Personal study
For my personal study I am going to research two photographers who go by the names of Mikko Lagerstedt and Dan Holdsworth. By researching these two photographers I will gain knowledge on the way they craft and go about taking their photos. By taking account of the way they create these photos it will help me create my images and make them look as professional as possible. I have picked these two photographers because they represent the style of photography I want to create. Which is using long exposure and creating surreal images. They tend to make images based on landscapes, cityscapes and seascapes which I find really interesting so I am going to try to recreate and use similar techniques to make my images similar to theirs. Also these analysis will change my perception on how I plan and actually take the photos I have planned for. Also I will use different techniques that Mikko and Dan have used when taking their images because I have kept to the basics whereas I am now going to expand and use a variety of different conventions. Most of these conventions i have not used is due to the fact this is the first time coming across these techniques.
The first photographer I'm going to analyse is Mikko Lagerstedt who is a self taught fine art photographer from Finland. He loves to capture night, and atmospheric photography and enjoys capturing simplistic landscapes. His work is mostly surrounded by taking photos of landscapes, this is what I'm mostly interested in with his work. I like this style of photography due to the photographer expressing himself through nature. I like his landscape, cityscape and seascape style of work the best. This is because his images are very interesting due to the use of long exposure to make the water look misty in some of his photos. In his photographs he takes all composition rules into account for example leading lines and the rule of thirds. Also most of Mikko Lagerstedts work features at night time when he can get pictures with the stars in them.
This is the first image I will be analysing and recreating. This photo features mikko taking a photo of a train track using the composition rule leading lines drawing you to look at the end of the train track. Also I like the colour balance in this image. Also the contrast between the different colours shows strong visual difference between the two colours. Also I like how the colours fade into one another making some of the stars visible in the darker aspects of the photo and non existent in the lighter part of the image. This image is very surreal creating a different type of atmosphere. This photograph makes me feel alive because it's very different from other types of landscape photos. This picture was not staged and was just taken when mikko was out taking photos. This image also makes me feel empty because this image is very simple and does not have a lot going on in the foreground. He has used Photoshop to change the contrast of the image to make it differ in the brightness. So when I take my photo the sky will be a mixture between day and night time.
This is my first image i created using the style of Mikko Lagerstedt who I have analysed. With this image I have used an image of the internet to create the two contrasting skies, to do this I just pasted into a selected background and used overlay so the sky wasn't so strong and bold. Also I used another picture off the internet to get the light trails. When I reshoot this photo I will have my own light trails due to using long exposure and changing the shutter speed to 10,15 or 20 seconds. I think this is similar to Mikko and his work because the sky is very important in the image to show the difference between night and day. When taking this photo I did not use a tripod so next time I will use one to make sure the image is totally focused. With the sky I changed the vibrancy to create a stronger impact on the photo. I used the crop tool to crop out the left part of the image because there was nothing happening and it was very dull and boring. When looking at this image im drawn to the moon due to there being such a colour difference between the tree and the moon. Mikko uses some of these techniques so i used them to re create my own style of his work.
The second photographer I am going to be analysing is Dan's Holdsworth who is a British photographer who creates large-scale photographs and digital art characterized by the use of traditional techniques and usually long exposure, and by radical abstractions of geography. Dan is known for the awards he has won and the personal collection he has. Dan chooses his subject through research, science and travelling to different locations for inspiration. Dan quotes ‘our perception of landscape is driven through science and technology’. This is one of a series of photographs from Holdsworth’s series A Machine for Living, 1999-2000, which depicts the Blue water shopping complex at night. Blue water is a large shopping centre built on the site of a disused
quarry near a major motorway junction in suburban Kent.
The second image I will be analysing is this photo above. I'm interested in Dan's work due to him using long exposure and traditional techniques when creating an image. Also when I take my photos I want to be making landscape photos and this is what he does. With this image I like the contrast of the colours from dark colours to brighter colours coming from the lights. The colour red portrays a very warm setting. With this image I am drawn to the roads because they are lit up. Electric lights in the car park give off an eerie, excessively bright glow. The scene is completely empty of people, and this barrenness, along with the saturated colours, conveys a sense of unease. This image looks very empty due to their not being any people present in the image, this creates an uneasy atmosphere when viewing this image. When looking at this image i don't see the actual location as being a real place and more of a made up place but when i look into the background on the horizon line i see pylons which actually shows signs of life and that it is a real place.
this is my final image that I created in the style of Dan holdsworth. When shooting this image I went on top of a car park and placed the camera on the wall. I turned the shutter speed to 10 seconds to capture the light trails from the cars that were passing by. By placing the camera on the wall it shows the difference between the town and then the car park with the two contrasting colours. The wall is dirty and grey. Where the roads and lights is a more colourful setting with a red tint. The red tint creates a warm effect. This is what Dan did with his work so I decided to use that technique. This makes my work have the same effect as his. Also with this image I like how the lights are very strong and stand out when looking at the image. I used long exposure to create the light trails from the cars. This is a technique that Dan used so I copied him to make my image look like his. Overall I thought this image was very successful due to using Dan's conventions.
The first photographer I'm going to analyse is Mikko Lagerstedt who is a self taught fine art photographer from Finland. He loves to capture night, and atmospheric photography and enjoys capturing simplistic landscapes. His work is mostly surrounded by taking photos of landscapes, this is what I'm mostly interested in with his work. I like this style of photography due to the photographer expressing himself through nature. I like his landscape, cityscape and seascape style of work the best. This is because his images are very interesting due to the use of long exposure to make the water look misty in some of his photos. In his photographs he takes all composition rules into account for example leading lines and the rule of thirds. Also most of Mikko Lagerstedts work features at night time when he can get pictures with the stars in them.
This is the first image I will be analysing and recreating. This photo features mikko taking a photo of a train track using the composition rule leading lines drawing you to look at the end of the train track. Also I like the colour balance in this image. Also the contrast between the different colours shows strong visual difference between the two colours. Also I like how the colours fade into one another making some of the stars visible in the darker aspects of the photo and non existent in the lighter part of the image. This image is very surreal creating a different type of atmosphere. This photograph makes me feel alive because it's very different from other types of landscape photos. This picture was not staged and was just taken when mikko was out taking photos. This image also makes me feel empty because this image is very simple and does not have a lot going on in the foreground. He has used Photoshop to change the contrast of the image to make it differ in the brightness. So when I take my photo the sky will be a mixture between day and night time.
This is my first image i created using the style of Mikko Lagerstedt who I have analysed. With this image I have used an image of the internet to create the two contrasting skies, to do this I just pasted into a selected background and used overlay so the sky wasn't so strong and bold. Also I used another picture off the internet to get the light trails. When I reshoot this photo I will have my own light trails due to using long exposure and changing the shutter speed to 10,15 or 20 seconds. I think this is similar to Mikko and his work because the sky is very important in the image to show the difference between night and day. When taking this photo I did not use a tripod so next time I will use one to make sure the image is totally focused. With the sky I changed the vibrancy to create a stronger impact on the photo. I used the crop tool to crop out the left part of the image because there was nothing happening and it was very dull and boring. When looking at this image im drawn to the moon due to there being such a colour difference between the tree and the moon. Mikko uses some of these techniques so i used them to re create my own style of his work.
The second photographer I am going to be analysing is Dan's Holdsworth who is a British photographer who creates large-scale photographs and digital art characterized by the use of traditional techniques and usually long exposure, and by radical abstractions of geography. Dan is known for the awards he has won and the personal collection he has. Dan chooses his subject through research, science and travelling to different locations for inspiration. Dan quotes ‘our perception of landscape is driven through science and technology’. This is one of a series of photographs from Holdsworth’s series A Machine for Living, 1999-2000, which depicts the Blue water shopping complex at night. Blue water is a large shopping centre built on the site of a disused
quarry near a major motorway junction in suburban Kent.
The second image I will be analysing is this photo above. I'm interested in Dan's work due to him using long exposure and traditional techniques when creating an image. Also when I take my photos I want to be making landscape photos and this is what he does. With this image I like the contrast of the colours from dark colours to brighter colours coming from the lights. The colour red portrays a very warm setting. With this image I am drawn to the roads because they are lit up. Electric lights in the car park give off an eerie, excessively bright glow. The scene is completely empty of people, and this barrenness, along with the saturated colours, conveys a sense of unease. This image looks very empty due to their not being any people present in the image, this creates an uneasy atmosphere when viewing this image. When looking at this image i don't see the actual location as being a real place and more of a made up place but when i look into the background on the horizon line i see pylons which actually shows signs of life and that it is a real place.
this is my final image that I created in the style of Dan holdsworth. When shooting this image I went on top of a car park and placed the camera on the wall. I turned the shutter speed to 10 seconds to capture the light trails from the cars that were passing by. By placing the camera on the wall it shows the difference between the town and then the car park with the two contrasting colours. The wall is dirty and grey. Where the roads and lights is a more colourful setting with a red tint. The red tint creates a warm effect. This is what Dan did with his work so I decided to use that technique. This makes my work have the same effect as his. Also with this image I like how the lights are very strong and stand out when looking at the image. I used long exposure to create the light trails from the cars. This is a technique that Dan used so I copied him to make my image look like his. Overall I thought this image was very successful due to using Dan's conventions.
