Bsc Digital Arts and Technology

I have finally finished, re-creating an Ansel Adams (or a photograph in his style).

I wanted to be able to emulate Ansel Adams skill of landscape Photography, but lacking the use of of a View Camera (seen in the previous post) the landscape here (as I’m not in Yosemite) a developing method that Adams used, I copied the effect digitally using Adobe Photoshop.

To do this I used a colour photograph that I took of Half Dome in Yosemite a year ago, with the tools in the programme I could alter the light exposure, and the contrast between the colours.

The first thing that I had to change was the colour, as all Ansel Adams photography was in black and white, using the Greyscale effect the photo turned black and white. As the photograph I was working with was taking in the Summer the sky was a lighter black/grey than the Ansel Adams photographs. To alter it I duplicated the layer, then changed the “curves” of the greyscale to make everything “darker” than it was to begin with. I also chanegd the contrast levels between the colours.

So that the darker sky could be shown, I used the magic wand tool to select the sky in the photograph I started with (the one I turned black and white) and deleted it, showing the second layer beneath it (with the darker the sky) I then blurred the clouds into the sky.

The orignal photograph I started with is:

And the image that I have finished to recreate it in an Ansel Adams is:

As can be seen from the last few days of posting I haven’t been able to change the photo as my computer kept crashing, however as it’s all been sorted I really hope that I can make some progress with it…otherwise I’ll be extremely annoyed and frustrated as I think I’m very close to completing it.

So far I’ve only got two layers the image that I changed black and white, and the layer with the same image only a lot darker. Today I’m hoping to mask the top layer (the duplication of the original black and write layer) for the black sky to show through.

The layer with the sky cut out:

This picture has a white background but it’s actually transparent only it can’t be shown on here hence the white.

I didn’t get much chance to add more to the photograph change process last night because I had work and needed to concentrate on another assignment which needs to have a lot attention giving too it as it involves coding

I don’t have much time this morning to add more as I’ve got to go into Uni to make a TV session and meet up with my group to work on the IDAT 104 Video Datasbase project, but I should be able to finish or make a more of a dent in the process of changing the photograph tonight.

In the previous post you’ve seen which photo I’ll be using to change into the style of Adams, I’ll know go through the process of changing it, although I’d be using a digital method to produce the final photograph and Ansel Adams used a developing studio the methods we use will be similar.

The first stage is turning the picture into black and white.

Photo in black and white

In order for the sky to be darker the contrast levels will need to be changed, by using duplicated layer of this I can change the photo without changing anything in the first layer.

The level looks like this

With the curve and contrast levels sorted, I needed to change the first image (the one thats just black and white) so that the darkness of the sky will show but the clouds and the dome can still be seen normally.

To do this I need to duplicate the backgroud image again so that I can use it to mask the darkness layer, as you can’t change anything in the main layer. With this new layer I’ll use the magic wand tool to delete the sky.

I habe no tiem to do it today, but will finish it tomorrow or as soon as I can.

The photo I’ll be using for this project is one taking in Yosemite a year ago in June 2005, it’s’ from the valley floor looking up at Half Dome through some trees, it was taking luckily when it was sunny as at the time the weather in Yosemite was very cloudy like living in Englad basically.

This is what it looks like :

The camera that was used to take this photo is a Canon PowerShot S2

I’ll be using Adobe Photoshop CS2 to edit this photo in the style of Ansel Adams.

Although I didn’t actually go out this time to take that photograph when it was taking I did wait for the right light to take it, as the days of my visit was poor weather it was hard to get a good clear photo of Half Dome, one that you could see the summit of it (still with snow on top even though it was the middle of June!).

The photograph is 9.5″ by 6.5″ and is in black white therefore my photograph will also be in Black and White, as his photograph was a life event I won’t quite be able to recreate it exactly but I have made as good of a try as I could do in the circumstances.

In mine the landscape has slightly changed i.e more trees around but these can be edited to look very similar to Ansel Adam’s on photograph.

He had a certain way of getting the shot he wants, he would stay in the park for days at a time waiting for the lighting of his shot to be just right to make the shot. As there isn’t any information on the type of lighting he used for this photograph I did have to improvise again.

But the important thing is that I go through the same process as he went, and feel the way he did when he took the shot.

The equipment he used was a View camera this meant he could take a photograph and capture even the smallest detail, it also meant he could produce large negatives so that he could show the tiniest detail in a photograph, it also meant he could control every aspect of taking the photograph from which parts of the picture were in focus which differers from a camera that has an automatic focus.

It takes up a lot of time and effort to use a view camera, but it produced much better results than an automatic camera which is why Ansel Adams used this camera rather than an easier camera to use.
The film had to be inserted into the camera in total darkness as well as being released from the camera in total darkness, and depending on the type of result the photographer wanted, the amount of light the film was exposed to changed.

I’m not sure if this is the camera Ansel Adams but it’s what a view camera did look like.

As this is an older camera it again was unable to use exactly the same camera instead a digital one would have to do…but at the same time I could change the light settings, and the tone so that I could get the same lighting or close to it as Ansel Adams got the day he took this.

The photo that I’ll be using to create in the style of Ansel Adams will be of the granite dome known as Half Dome in Yosemite Valley.
It rise 4,737 feet above the Valley floor, tourists can climb/walk to the top of half dome through a series of trails set out by the Park Ranges, it’s a 17 mile round trip and roughly takes about 10 to 12 hours to complete.
Hikers can take many trais to reach the summit most involve going via the East face of Half Dome or alternatively they could climb the steep Northwest face.
The last 200 yards, the walkers have to “walk” up the rather steep but rounded east face of Half Dome, this is achieved by the aids of two metal cables that are attached to poles along the side of the face, and wooden planks acting as steps between them. However these aids aren’t up for use all year round, the wooden planks are removed and so are the poles, leaving only the metal cables attached…with nothing to support them just lie on the wall (vertically of course) hikers can still reach the summit of half dome by going up the east face “batman” style with the cables in between their legs and just walk up.
The cables, steps and poles are taking down for the Winter and then put up in the last weekend in May, which is when most people attempt to walk Half Dome.

From personally experience it is a very hard walk/climb to do but worth it in the end. When I climbed Half Dome it was before the poles and wood were attached to the metal cables…so I did have to go “batman style” up the east face. It was worth it though.

I can’t exactly copy a photograh of Ansel Adams but I can recreate a similar scene or photograph going through a process that he most probably went through himself.

The photograph I’ll be taking will be of Half Dome as the two pictures shown above, and will try and get the contrast between the clouds and the sky the same, as the photograph above and will try my hardest to get the light on Half Dome itself just right.

I’m still deciding on which peice of photography of Ansel Adams I want to reproduce as I love them all, and I’m finding it hard to narrow down only one piece to copy…I just hope the work I do produce gives in justice and really show the “wow” feeling of being at Yosemite.

Which trust me you do feel when you’re there, after seeing it in person nothing else describes it, and that is one reason why I love his photographs because when you look at it you can see why Yosemite is such a beautiful place. After being there I can truely appreicate how Ansel must have felt when he took his photographs, the things he’s managed to capture with his camera is just unreal (sorry repeating my last post so I’ll move on)

Here I’d just like to add some history of Ansel Adams with a few pictures of him and his work, as well as hopefully I biography of him.

Now I could go on about his history and pretty much his biography with the information I get from his biography…which doesn’t make much sense me re-writing it so instead I’m going to include a link to his site (well not his as he’s dead but the offical site for him) it’s http://www.anseladams.com/content/ansel_info/anseladams_biography2.html

I have read it ALL and I find it very interesting, as I have expressed my interest in him and his work…I’m looking forward to looking more into the work he’s produced and the process he went to create them.

I’m such an idiot…I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before…all this time I’ve been debating about whether to do the black square or the half-figure in the yellow shirt and finding as much information as I can about Malevich and the peieces of art when there was an artist who’s work I really like right in front of me.

This is Ansel Adams. He’s was a photographer in thirties who shot photo’s of national parks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite in black and white, some of his photographs can be brought now but at mostly prints and posters and sold to the public.
And I persoanlly really like his work, espcially the photo’s he’s taken in Yosemite, as I’ve been there myself and have seen the places he photographed it’s unbelieavale how well he’s managed to capture how you feel when you see these places in real live.

He has a gallery in Yosemite Valley (which is where we’ve purchursed some of his copies) and all his photographs are amazing…I know this is going to sound so stupid but they’re so real! I can’t even begin to explain what his work is like…

There is one photo in particular that I really really like looking at and it’s “Clearing after a Winter storm”

it’s just so weird how he’s been able to capture the moment exactly I know the that the photo is of course still but you can really see how still the valley is after the storm..and the way the clouds are wrapping around the cliff edges, and clearing is just so amazing!

I can’t express how I feel about his work…I just think his photographs are truely supurb and I look forward to recreating some of his work.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Malevich is the artist whose work I’ll be imitating, the piece is yet to be decided but I just thought I’ll write a bit about the artist himself.

 Look at his background and his history etc. this will probably be added to as I continue my research into him and into the work that I chose to use. However I should hopefully write more about the piece itself and the process Malevich went through to produce it and how I copy that (or as best as I can)

 Malevich was born near Kiev, Ukraine, he was one of fourteen children (which only 9 survived into adulthood), he and his family moved around quite a bit from village to village in Ukraine, normally beside sugar plantation (his father was a manager at a sugar factory)/

 Living in villages meant he was far away from centres of culture and professional artists, he was though surrounded by peasant styles, i.e. decorated walls and stoves as well as embroidery, Malevich was able to paint in that style also.

 He first studied art in Kiev between 1895 and 1896; he later studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture from 1904 to 1910

He began working in an unexceptional Post-Impressionist manner, but by 1912 he was painting peasant subjects in a massive `tubular’ style similar to that of Léger as well as pictures combining the fragmentation of form of Cubism with the multiplication of the image of Futurism (The Knife Grinder, Yale Univ. Art Gallery, 1912). Malevich, however, was fired with the desire `to free art from the burden of the object’ and launched the Suprematist movement, which brought abstract art to a geometric simplicity more radical than anything previously seen.

After studying art he started experimenting with different modernist styles which included Cubism and Futurism.

  By 1912 he went back to painting peasant subjects in a ‘tubular’ style, which is similar to the styles he experimented with earlier in his life, he was fired though as he wanted to move art away from an object, thus launching the style of Suprematism. (Works in this style include Black Square and White on White). This style brought abstract art to a new level that had never been seen before.

 With this new style it meant that Malevich (and any other artist using that style) wasn’t restricted to the object and the things surrounding it for their art.

 Malevich tilted rectangles, used more colours and even introduced the suggestion of 3D.

 However in 1918 he did return to his earlier style of purest ideals (White on White an example of this also). He then realised he could go no further painting, and turned to teaching and writing about painting as well as making 3d models.

 Malevich started his teaching career at the art school at Vitebsk, and in 1922 he moved to Leningrad where he stayed for the remainder of his life. He did return to painting in the later 1920’s by became out of favour with the political system as it now demanded Socialist Realism from artists, thus resulting in him dying in neglect. This did not affect the influence he has on abstract art in the west and Russia which his pretty big.

Something that I found out about him which is interesting is he designed his own coffin obviously using Suprematism design.

 Ollie then said he’d make his own coffin too and have an enormous banana for it, not quite sure if that’ll work of if he’d still want that when he’s older but hey it could still work.