P42: man-made landscape

The last project in Landscape, is essentially the subject for almost every photograph I have taken or posted during this course.  At times I have railed against the obsession of the material with the traditional pastoral British landscape, but I have to admit that the course has provided me with the freedom to pretty much do as I please, provided I remain respectful of the fact that I need to develop skills and awareness of landscape style subject matter.

My personal subject has been urban landscape and in particular the city of Munich, my home for the last 18 years.  As I write this I have already commenced on my second course, Social Documentary, once again with Munich as my subject, but this time an emphasis on the people rather than the topography.  As I progress it is this unifying theme of my home city that drives my photography.  It is there, near by, ever changing and yet constant.  The more I look the more there is to see.

Thus this project is  an apt way to close my course work.  As every photo I have taken thus far is of a man made space, rather than go out and find 3 man made landscapes, here are 3 photographs of man-made landscapes taken during the course that mean a lot to me

This is the winter image from my portfolio, showing the area in the Englischer Garten in which I photographed Assignment 3, a study of a small area of parkland as Summer turned to Autumn and then Winter.  I visited again and again, developing an afinity with a space that I never thought I could have.  It helped me to understand that good photography is not a lucky or even a brilliant press of a shutter, it is hard graft and the progressive development of an idea.

Not used in an assignment, this shot was part of the development work for Assignment 1.  It represents a geometrical view of the world, at this stage an exercise in perspective.  Whilst taking these photographs I made the decision to stick within the city for the course;  at the time I was still considering working on the edge of the city, looking at how we sprawl out into the countryside.

A development image for Assignment 2, still thinking in colour, but with an almost B&W feel to it.  This image is very representative of the aesthetic I was developing towards and that which I adopted for Assignment 5.  It is very planar, carefully constructed and crossing the line from Landscape into Social Documentary.

I think my recent photography is strongly trending towards being a series of Documentary studies, not Social Documentary as such, but linked studies of locations.  I also feel that I am now evolving an own style or "voice", still imature, but beginning to grow.  The last photo in this brief commentary is a good example of that style.