you are able to view a simple landscape but on top there are houses and roads. I like how this photo represents the area around me as you are able to see multiple locations that are important to me all at the same time. Nonetheless, this idea still could have been further refined by perhaps using more than two images merged together or by using colour in some parts to highlight something in the photo as there isn't a main object to look at but rather just a scene. I would've also liked to disrupt it to a greater extent by covering more of the image up or similarly to the slides, use tools to manually make the photo look older.