Project 1: Gestalt In Composition.

Now the theory works done its time to put into practise what we've learned of Gestalt. Right of i made the classic mistake of thinking how hard can it be, surprisingly quiet hard. Now I'm aware of the basic principles i start looking at the scenes through the camera lens in a slightly different way looking for shapes and relationships that although i probably subconsciously recognised before, now i really start the think about what I'm seeing. What i soon found was that alot of the time things just don't fit together to form the kind of order I'm searching for or parts of the scene don't quiet form the shapes I'd like. To say I'm driven a little mad by the process is an understatement but with a bit of persistence i think i got three pretty good images.

f-stops- f/9

Exposure- 640secs

ISO- 800

Exposure Bias- 0 steps

Focal Length- 300mm

With the above photo of a Red Admiral butterfly i used the Law of Closure and the Law of Simplicity to produce a very balanced image. The way Closure works is that the each wing and the fern leaf below form triangles while also you have another formed between the two wings and the top of the frame, add these all together and they direct your eye nicely to the middle of the frame and the main focus. To involve Simplicity i managed to capture the butterfly in such a location that there isn't alot of confusing lines in the background or foreground which remove from the focus of the shot, yes i think i could have used a little more blurring in the background but unfortunately with the lens i had i couldn't get a much lower F-stop setting to gain this depth of field. Took a bit of time and patients to get the right shot because anyone who's ever tried to photograph butterflies will know that the slightest movement and away they go, i must have spent about an hour hour and a half just following the bloody thing round the garden with my camera and tripod and each time i thought I'd got it either the wind would blow and it would take off or I'd scare it myself somehow. Overall i think the colours and sharpness created by the light really make this photo stand out, but that's just my personal opinion.

f-stops- F/10

Exposure- 250secs

ISO- 250

Exposure Bias- 0 steps

Focal Length- 28mm

For my next image in this project you could possible say makes use of quite a few of the laws, when i original took it i only really had in mind the Law of Simplicity created by the single line of trees line up diagonally through the frame but when I've sat and studied it a bit more i think there's more to it then just that. You could put the idea of Proximity to it because you recognise that the trees are grouped together because of how close they are to one another but then also you could use Similarity because they are the same shape and size throughout only appearing smaller as they move through the frame, finally I'd also say Good Continuation has some part to it also because you can imagine the line of trees continuing in either direction out of the frame. My thinking behind shooting in black and white was that i found the colours in the scene a little distracting from the pattern i was focusing on, if it had been a few month later with Autumn in full swing i might have felt differently but at this point all i would have ended up with was a very solid block of green which to me didn't do anything for it.

f-stops- F/7.1
Exposure- 400secs
ISO- 640
Exposure Bias- 0 steps
Focal Length- 250mm


For my final image its all about the eyes. When you study a face i never realised and to be honest hadn't before this point thought about it that much but the shape of it tends to make you focus on the eyes, what i mean is that if you consider it with the Law of Closure in mind the shape formed by the nose around the eye sockets forms two circles which draw you whether you know it or not to focus on the eyes. Its very clever in away and I'm sure there's some reason for it ( I'm pretty sure i read somewhere that if you only see a persons eyes that you know you'll recognise them) but anyway this is slightly getting of the point, my aim was to get a close up of a face to make use of this idea and this cats face works better then maybe a humans because the markings help to outline the shapes more clearly. I have increased the saturation of the eye colour slightly plus my focus is off a bit because its more on the nose then the eyes but overall I'm happy with how the final shot turned out.


To be honest i found this project as I've already said difficult at times but once i got my first shot in the bag the other two didn't take me that long to finish. What I've found through this process was a different way to look at and study photos, as the saying goes things aren't always as black and white as they seem and when you understand Gestalt theory it give you another way to dissect imagery and understand what makes it work and why.

Major Project Proposal.

   Right its time to set out what I'm planning for my Major Project, you think this would be pretty straight forward but finding a subject that you can then break down into 6 parts just isn't (well for me it wasn't anyway). The main problem i found was coming up with something that would allow me to be creative while also holding my interest as i can sometimes find myself being easily distracted, also as it makes up the bulk of the course i really need something that i felt i could do justice to and with work and winter approaching there's the consideration of time too. For these reasons I've chosen to base my project around the village that i live in.
   So you may be asking view pick this particular subject? Well quiet simple to begin with it was the fact that it was some think that wouldn't involve alot of travelling which at this time of year would mean i could maximise the amount of daylight working time that is available but then when i sat back and thought about what i could do it seem to make more and more sense. For one i already have a real good understanding of the lay of the land as you might say because I've lived here pretty much all my life and i know pretty much every nuck and cranny in the place but surprisingly it isn't somewhere that I've actually done alot of photography, secondly it gives me the opportunity to do quiet a bit of landscape photography which is where my heart lies. To be honest where i live in Staffordshire its no Lake District but in away this makes it just as interesting if not more because i have the chance to show what a village is like in the times we live in.
   Next i should explain how I'm going to split my project up under the following 6 sections:-

1. During The Day- as the title say quiet simple looking at the village during the daytime, capturing landmarks, landscapes village scenes that make the place what it is.
2. At Night- looking at how the change in light effects the feel/look of the place.
3. People- like anywhere the people that live and work here give the village as much character as any of the buildings or landscapes.
4. Village In Decline- here i plan to look at how the economic situation is effecting the village.
5. Agriculture- looking at how agriculture shapes the landscape of the area.
6. The National Forest- looking at how the growth of the National Forest scheme has changed the surrounding landscape.

For each section i plan to produce between 4-6 images.

   As you can see there's some real scope to what i plan to look at but it also gives me alot of research to do because I'm going to have to focus on two styles of photography in Landscape and Social Documentary, the landscape side clearly I'm looking forward to but on the other hand the social documentary side isn't something that I've ever approach before and probably isn't something that I'm that comfortable doing. To get round this problem i just keep telling myself that if i want to be a more rounded photographer then its all part of the learning process.

Pictorialism.

 I've mentioned in the two previous articles a style of Photography called Pictorialism and i thought now would be a good time for a little more explanation on what it actually was and how this style looks. By the second half of the 19th century the camera had been around for a while and people had become accustomed to its use but the novelty value was beginning to wear thin mainly because people began to question whether what it captured was too accurate and detail (to use today this sounds a little crazy but at the time you have to understand how people would react to this new technology) add this to the fact that in the art world Paintings enjoyed a much higher statues and appeal to the public and you begin to see why photographers of the period began to experiment with processes that could make there work look more like a painting then a photography. So the Pictorial style was born, the aim being to produce photos that put the finish article first and the subject second. To make there photos look more like a painting photographers employed a number of different processes soft focus (as with the two photos see here), special filters and lens coatings, heavy manipulation such as layering exposures together and even some very exotic printing processes using different papers and chemicals, unfortunately for these photographers by around 1914 this kind of work was in  rapid decline and as I've already talk about how modernism was on the climb meaning the end was in sight. Today you could maybe say that this kind of work has had a renaissance of sorts because with the introduction of digital photography and photoshop software again alot of image manipulation is common place but this discussion is probably best left for another day.

Both images taken from Wikimedia.

Theoretical Study on Straight Photography.

So I've look at New Objectivity and now next its the turn of Straight or Pure Photography, this movement came about much earlier then New Objectivity and in a way is connected to it because of similar principles. Straight Photography is defined as "Photography that attempts to depict a scene as realistically and objectively as permitted by the medium renouncing the use of manipulation" in other words the photo that you produce should be an exact or near perfect reflection of what the original scene look like and that no kind of alteration has been used to alter it.Here you can see the similarity to the New Objectivity movement because in both the photographer strived to produce an accurate representation of the subject, yes i know its only a slight similarity but its there. What makes Straight Photography different to other forms is that when you think about it there is very little forward planning involved because you're just shooting exactly what you see before you, not looking and thinking this landscape would look better in a few hours time under different light conditions because with this movement its not about making something look its best its more about capturing the moment.

Alfred Stieglitz.


He is considered by many to be the first so called Modern Photographer because he took the medium and saw the endless possibilities that were available if you moved away from the compositional practices that were common place at the time. In his early years he work like many of his counter parts by arranging scenes in a similar manner to paintings but unlike others he began to question whether photography was a art form in itself and in which case shouldn't follow the same rules and practises used in painting. From this point Straight Photography was born, he began to promote the idea of a process where you capture the scene as it appeared without any staging and then in the printing stage used very little retouching or cropping processes. When you consider the documentary style of photography at this time this was a large leap in the opposite direction because photographers just weren't capturing the everyday scene in this way, if anything it was a revolution in the way we see the world. With his gallery he was able to get his work into the public domain giving it more of the wider regonisition that it deserved while also encouraging others to follow in his footsteps, he was more then happy to exhibit other peoples work thus giving them the exposure they need if he thought there work was good enough. What made his work so good was the fact clearly as you can see he wasn't afraid to get out there in any conditions and get right up close and personal with the world and the people regardless of how things appear. He was interested in how  the aesthetics of the view he just wanted to show real life.

 Paul Strand.


Paul Strand was one of the people that followed Stieglitz and took on the idea of Straight Photography and could be seen to even have taken the idea a step further. Again some one who came from the background of more artist based photography his view was said to have been changed on a visit to Stiglitz's New York gallery when he became convinced that he could use the camera to produced images that were both aesthetically pleasing while at the same time be documentary in purpose, so with the help of Stieglitz's gallery and magazine his work was introduced to the world. What made his work stand out was the sharpness and definition that he produced while his subjects tended to be rooted in reality but at the same time had a very abstract nature about there composition which others work didn't have. As the year went by his style did evolve and move away from the abstract and became if anything more natural and calm as he perfected his style but he never moved far away from the idea of straight photography that he'd learned in his early life. Some of the best descriptions of his style and work come from Stieglitz and himself, Stieglitz said of his work " His work is rooted in the best traditions of Photography, his vision is potential. His work is pure. It is direct. It does not rely upon tricks of process. In what ever he does there is applied intelligence. In the history of photography there are few photographers who from the point of view of expression, have really done much work of importance. And by importance we mean work that has some relatively lasting quality, that element which gives all art its real significance". As for Strand himself he said of his work "I've always wanted to be aware of what's going on around me, and I've wanted to use photography as an instrument of research into this and report on the life of my own time", while also saying " Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees". This was a man with clear ideas who's only aim would appear to show people the world through his eyes.

 Edward Weston.


Edward Weston was again born in America towards the end of the 19th century and to begin with was an award winning Photographer in the  Pictorial style that the majority of his counter parts practised but this all changed in 1915. Weston said that " The camera should be used for a record of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh" this idea began to grow after a visit to an exhibition of modern art, he was becoming more and more disaffected about his work in the Pictorial style and from this visit it lead him to begin experimenting with a more strongly focus semi-abstract style that distanced him from his earlier work. In the 1920's this change of style had the inevitable effect of leading him to New York and meeting Stieglitz and Strand as these were the people leading the race to make photography a more excepted art form in its own right with there own brand of work, from this point his career and out look changed for ever and with his images taken at the ARMCO steelworks he was set on the idea of strong focus photos that reflected the true essence of the subject. From here on he became famous for his natural form close ups, nudes and landscape that he capture using large format cameras and natural light, what i think best describes his work is that it has far more life to it, it feels somehow more natural compared to say Strands where he sometimes seems more focus on the abstract nature of the subject. By 1932 Weston had form Group F/64 with fellow photographer Ansel Adams and Willard van Dyke and together they set out there manifesto stating " The members of Group F/64 believe that photography, as an art form, must develop along lines defined by the acualities and limitations of the photographic medium, and must always remain independant of the idealogical conventions of art and aesthetics that are reminiscent of the period and culture antedating the growth of the meduim itself", in other words they were telling the pictorial photogrphers in no certain terms that their approach to the medium was wrong and would do nothing to increase it as an art form ompared to there's which was the true purpose of the camera. Clearly they were brave men to take this stand but they believed truly and completely in the approach they were taking and it paid off greater then they could ever have foreseen.















As a group of photographers we now know them as the Modernist but at the time as I've already said they could never have seen how influental there work would become and the amount of photographers who they've effected over the years, even as far as the 1970's alot of there beliefs were still held by the majority of people practising in same fields.

Theoretical Study on New Objectivity.

New Objectivity or Neue Sachlichkeit was a type of photography first practised in the early 1920's beginning in Germany and soon spreading through Europe and into America, instead of previously trying to emulate the expressive qualities of painting they embraced the technical side of photography and began to focus on capturing the world in a clear objective manner. What this meant was the photographers using this documentary style captured real life subjects without any attempt to stage or set up a scene or situation with the shots appearing rich in detail with a very strong focus but yet have a very calming feel to them overall. It has been suggested that this approach came about because of the sudden increase of industry and technology in society at this time between the 1st and 2nd World Wars and these new shapes and textures needed a different approach to full illustrate.

Three good examples of the range of work produced using this style can be seen by looking at the work of the following people:-

Albert Renger-Patzsch.

He was born in Wurzburg Germany in June 1897 and is seen as one of the co-founders and mastermind behind the New Objectivity movement, he chose to move away from the "romanticizing" art Photography and wanted to start capturing images that were completely true to life through proper control of the lighting and development

techniques. He described the New Objectivity movement as being " To create photographs with the resources of photography that can endure by means of their p

photographic qualities without borrowing from art." His many focus seems to have been capturing the industrial culture of the early 20th century but he also did a lot of still life work capturing everyday scenes. His most famous work and one where you see most clearly his view of the industrial world is found in his book Die Welt Ist Schon where he looks at Germany in the Pre 2nd World War era.

Karl Blossfeldt.

He was born much earlier then Renger-Patzsch but they had in common a similar idea on how they wanted their photography to look and feel. Where as Renger-Patzsch was focused on mainly man made subjects Blossfeldt only ever took images of flowers, buds and seed pods but it was they way that they both captured these subjects in great detail and sharpness that makes them similar. As I've already said Blossfeldt was best known for his close up work of plants and living things, inspired by the natural world and the way plants in particular grew he work with his home made camera to capture stunning images at this time showing the form and structure of his subjects. He once said "The plant never lapses into mere arid functionalism, it fashions and shapes according to logic and suitability, and with its primeval force compels everything to attain the highest artist form" yet he never considered his work as any type of art more a teaching tool for others to learn from.

Images taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Emmanuel Sougez.

Sougez's work to me is a kind of combination of Renger-Patzsch and Blossfeldt, he chose to work with a large format cameras to capture still life's, landscapes and nudes but where his differs from the others was his skill of composition. He'd use the lines and shapes to give his work a more artistic feel but still kept the strong focus on detail and the natural feel of the image that defines it as part of the New Objectivity movement.

Images taken from German Wikipedia.

What's clear to me from studying this movement is that sometimes a very simple subject if looked at in the right manner can produce stunning results, with the right lighting and composition and a really understanding of the subject just look what can be produced.