Edward Weston

Edward Weston

I am a massive admirer of Weston’s Landscape images. During the 1930’s Weston and others formed the f64 group, f64 is one of the smallest apertures on the large format camera they were using larger formats, mainly the 8x10. The f64 group wanted to take advantage of photography as a medium, their photos with sharp detail, largest depth of field and full tonal ranges. Although I have noticed in much of Weston’s work his blacks are slightly greyer. They did believe in any photo manipulation (not even cropping in the darkroom) but relied on their exquisite hand printing.

In May 1928 Weston is claimed to have made his first focused attempt to take photos of a landscape. He is now one of the most famous modernist photographers to take images of the America, attempting to explain the American landscape through his images.

Some of Weston's most influential work:

The images I have chosen to concentrate on are of the dunes in Oceano during 1936. These images focus on the details and the curves of the landscape rather than the landscape as a whole. I also admire the sky shown in some of these images, it shows the fine clouds. Conceptually, as these are known for trying to define the American Landscape I would like to apply the same concepts in my images but with my local landscape. I live in quite a hilly area and whenever I visit Burton Dassett near my home the sky tends to create patterns that I feel could reflect England’s weather; sometimes sunny but always with dark skies and rainfall (a mixture of all).

Aesthetically I would like to focus on the shapes of the landscape, utilising photography as a medium in the way the f64 group did. I would like to take my images on my DSLR as even though Weston prominently used his 8x10 large format I feel it would be a challenge for me to try and achieve these digitally.

During my photo-shoot I tried to use the smallest aperture possible but because of the wind this was not possible (as I would have to compensate with a longer shutter speed). Therefore I used an aperture of f20 with a shutter speed of 1/6 on a tripod with a lowest iso of 100. Even though I chose a sunny day the clouds left a strip of sunshine across the top of the hills, representing the weather I wanted to portray. This meant the curves in the landscape became more prominent and contrasted more with the shadows. I took this photo in black and white obviously in the style of Weston but this also makes the shapes look more abstract, focusing more on the shapes rather than the actual scene. I tried to include some land in the foreground as Weston does in his work. I have found Weston doesn’t include much of the sky in his images but because I am trying to combine both and aesthetic concepts and I feel this reflects my area well.

My take on Weston's method:

I am pleased with my final aesthetic outcome but would have liked to try out smaller apertures with longer shutter speeds to gain more fine details in the image that it would have benefited. I have only slightly used post production on my image, slightly adjusting the contrast even more to create darker shadows but still not completely black.