Fay Godwin is a renowned British photographer, famous for her breathtaking black and white landscapes of the coast and countryside in Britain. I decided to look at her work first because it really stood out to me among some of the older examples of landscape photography I've looked at. I really like Godwin's style and the powerful use of composition throughout her work which really gives dimension to her subject matter. I think one real skill in landscape photography is giving what can very often look flat and two dimensional some depth and dimension, and Godwin gives some beautiful examples of how to do this.
In the photograph below for example we can see many elements in the image that Godwin has framed perfectly to really show us the 3 dimensional qualities of her subject matter. For example she has taken the photograph at a vantage point that means we can see things occupying every bit of space between the background and foreground. For example we have these two bits of wood right in the foreground which gives the viewer the feeling of peering in to this scene, and right on the horizon we can see a third pylon in the background. Diagonal lines are also a powerful tool used to create distance and dimension in this image which for me is what is so visually intricate and interesting about this photograph.
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| I created this just to show a few of the diagonal lines used in this image. |
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| Disused Mine Water Treatment Plant, Todmorden, Lancashire |
When I first saw this photograph, before I even knew the exact subject matter I got a really ghostly and eerie feeling from this image. The strong amount of texture that Godwin has created through using the zone system creates a strong amount of grey mid tones, which balances out any strong amount of shadows and highlights as this photograph looks like it was taken at midday where the sunlight would have been very bright. This really adds to the barren and cold aesthetic of this photograph, and the high amount of texture really adds to this more grunge look for a landscape photograph. Despite being able to see the structures to this disused mine water treatment plant and two dark figures, this photograph just evokes the feeling of emptiness and abandonment which for a landscape photograph I find particularly powerful.
Inspired by the techniques used for these photographs and Fay Godwin's use of shorter dimensions in her prints, I have taken my own black and white photographs of an area of woodland and river behind my college, looking for dimension. I have also lowered the contrast of my images to get more texture from my subject matter.
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I cropped my images so that like a lot of Godwin's prints they would have square dimensions which is something I've never experimented with when editing my photographs. I imagine the analogue camera Godwin used has a 1:1 aspect ratio so I made sure my images were cropped that way. I really like the way the square dimensions have framed my images and they allowed me to get rid of anything in the frame that didn't add to the original composition.
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The photograph above is my favourite as I think the juxtaposition of these two large trees compared to this tiny falling tree is quite poetic and evokes the kind of emotion that I found really intriguing about Fay Godwin's photographs. I also like the framing of my cropped image in particular as the surrounding trees are a great natural framing device. I also like the original image as well, as there is a really powerful sense of movement through the large trees which to me really shows the power of nature.
Overall for my first shoot I am quite happy with what I have produced, however I would like to now go and take some photographs exploring more open landscapes and other approaches to landscape photography.
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