"As we travelled, we came near a very great hill, called Pendle Hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it; which I did with difficulty, it was so very steep and high. When I was come to the top, I saw the sea bordering upon Lancashire. From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered."
Photographs of Pendle by other photographers.
I do like these images but i feel most of them are missing a certain 'something', a dramatic element fitting with Pendles great and sometimes bloody history. I will be doing research into a few famous landscape photographers who's work I admire and their techniques to try and find some inspiration for my own photographs.
Ansel Adams (1902-1984)
Ansel Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his landscapes of the Deep West. He developed the 'Zone System' as a means to determine proper exposure (very simplistically-expose for the highlights and process for the shadows in one shot) This technique gave Adams' photos a clarity and depth that makes his photos immediately recognisable. I don't know if i have the right technique or, indeed, the talent to make a photograph in that way (landscapes being particularly difficult to expose due to the difference in the shadows and highlights) but I will be trying this technique along with a more modern and simpler version which is to take 2 shots, one exposed for highlights and one for shadows, and combine them both in Photoshop to bring out the best in both.
I adore Adams' way of capturing shadows and highlights in landscapes, and his insistence on capturing each scene with only one frame both inspires and scares me-my affectation for digital photography means i might take dozens of shots for only one picture and i intend on using Adams' influence to try and reduce the number of exposures i make.
I think Adam's use of Black and White is one of the things that makes his work so recognisable, it is definitely something i will be exploring in this part of the brief but i do think i will end up working with colour, as the colour of Pendle and the sky at sunset is one of the more breathtaking views of the Hill.
For my 2nd familiar place, i was inspired by David Chandler's 'Landscape of Disappointment'. Instead of going for a positive, homely place for my shot, i decided to take Chandlers more melancholy aspect of his essay and apply that to my shot. I am particularly inspired by Walker Evans after seeing some of his photographs in 'The Ongoing Moment'
Walker Evans (1903-1975) was best known for his Farm Security Administration photographs documenting the effects of the Great Depression. I love his photographs of doors, of open doors inside buildings and closed ones without. One of my very first ever 'proper' photographs (i.e. one where i purposefully paid attention to the composition and details, although i was far too inexperienced for aperture or shutter speed!) was of an open door with a view of another through it, and its only now, when i look back, do i see the similarity to Evan's work (pure coincidence though of course!)
Examples of Evan's work:
I will be visiting some of the houses I have lived in around the Burnley area to see if i can find inspiration and if any of my old homes fire that creative spark.
My Work
For my image of Pendle, I walked up the large hill behind my house just before sunset and took lots and lots of images. I set my camera to record 3 different levels of exposure (-2, 0 and +2) so that i could try my hand at a genuine HDR image-previously, i have only ever done HDR by making exposure-adjusted copies of one photograph. I used a tripod to make sure there was no discrepancies between the images, and used a cable release to trigger the shutter so there was no camera shake, especially on the longer exposures. I then went through the photographs in lightroom and chose the shots that i think would look the best as HDR images.
Contact Sheets
i chose the images i thought would make the best HDR, showed the 3 exposures and the HDR generated at the end, using Photomatix and Lightroom.
i picked 4 out of the 5 HDRs and put them on a contact sheet so i could compare them easily. Each image was very different, considering they were all taken within the same hour.
and this is my final image:
i chose this one mainly because of the sense of scale. The towns of Nelson and Barrowford can be seen at the base of Pendle, and at the very bottom of the image, the new school Pendle Vale, which is just a few minutes away, is seen. considering how large the new school building is, it really goes to show how much Pendle looms over my hometown. The HDR works well as it is showing the detail in the towns and buildings and the intensity in the sky which wouldn't be possible with just one exposure. On the whole, i am pleased with this image, although I do think it is probably the weakest out of my places set, which is ironic as it is the first of the places brief i decided on!
Familiar Image 2
As i stated before, I have lived in Burnley and the surrounding for the majority of my life, despite being born in Manchester. I see the old houses I have lived in fairly frequently but none of them created any sense of familiarity, discontent or that faint melancholy of Chandlers description, so i broadened my horizons slightly. I visited Burnley Wood, a place that is among the 5% most deprived areas in the country. I have lived in several houses around this area, but it wasn't until i came across my grandmothers house that I realised i had found my photographic subject. I haven't seen my Granny for around 8 years, and the last time i did, she didnt know who i was or any of my siblings. Not through dementia or any other old-age illness, but because she simply does not care. I spent many many hours in her house whilst my mum was at work, banished with my sister to the front room, sitting on her floral carpet and reading the Enid Blyton books I had brought with me. We were not allowed to leave the room, make noise or run about. Me and my sister would do everything in silence, playing, fighting, crying. As children we were to be invisible, there were no grandmotherly kisses and cuddles, no 'dont tell your mum!' packets of sweets.
It pleased me to see the house boarded up and marked for demolition. I have no good childhood memories of this house. I had no idea that my Granny didnt live there any longer (although I have been informed she is still alive) and that it was boarded up. I loved the fact the door was boarded up with bits of wood rather than the heavy metal doors which normally marks the abandoned properties in this horrible part of Burnley. I intend to revisit the site in a few weeks time and see if its been demolished yet.
I had recently finished 'The Ongoing Moment' and found that works i found in this book influenced a lot of the photography I produced for the Places brief. I was inspired by the photography of Walker Evans when photographing this house, as discussed in the research part of my blog.
Contact Sheets
i took a small series of images of the property, holding the camera by hand, mainly using the rule of 3rds to compose the door and the window. because i already knew what compositional style i wanted to use for this photograph, i only needed to take a few shots til i got what i wanted.
as you can see, i chose the 3rd image from my contact sheet. i edited the image in lightroom, cropping and rotating it slightly, and converting it to a high-contrast black and white with some more black added and the clarity raised. I love the way this image has edited up, how the textures in the wood and brick have become more evident. I'm really pleased with this image!
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