The First Edit
It has now been a week since I embarked on my journey along the South West Coastal path. Along the way our plans changed slightly as we got to a point in the path where the journey was not going to be that interesting to photograph. We walked from Rame Head to Parr over two days getting 35 miles under our feet. Matt and I then decided that we were going to head back to Plymouth and commit to two more days of filming and photographing. We spent a day around the Slapton and Start Point area and then I took myself off to the North Coast of Cornwall where I went to St Agnes, a location that I first went to at the beginning of this project.
When I began this journey, I was not entirely sure on the output of the photographs that I was taking along the way. Much of my focus was on the filming and drone work that Matt and I were doing while walking along the path. I knew that I wanted my photographs to show the beauty and power from the land through my eye. This is because it is the omnipotent energy that I feel from the land which fuels my love and innate connection with nature.
The weather was and wasn't on our side during our time on the path. One minute the rain would be falling on us like we were standing under a shower and the next we were walking under the ray of the sun and blue sky. This constant change in the weather was great as after the rain had stopped, the sun began to push its way through the clouds and highlight certain areas of the landscape that we were in. I felt inspired by this light as it emphasised some areas of the land more than others which photographically draws the viewer into certain areas of the image. This light also visually displays the omnipotent feeling that I get when I am standing in an area of great ever changing beauty.
On my return I began to edit the photographs that I took. In a new style that I have perhaps not worked with before. Embracing the vibrant colours that the rays of sunlight were projecting onto the land. This body of work is a continuation of the ideas that I was photographing in my last project “Untitled Thought- Seeking Silence” which I shot in black and white. In contrast, this new style represents the power and happiness that I feel when I am in the landscape. The moments of silence are still conveyed in this new style of work, however the underpinning notion that I am giving to my viewer is the greatness, power and awe that I personally feel when wandering through the land.
I went through a 2-3 stage editing process when I was working on these images. I first went into Lightroom and created an editing style/ preset that I could place on top of all of my images as a starting point. Doing this enables an efficient work flow that gives a series of images the same style which is what I wanted to achieve with this collection. The next process that I went through was to send each image into Photoshop where I refined my edit predominantly using the raw camera filter tool to balance my images out. With some of the images below I adjusted what was going on in the frame to condense the compositions to enable more eye catching photographs.
The image above is the one image in the series that looks slightly different. This is because it was shot when the sky was clouded over after a heavy rain shower. The pools of light that fell on the sea were magical and I was taking a photograph every time that I turned around and looked out to the sea behind me. I knew that it had to be in this series of images for two reasons. The first being the fact that you can see Rame Head in the far distance which is where we started our hike. And the second being that I felt an immense amount of power and energy from the environment that I was in. The sun was pushing its way through the clouds after a heavy amount of rain and it felt like the environment was now giving us something back.
The edit process of the image was most probably the longest out of the series. I found it hard to correct the tones of blue in the sky and yellow in the mid ground so that the image sat visually coherent to the rest of the photographs. The tones in this image are much darker than the other images which I have grown to like as it represents the wet and harder times of the walk where we were battling against the weather.
I am constantly working out new ways in which to improve my workflow as I work in a different way for the nature of the body of work. Once I had a collection of around 15 photographs I knew that I wanted to display them together. This is when I opened a Photoshop document and began placing the photographs side by side. By doing this, I could then go back into the individual images and make the final minor adjustments in order to make the images visually sit well together. I think that this was a highly effective way of working as I could easier see the changes that I needed to make in order for the images to sit cohesively together.
Here is an example of how I removed something out of the frame in order to simplify the photograph. I did this as the bank in the left hand corner of the image distracted the viewer's eye from the landscape in the background which is the main focus of this photograph. This was one of the first photographs that I edited and created my style with. I did not want the contrast or details to be too aggressive in the image which is why I turned them down in post. I wanted to create a bridge of colours that sat in between pastel and vibrant colours which I think I have achieved successfully. This gives the images a calmer tone which I believe emphasises the peaceful and silent energy that I try and convey in my photography.
I began to shoot all of my photographs in portrait and placed a 5x4 crop on the images. I did this because it keeps the viewer's eye on one aspect of the landscape which shows off one bit of beauty at a time. Keeping this a constant throughout all of the photographs shows the viewer short snippet of the vast landscape that I was in. Something that I wanted to achieve as when the cinematic piece is put together, it will support the photographs with a wider perspective of the land that I was walking through.
This photograph does not have an immense amount of depth of field, however it shows off the layers of the land. Where the land meets the sea and the earth meets rock. When shooting, it was rather easy to get lots of photographs that were framed in the same way. Either looking down the coast or behind, this is also one of the reasons why I shot the majority of the photographs in portrait. The layers and close detail within the rocks draw the viewer in the textures of the land which are ever changing on our coastlines.
This is one of my most favorite images that I took while out on my walk. This is because I can go out and take landscape photographs of the land any day of the week but a rainbow is something that presents itself in front of you. I have taken lots of seascapes and landscapes in the past, yes they all look different, however a rainbow ending in the sea is not something that I have managed to capture before. This natural occurrence presented itself in front of me, at the end of what was a pretty wet and windy day. It gave Matt and I time to reflect on the day that we had and the beauty of which we were spending our time in.
Editing the images took some time and you can see the process that I made throughout the edit. This is where placing the image in and next to the series helped me make the adjustments. I could see where the tones in the images needed to be adjusted so that they would sit coherently together. I find that sometimes when I am working on an image on its own, it is easy to get absorbed into the tones and colours of that one image which may look differently to the series. This is when it helps to place the image next to the collection that will become a series.
This is an example of how I added an extra element in the photograph to make it more dramatic. I did this because I wanted to balance the texture in the sky with the texture and detail that was in the wind swept sea. I feel like this adds complementary textures between the soft clouds and the harsher detail that we can see in the sea.
I did this edit by selecting the cloud that is in the sky and copying and pasting it a few times. By using the soft eraser tool, you are able to soften the images and blend them together. In the raw camera filter, I then placed a gradient filter over the clouds and brought the highlights down which increased the contrast in the sky.
Above are the final edits that I made from my journey along the South West Coastal path. After a good few hours of working with these images I am pretty happy with the outcome that I produced. As spoken about in my plan, these images are going to sit alongside and support a cinematic piece that I am going to make. Throughout the edit process I have decided that with these photographs I am going to make a Zine. In the exhibition, the Zine will sit beneath the cinematic piece that will be projected. The short series of photographs show off the beauty of the landscape that we experienced along our journey. I do not feel as if there needs to be loads of photographs as our journey was not too long and much of the landscape looks very similar. This is why, when I was selecting which images I was going to edit, I wanted each one to have a different composition or focus texture. This is so that the viewer does not lose interest in looking at too many photographs that look similar.
This is not the final process for which I am going to put these photographs through. My next task is to place these in a layout and order that I feel is best suited to the way in which I want to present my work. This means there might be some small edits that go back into these photographs if I feel like I need to change anything that will make the photographs sit beside each other in a more uniformed way.
Once the Zine and cinematic piece is created, I will then spend some time reflecting on the whole process that I have gone through in order to make this work. Going forward, I have decided that I will be making a similar series of photographs and video on Dartmoor to sit beside the coastal path walk.