KISHAN THAKRAR
A LEVEL ART PHOTOGRAPHY PORTFOLIO
A2 Trip to London
18th September 2015
Inspiration
@
Tate
Britain
= photo taken by me.
I did find that there was less inspiration for my topic, atmospheric perspectives, although I was able to take some interesting images, not only of the artwork, but also the way it was presented, and the architecture of the gallery itself.
The gallery is ordered chronologically, so I went to the 2000s section first, hoping to find quite modern art and photography that could inspire me for my project. I ended up finding more inspiration from a section on JMW Turner. His romantic-style paintings were filled with atmosphere and the colours were amazing.
JMW Turner lived from 1745-1829, in London. He is renowned for his oil paintings and landscape watercolours of Britain.
Use of light is highly important in his work, especially coupled with the use of mist and fog, forging realistic environments with high detail. His techniques influenced many artists in the impressionist period, including Monet. Turner also created the Turner art prize award.
Although these are paintings, the composition of the art and the ideas behind it remain the same as on the canvas.
My favourite feature of Turner's is how each image looks like a real photograph, and of course, for his time, could have been very impressive and still is, seeing as cameras could not even capture this at that time. The colours used are quite autumnal; with greens, yellows and oranges being the main tones. This would be similar to applying colour adjustments or filtering hues in photoshop. Some of the paintings are so atmospheric that they do not seem detailed and crisp, but instead blurry and hazy.
The painting to the left, 'Crossing the Brook' was my favourite piece. The landscape is very vast and green, and the atmosphere gives a sense of space in the distance. I like the way the light is distributed through the image, with the strong shadows in the foreground, allowing focus into the distance.
Turner's style can be seen in other artists, including Michael Kenna, who uses the atmospheric light as a medium to manipulate organic images into very different outcomes, whilst almost telling a story. Telling a story or conveying emotion is common in Romantic style art, and also music, with artists such as Turner and composers including Wagner both exploiting the freedom of expressing and exaggerating moods and emotions at an unprecedented level in its time. Kenna uses less colour to convey this, however his principles remain identical. He also focusses more on minimalism than these painters did. With a more contemporary approach, Kenna's take on atmospheric perspective does have a different feel overall.
Photos I took around Cork Street, en route to the Royal Academy:
The Royal Academy
I took the latter of the photos around London, mainly along the Thames at Southbank. I wanted to capture images that would be useful for my atmospheric perspective project, because even though there was little atmosphere, I will be able to digitally create atmosphere with Photoshop brushes and techniques. I also will use these images for my collages/photomontages that incorporate the atmospheric perspective theme. A lot of the photos were of buildings, and I felt that by increasing the blues and desaturating the other tones slightly, it complimented the 'London' look. I also edited the clarity (HDR look) on the photos which looks great with water, close up surfaces, buildings, vegetation, and skies to fully enhance (and even exaggerate) the detail of the images.
