Shoot Four
Plan
For this shoot, I plan to look into the industrial side of man vs. nature, which will involve looking towards the power plants and industrial areas. I plan to take this shoot around Teesside near the Teesside industry, I will go to the beach to take these image which will give the contrast of man vs. nature with the natural aspect of the beach mixed with the man made pollution. I aim to take images of the buildings surrounding and making up the industry. The images I take with be landscape based and I intend to manipulate them to improve their quality and my experimentation techniques.
Overview
This is my fourth shoot, I took these images at the Blue Lagoon near Seaton Carew in Hartlepool, I used a Nikon D3100 camera with a normal 55 lens, but I plan to reshoot and use a bigger lens to zoom in further on the industrial landscape. When researching into this topic, the ideas of Ian Macdonald inspired me to turn my attention to this area of the idea of Man vs. Nature. As Macdonald's projects were based around Teesside, this is where I conducted my shoot. During the shoot, I tried the techniques of different aperture setting to capture the natural lighting of the sunset and to control the reflection of the light on the sea. I also tried using reflections in the shoot, developing on ideas from my previous shoots. Furthermore, if I was to improve this shoot, I would expand the ideas of the reflections in the puddles, as I think this would make the shoot stringer as expanding on the previous ideas would link all of the shoots together even more.
This is a successful image because it simply illustrates the idea behind the shoot, which is that of man vs. nature being portrayed by the idea of industry and pollution, this image has been taken of the Teesside industry. Furthermore, when taking the image, I made sure that the horizon was straight giving the image more quality. The idea of the image gives the image an intense mood to the viewer, however the blue and lighter colours shown in the image juxtapose with this and give a calm atmosphere to the image. The composition of the image allows the viewer to see the beach along with the waves, which are in motion as well as the contrast with the industry in the background illustrating the divide between man and nature. If I were to improve this image, I would consider cropping the top of the image so that there is not as much sky meaning the idea of the rule of thirds can be considered improving the quality of planning behind the image.
This is another successful image in which illustrates the idea of man vs. nature through industry and pollution. There is a contrast between the industry in the background and the sea and the waves (portraying nature) in the foreground. A further idea in this image is that of the waves which show how nature is being washed away by man, and how other than the waves, all that can be seen in the image is the industry showing that man is taking over. The lighting used in this image is natural because of the shoot being outside, however this image would have been more successful if there was more light, meaning if the shoot was taken earlier on in the day, so that the industry in the background was not too underexposed. There is hardly any depth of field in this image, as I wanted the entire image in focus to illustrate the impact that man has had on nature. Also, I have considered the rule of thirds in this image, having the sky as one-third, the land as another and the sea as another, breaking up the different parts. This links in with the way I have made the horizon equal in the image, increasing the quality of the image.
This is the same image as the image on the left, however, I have edited this image further and added the tilt shift effect so that the background was blurred and so it looks like there was an increased aperture when the image was taken and this increases the focus on the waves, making the waves the point of focus in the image. This changes the idea of the image slightly, as it shows the viewer more of the waves so makes them think more about the nature side of the image and so it focuses more on the influence of nature on the world, hiding away the idea of man destroying the nature. I created this effect by using the gradient and lens blur tool on Photoshop.
This image is considered as successful because of the evident planning that has been considered before taking the photograph, which can be seen by the horizon that is completely straight in the background of the image, this makes the image look more realistic and successful. Also, the rule of thirds has been considered in this image, the top third of the image is the out of focus industry in the background, the middle of the image is the puddles of seawater in the sand and the bottom of the image consists of the tyre, which illustrates how man is abusing natures beauty by littering and dumping unwanted belongings. The point of focus in the image is the tyre in the foreground which portrays the idea, however, the most focused part of the image in the middle where the puddles in the sand can be seen, so to improve, I would try and focus more on the tyre as this is the point of focus for the image.
Using different techniques has made this image successful as all of the details make the successful image. I have used the tilt shift effect to blur out the background, making it seem to the viewer that there was a smaller aperture used to create the image. Also, the angle of view makes this image successful because of the way I have captured the reflection of the industry in the puddles of water, where the tide has came out. I think that the reflection makes this a stronger image because it gives it more characteristics, rather than taking a simple image of the industry, I have thought about alternative ways in which to do this. By blurring out the industry in the background, I have made the reflections the main focus of the image so influence the idea of reflecting the industry through the water to show the idea of man taking over.
In this image, I have focused on the boat coming in through the industry; I have done this by using Photoshop to make the image black and white apart from the ship, which I have kept in colour. This represents the idea of the ship being the only thing in colour, being metaphorical for man being dominant over nature as the nature in the image is in black and white illustrating that it is not relevant. The reflection in the puddles is an added element to this image, which improves the idea as it illustrates how the industry and man made objects is pretty much everywhere and effects nature in some way. The main focus is the ship as its colour stands out in the image and the atmosphere created is very dull because of the industry in the background and because most of the image is in black and white.
