Part 1 Beauty and the sublime - Exercise 1.1 Preconceptions

Exercise 1.1 Preconceptions

For this first exercise I'm asked to abandon tradition and to pick-up a pencil and draw a rough sketch of a "landscape" picture.

So, here it is:

As you can see drawing is not an area I have strengths in.

I'll answer the questions raised in the exercise:

What shape is the picture?
I've chosen an A4 sheet in landscape mode and used the full space of the picture, However I see from the earlier notes that landscape images are traditionally taken on medium format camera film at 6 x 6cm and larger format camera film at 5 x 4 inches

What sort of terrain is depicted?
I have a flat land in the front with hills / mountains in the back and a large low sun

What's in it? Are their people?
I suppose my sense of humour or sense of adventure shows a maternity hospital being "destroyed" by a bashing ball from a crane whilst a poor heavily pregnant lady walks towards it with her hands and arms held high in distress at what she sees. I've used the lead in lines from the right from the caterpillar tracks toward the crane with the ball and a curved path from the foreground to the hospital doors.

How are the subjects arranged?
I have foreground interest with the person, mid ground building and mountain / hill profiles in the background

How might you describe the "mood" of the image?
There is a slight element of humour in the image as its a drawing but if captured real then its a distressing image with political overtones as we see hospitals being closed in our current time.

I think a tradition of landscape photographer's is to have some foreground interest in an image with a large depth of field and leading lines guide the viewer in the image and help give the image depth. Of course in this image I have neither colour or tones but the low sun suggests one of the golden hours, which are a favourite time for landscape photographers. This in turn results in longer shadows some of which I've drawn in the image.

I may be influenced in landscape imagery through social media sites of images people have taken and on websites of photographers and landscape images in general. In addition some elements I have also used in my own landscape images that I've taken.

A landscape image suggests that "land" might be predominate in this type of image.

Looking at the word landscape in the Wikipedia I found the following within its definition:

There are several definitions of what constitutes a landscape, depending on context. In common usage however, a landscape refers either to all the visible features of an area of land (usually rural), often considered in terms ofaesthetic appeal, or to a pictorial representation of an area of countryside, specifically within the genre of landscape painting. When people deliberately improve the aesthetic appearance of a piece of land—by changing contours and vegetation, etc.—it is said to have been landscaped,^[1] though the result may not constitute a landscape according to some definitions.

The word landscape (landscipe or landscaef) arrived in England—and therefore into the English language—after the fifth century, following the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons; these terms referred to a system of human-made spaces on the land. The term "landscape" emerged around the turn of the sixteenth century to denote a painting whose primary subject matter was natural scenery.^[2] "Land" (a word from Germanic origin) may be taken in its sense of something to which people belong (as in England being the land of the English).^[3] The suffix "‑scape" is equivalent to the more common English suffix "‑ship."^[3] The roots of "‑ship" are etymologically akin to Old English sceppan or scyppan, meaning to shape. The suffix ‑schaft is related to the verb schaffen, so that ‑ship and shape are also etymologically linked. The modern form of the word, with its connotations of scenery, appeared in the late sixteenth century when the term landschap was introduced by Dutch painters who used it to refer to paintings of inland natural or rural scenery. The word "landscape", first recorded in 1598, was borrowed from a Dutch painters' term.^[4] The popular conception of the landscape that is reflected in dictionaries conveys both a particular and a general meaning, the particular referring to an area of the Earth's surface and the general being that which can be seen by an observer. An example of this second usage can be found as early as 1662 in the Book of Common Prayer:

Could we but climb where Moses stood,

And view the landscape over.

(General Hymns, verse 536).^[5]

The original word meant human made spaces on the land. Interestingly Salgado's set of work Genesis included people within landscape and he his desire to capture landscape and people that have remain relatively untouched by modern man.

So I think ;landscape could include land and its interaction with people or rather than the other way around. Interestingly we might also call an image primarily displaying water a landscape image rather than a waterscape.