Formby in Impressionist Painters’ Eyes

Hypothetical brief

For this assignment I have come up with a hypothetical brief in which I am submitting 10 photographs for a local competition run by the Liverpool city council. The competition is entitled Formby in Impressionist Painters’ Eyes. The images will be printed and displayed in a Liverpool gallery. Participants of the competition are allowed to use digital imaging software in order to produce relevant effect. They are also expected to portray any element of the Formby area as long as all the images will have a common theme.

Aims and objectives

Following the brief specifications, I decided to focus my attention (and camera) on one of the most prominent features in the area in question, i.e. Formby’s beach. The aim of this assignment is to create 10 images which capture wild nature of Formby’s beach, which is conspicuous in mosaic of golden sand, dramatic sea views, coastal bushes, etc.

Planning

In preparation for the trip to Formby, the following aspects had to be taken into consideration and planned:

- camera with high resolution matrix – this was useful in landscape photography because large format images allowed me to accurately portray the views.

- lens (35mm, prime lens, bright) – I chose this particular lens for several reasons: (a) thanks to the aperture of the lens (and its brightness), I was able to use high F value (aperture size) (in this case it was 11). I chose this type of lens as the objects I was aiming to photograph were close to me. Also, I didn't want zooming to distort the natural balance of the images.

 - tripod – although the weather forecast anticipated a sunny day, I took my tripod anyway in case the lighting became a challenge (e.g. cloudy sky), which could have forced me to use lower F value. If I had to use wide aperture, I wouldn't be able to achieve favourable depth of field.

 -  lens hood – it was to ensure that in case of a very sunny day, my images aren't overexposed as a result of direct sunlight.

- extra batteries and spare memory card – these were just in case I took more images than expected

- clothing (raincoat), food, drink, mobile phone, watch, maps, money, printed weather reports

Research

I conducted preliminary research on Formby beaches and came across a lot of useful information on the National Trust website (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/formby/), which included some information about the area, as in the following:

This is one of the newer counties carved out of Lancashire and Cheshire and centred on the city of Liverpool. It covers part of the Wirral peninsula with the once-great shipyards of Birkenhead (previously Cheshire) and stretches up the (Lancashire) coast to reach beyond Southport. The county is split in two by the River Mersey under which there is a tunnel and on which there are ferries between Liverpool and Birkenhead. Lying between Liverpool and Southport is Formby with its sandy beach backed by dunes and woodland.

I also found several photographers’ images which I wanted to use as a source of inspiration for my images.

The photographers include the following:

Andrew Stannard

Ron Davies

Peter Heyes

The results of the research was my discovery of certain trends and tendencies spotted in the above three photographers’ work. First is the amount of the sky and the sand in the image. It looks like most of the photographers clearly focused on portraying either or both elements in their photos. This seems to have ensured a sense of vast, unrestricted space, which contributed to the dramatic effect of the images. The colours in the images of those photographers are extremely vivid and of high contrast, which adds a certain quality of movement, for example, the grass on the dunes creates an impression of swaying in the wind. Moreover, the composition of the photographs relies on a sense of balance, as most of the images seem to cover the same proportion of sky, sand and dunes. These help to capture the sight of the viewer, who can slowly explore the image by clear lines delineated by the balanced composition. Finally, reflections in the images contribute to the overall glamour of the landscape.

Evaluation

The result of the trip to Formby is 10 digitally processed images (see below). In terms of their evaluation, the composition is similar to those photographs which I identified as a result of my research. In other words, I tried to keep the following elements in my images: sand, water, sky and plants. As the images below demonstrate, in some cases I decided to prioritise some elements of the composition to achieve a given effect. For example, image 2 shows the beach in the foreground, while the sea and the sky occupy the background. The aim of this was to emphasise the trail left by a quad (used by maritime police), which allowed me to establish the point of departure for the viewer. This was based on an assumption that the trail will ‘draw’ the viewer into the picture and keep him/her focused on exploring the rest of it. The same use of composition lines are seen in other images. Image 8 portrays a fence which keeps the viewer examining the picture. The similar effect is achieved by path in image 9 and 10.

As far as technique is concerned, I used almost all the equipment I brought with myself, except for the tripod, as the weather turned out to be sunny. I used F 11 value for the aperture size, which was the same for all the images. The reason I used the same F value consistently is that I wanted to make sure that the depth of field is identical in all the images, especially that the ten images were to be used as an album. When shooting the pictures, I tried to keep all the objects photographed from the human eyesight point of view. I didn't experiment with shooting from the above or below, simply because I wanted to show the landscape as viewed by a human being (artist in this case).

Because the images were supposed to have impressionist-like quality, I used Photoshop to process them after the shooting period. One of the Photoshop features I used is brightness and contrast. These enabled to use HDR and increase the dramatic effect of the image. This is especially visible in image 6, where the sky and the beach are dimmer and darker than the dunes. As a result, it looks like the dunes are sunlit, while the other parts of the landscape are dark due to coming clouds (and potentially violent storm). The most prominent Photoshop technique is an ‘oil paint’ filter. Thanks to this I was able to convert the images into paint-like pictures, which was very important because of the brief, which asked the participants of the contest to create impressionist-like images. The filter I used created an effect of subtle brush strokes, which is one of the most typical features identifiable in impressionist paintings.

Finally, the ten images are bound by one common theme and underlying message: however hard we try to portray nature in photography, it will always remain undiscovered to some extent. For example, the presence of dunes, which in a sense obscure one’s view, is to symbolise an obstacle in grasping nature’s full picture. Even if a person went over the dunes, they would still be able to see as far as another obstacle on the horizon.

In my opinion, this project was mostly successful because I was able to produce images in line with the requirements of the hypothetical brief. I succeeded in selecting proper equipment and relevant software to add impressionistic quality to my images. Regarding areas for improvement, I should have paid more attention to light, which turned out to be brighter than expected. As a result, the choice of ISO (320) seemed slightly inadequate, as 50 would have sufficed, given the sunny weather on that day. At the same time, some of the images wouldn't have been spoiled by occasionally visible ‘noise’. However, overall I believe I used my skills learnt during the course appropriately, which resulted in good-quality images.

 image 1

 image 2

 image 3

 image 4

 image 5

 image 6

 image 7

 image 8

 image 9

image 10