Luca Lupi // Landscapes + Creating A Panorama

"The images are intended to be "modular." In other words, they can be moved and rearranged in different visual sequences to form endless landscapes. Thus, the goal of this work is to reflect on the complex and continuous transformations of our environment. The changing relationship between built and natural forms is what gives shape to our contemporary world."

I came across Luca Lupi's Landscapes series on Lens Culture the other day and felt instantly inspired by his unique composition and conceptual ideas with his series of landscape photographs. All the photographs in this series were taken from the same distance from the land, out at sea so that the horizon line would be the same in all of Lupi's photographs. This concept is really great and makes for an interesting exhibition, as this means all of Lupi's photographs can be stitched together to create a panoramic type photograph, and you can make an infinite number of combinations as they will all stick to one another because they all have the same horizon. 

I really like this about the series because the individual photographs are not consecutive and range from cityscapes, woodland, beaches and a quite industrial areas are featured in his series as well. Because of this I think these photographs really make a comment on capitalism and globalisation, as these photos really reflect the effect of humans on the natural landscape, in particular showing contrasts between these rich green woodland areas and grey and dark cityscapes and industrial areas. Because of the use of this same horizon line I really get the idea that Lupi is trying to communicate, this idea that we were given a canvas with the world around us and to show what we've done with it. Yes all these photographs look beautiful and show the continuous transformation of our landscapes in the modern world, but to me it does show something quite sad and reveals the stark differences between the natural and industrialised and built up landscapes, especially through the colours that we can see in the photographs. 

Concept aside, I do really love the composition and aesthetic to Lupi's Landscapes photographs. I love the large amount of negative space created by the cloudless sky, which really gives a sense of depth in terms of how significant the land actually is when you think about how high our atmosphere stretches. I think to chose this amount of sky in his images was a really interesting choice which I think works perfectly to help the viewer focus on the contents of the land itself, rather than the shape of the actual land and really focus on what Lupi is trying to show through these images which was the relationship between humans and the natural landscape. 

I also really like the pale tones in these images which really show off the natural green shades well amongst the brown and grey industrial structures. In this particular photograph above these two chimneys from what looks like a power station really stand out from the land and create an interesting focal point which adds to the land's flat shape with the stations entire geometrical appearance which really makes this landscape look surreal and unworldly from this unique vantage point.

From looking at Luca Lupi's Landscapes series I've been inspired to think about composition more in my photographs and the tones of the colours within my images. I've also thought about how my images would look altogether as a series and how different photos of landscapes can go together whether merged or simply having the same aesthetic and compositional layout like in Lupi's images. With these ideas I went out into the countryside in Derbyshire on a day with a clear sky to conduct some experiments with composition and the other ideas I have gathered from looking at Lupi's work. 

I really like the composition of this image as this bold wall acting as a diagonal line really breaks up and adds dimension to what could have looked like a really flat image in terms of the subject matter. It also gives an interesting focal point to the image and creates a striking contrast with the bright blue sky above. 

This is one of my favourite photographs from the shoot as I really like how the focus is on this manmade stone wall but we can still see the shape and colours of the landscape in the distance. I put a blue filter on my images to really give these green and warmer tones more of a pale quality like in Lupi's images, which I think creates a really nice complimentary effect with the bright blue sky above. 

This image like in the one of Lupi's I looked at has an interesting geometrical quality which I really like visually, the fence also creates this diagonal line which really breaks up the image and gives an interesting focal point on this landscape. 

My last photo shows a view of Sheffield. I really like the dark tones in this image and the way you can see the countryside turning into a cityscape. Ideally I would have given more space for the sky but I do like this transition you can see across the land.

As Lupi's photographs can be stitched together to create a giant panoramic piece I decided to try creating my own panoramic shot of a view I came across when out taking my photos at Lodge Moor. A panorama is simply an image that shows a wide continuous view of what surrounds an observer. I created my panorama by positioning my camera on my tripod and keeping it so I could keep it at the same height but move it sideways freely. I then kept my aperture the same as with my other settings and took a photo of the view around me, making sure that the same parts of the view were in the photos but moved slightly, so that they could be merged together with ease. I then used the panoramic settings in Photoshop to merge my selected image automatically. 

I really liked being able to create such a wide shot of a lovely view I came across while out walking. I'm not overly keen on the style of layering this photos in a more horizontal style but I'm glad to have experimented with this technique, and would like to use it in future to record great views like this one, and I would also like to try layering images like this by hand.

Overall I really enjoyed experimenting with this more minimal style aesthetically and creating interesting compositions with my landscape photography. However these photos do lack the detail and strength visually that Lupi's have and I would now like to try some other methods of arranging landscape images and taking them.