Researching - Erik Johansson. (Manipulated Images)

Only twenty five, Erik Johansson, a computer engineering student from Sweden produces heavily manipulated photographs inspired by surreal artists such as 'MC Escher'. He has taken a masters in interactive design and has already been offered work from design magazines after he published his work on his website. 

He relies heavily on Photoshop and is not ashamed of this. He enjoys the fact that it is "somehow different from other kinds of art." In his own words he has taken photographs all his life and his work can be very humerous or quite serious and political. His photographs, although surreal are very realistic. This is what creates the shock value. The way that he works is first to have an idea which he then realises.

Photography for him is a means to an end. The real work is created on the computer. It can take him between a week and a month to finalize a piece of his work. Sometimes he will use himself in the photos but prefers to sue family and friends. Photography is often thought of as denoting realism but Eriks work takes realism and subverts it into the fantastic.

Hang Havet Pa Vaggen - Erik Johansson

This is a photo of a lady positioning a picture of a harbour full of boats on a wall. In so doing it appears that she has altered the balance and that the water is draining out of the picture onto the floor. These images were located on his blog and quickly gained a following. They are very evocative of the style of the surrealist painters such as 'Salvador Dali' and others. His body of work reminds me a little bit of the unreality of dreams and/or nightmares. This particular one is amusing and invites the viewer to share the joke.

Utan Granser - Erik Johansson

This photo shows a man ascending a spiral staircase set at the end of a road within a bland landscape and in sepia. It brings many different thoughts to a viewers mind such as 'Is this a modern Jack and the Bean stalk?' or maybe 'The staircase to heaven.' The staircase is so incongruous that it opens up a whole world of possibilites.

Go your own Road - Erik Johansson

In this picture a young man is walking towards the viewer and seemingly dragging the road behind him. The idea is extremely bizarre but also comical. He almost looks like a bride trailing her train behind her. On a deeper level it could refer to the road you take in life and that you make your own way in life.

The reason I like Erik Johanssons work is that they are startling and imaginative. They are a little like the Rorschach Inkblot test in that you look at the picture and devise your own story line. I like the fact that some are purely comical whilst others are thought provoking. Some of the other pictures on his website remind me of the film Inception which is about a dreamworld. 

Researching - Peter Lik.

Peter Lik is possibly one of the best Landscape photographers of today. He has won many awards and is known throughout the world. He is an Australian whose Czech parents migrated to Melbourne when he was born. His parents bought him a Kodak Brownie camera when he was eight which started off his enduring passion.

Lik tought himself and decided to move to the Unoted States in 1984. He met another photographer in Alaska called Allen Prier and he introduced him to the Medium Format Panoramic camera. His advice to Lik was " Go big or go home."

Lik went back to Australia and photographed the huge vistas of the Great South Land. He opened his own fine art publishing company and his first gallery in his now home town of Cairns (Australia).

In the new millenium he returned to America and set himself a task of photographing landscapes of all fifty states. Pictures of this challenge can be found in his book 'Spirit of America'. He has been awarded Master Photographer by both Australia and America and has fellowships from the British Institute of Professional Photographers and The Royal Photographic Society.

He now runs his company LIK USA from Las Vagas. He has thirteen galleries of his own and a TV series 'From the Edge with Peter Lik', which has made him a famous name in the United Kingdom. Now very wealthy, he sold his photograph 'One', of the Androscoggin River in New Hampshire for one million dollars. His photographs break records in sales and his works include 'Ancient Spirit', 'Sacred Sunrise', 'Angel's Heart', 'Tree of Life' and his famous 'Ghost'.

Tree of Life - Peter Lik

He has the ability to photograph landscape and make you feel that you are seeing something for the first time. A lot of his work mis documentary in that he has his won weekly show. This photograph is one made when he was photographing the fifty states. This particular state being Oregan. This photograph is mainly of a tree that is shown centrally positioned with a small mound of Greenery in the foreground. What draws the eye is the vivid burst of orange red of the leaves. His picture makes the viewer feel as though he is veiwing the scene at first hand and not via the medium of photography. His colours are so vivid and contrasting that it is almost psychedelic. The reason I like this image is because I like the secrecy of woods and I am particularly interested in extremes of colour.

Painted Skies - Peter Lik

This photograph is another one of his panoramic views that encompasses a fairly barren landscape made dramatic by the gloriously coloured skies above. The sky reflects the shadowy hues of purples and pinks below. The horizon sits halfway up the photo with the eye being led to the distance hills in the middle third. The sky and the land are linked by a tree in the left hand third. The landscape is flat but still conveys the distance of the hills in the background.  

Once again it is the colours that draw me to this particular photographer. Colours are very important to me, especially vivid colours, contrasting colours and moody colours, all of which are seen in his photos. I am also drawn to photos that have a particular mood. This might be a glorious feeling of exultation or the lonliness of a deserted landscape. I intend to try to convey this excitement in my final photos.

Researching - Helen Sear. (Manipulated Images)

Helen Sears Photography has progressed from a fine art background of performance, film and installation work made in the 1980s. Her work combines vision, touch and the nature of experience, particulary being interested in landscape in relation to humans and animals. She uses drawing, lens based media and didgital technologies. She has had work displayed in many galleries as well as solo exhibitions. She is at the moment Reader in Photography and Fine Art Practice as well as a member European Centre for Photographic Research at the University of Wales Newport. She is based in Raglan, Wales.

Some of her work was influenced William Henry Fox Talbot, who placed black lace onto sensitised paper and exposed it to the sun. The lace then appeared white on a dark background. He called this technique 'Photogenic Drawing'. She uses some of Fox Talbots technique within the body of work known as 'Inside the View'.

In her solo show 'Inside the View' 2005, she mixes together formal landscape and portraiture and then alters the surface of each image using digital erasure so that the picture appears to have a delicate lace work and this is hand drawn in the computer. These works are very etherial and romantic and touch the viewers psyche. The photos seem to have an almost spiritual overtone.

Sears more simpler work, where she restrains herself from too much didgital enhancement tend to be more meaningful as when she has used too many layers and references the point of the pictures tend to be lost.

She won the Creative Wales Award which will help her to develop he photgraphy practice. She will be developing ideas concerning landscape which changes dramatically through land management and will also be doing a portrait of a field and its change over a period of a year.

Sears is absorbed with culture, methology, nature and technology.

Taken from the Series 'Inside the View' 2004 - 2008

This picture involves two screens, the computer screen in which she draws the lace and the photographic layer. The effect is almost that the person in the photo is ourselves viewing the landscape. It is aesthetically pleasing while also having a certain sublime attribute. The women that we see are not wholy in the space but are almost a ghost of ourselves.

Taken from the series 'Beyond the View' 2009 - 2010

Whereas 'Inside the View' were 34x34cm, 'Beyond the View' is 110x110cm and this allows the viewer to see the image behind appear inside the erased line of the top image. Because of this change of scale there are also two different viewing distances. The landscapes are more detailed and the underlying image more obvious as it is pulled through to the surface of the image.

Helen Sears is very innovative which makes her very important in this field. She doesn't use filters or patina but tends to use software like an archeological site whereby layers can be pulled through one another to alter a conventional perspective. In both of the bodies of work I've discussed the composition is similar having the background and the foreground with the womans head sandwiched between both of these. These works are viewed within galleries. The reason that I like this work is because I would like to use a similar technique in my manipulated images task. This style invites the reader to ellaborate the picture with their own ideas and fantasies. 



Researching - Liza Dracup...

Liza Dracup is a photographer who focuses on the Landscape of the British Isles. She has produced a large collection of work which she exhibits. Some of her work is in private and public collections. She has been inspired by Atkinson Grimshaws work. He makes great use of light and colour and location and some of his work is reminiscent of Turner's Paintings.

Her collection called 'Sharpes Wood' was nominated for the Prix Pictet EARTH Photographic Prize. The ' Sharpes wood' pieces are taken at night, thereby showing us what can only be seen by the camera. She exhibits her work at various galleries throughout the country.

Dracup's work is tinged "with myth and memory". Her interest in woods and night harks back to childish fear and excitement of the unknown. Her work verges almost upon the fairytale. 'Sharpes Wood' was comissioned by The Impressions Gallery and took four years to finish.

These two photos I have chosen from the 'Sharpes Wood' collection.

There are twenty three images to this series.

The first picture was taken at night  and leads the eye into the middle distance. The compostion has a tree lit by the flash in the foreground and then the light fades as it goes into the shadowy background. The picture is very haunting and the colour almost unbelievable. It could be from any time. I think that she has enhanced the colours to add to the drama. There are various shades of gold, purple and a cold blue. These works are viewed in exhibitions around the country. I would like to be able to use her work as a reference for some of my final images as I enjoy the ways in which she plays with light and colour. I am a fan of changing the Colour Enhancement.

The second picture that I have chosen in this series shows the cool reflections of trees in a woodland lake. Again this is taken at night and the depth of the background contrasts well with the muted greens of the middle and foreground. The picture is at one and the same time mysterious and yet soporific. The atmosphere is slightly unnerving as though the viewer is in a state of trance waiting for something to happen.

'Whitby' (Moonlight) 2010

This picture is number ten of a series of eighteen from the 'Chasing the Gloaming' collection. It is a beautiful photo of moonlight reflecting on the sea. Again it has the silhouette theme that I like and the lighting is so subtle that it almost looks like a painting. It is a very romatic and evocative photo and is almost mesmeric. The main colours are greys and silver with the silhouette lit by an orange glow.

'Green Circle' - Tree & Moon 2011

(This photo again is from 'Chasing the Gloaming').

This photograph is circular on a green/grey background. The moon shines low through mist and trees. This photo will have been digitally manipulated with the use of the frame. It would be ideal to digitally manipulate as the setting is almost fantasy. For this body of work the photographer was much influenced by Atkinson Grimshaw (a victorian artist). Dracup was inspired by his use of light, colour, subject and location.I find that the frame transports it from photo into a piece of art.

Researching - Bill Atkinson...

As a young child Atkinson cut out nature photographs from the Arizona Highways Magazine. He pinned them on his bedroom wall and this was his original inspriration to begin his life photographing nature. He spent forty years perfecting his art, always looking for that elusive hidden beauty to be found in nature. He photographs Landscapes and also Close-ups. He is a pioneer of Digital Printing Technologies and has passed on his expertise to many more photographers.

He was a member of The Original Macintosh Team at Apple Computer for twelve years, designing a lot of the user interface and wrote the QuickDraw, MacPaint and HyperCard software. He uses what he has learnt to perfect his own art, using the accuracy and creative control.


His Close-up pictures, mainly of stones, look very much like abstract paintings. He wrote a book using these photgraphs called "Within the Stone".

Artists Statement:
" Photography begins not in the camera but in the mind and the eye. The real work is one of noticing and appreciating, seeing things clearly and differently, and sharing that vision with others. I have developed my vision and my photographic craft in order to bring the beauty of nature to light in a fresh way that can inspire and nourish people." - Bill Atkinson.

1029 Quinault Rainforest - Bill Atkinson

This photograph is from the collection titled 'Pacific Northwest' located in the Olympic Peninsula, Washington on a Nikon Camera using a 35mm Format. I found this photo on his Official Website. The style is Documentary and brings the exotic to the viewer. The picture was taken in 2007. The photo is taken deep in the forest and shows a moss covered trunk as the main subject which is surrounded by various flora.  The light projects down form the canopy emphasizing the shadows and bringing out the different textures and shades of green, this being the prime colour.

It is a relatively close up photo giving a view of the dense foreground. There are 48 images to this series. He displays his work on the internet, in magazines and newspapers.

1530 Sunrise at Red Sands Beach - Bill Atkinson

This photograph is from the 'Hawaii' collection and the location is Maui, Hawaii. He has used a Hasselblad Camera. The photo comprises of a rugged Silhouetted Rock set in the foreground and a dramatic sunrise as the backdrop. There can also be seen Choppy waves crashing onto the rocks. This picture is full of romantic drama with fiery clouds hanging under blue skies. The silhoutte is in stark contrast to the colour of the background. This photo is full of power and emotion. I would like to take a photo in silhouette because I love the contrast between a flat outline and the movement of the sky or landscape behind. The effectiveness of this type of photo relies heavily on timing and requires quite a lot of patience and luck.

Researching - Ansel Adams...

Ansel Adams is a photographer who captured some of the most beautiful, inspiring and Grand pictures of the American Landscapes, and because of his art and his personal interest, helped to protect and preserve it.

Adams visited the Yosemite National Park in 1916 and fell in love with it, taking pictures on his first camera. He went back each summer working at various jobs and began to perfect his own style of photography. He was an acknowleged wilderness photographer by the age of 34 and was also brilliant in the Dark Room. He developed a set of guidelines for planning the exposure and development of negatives and this he called the "Zone System". This allowed him to control the contrast of light and dark.

He founded the department of photgraphy at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1936, he petitioned congress to create a National Park in Kings River Canyon in California and his photographs of this area helped to convince the lawmakers to agree and the Kings River Canyon was made a National Park in 1940.


He was comissioned to produce a series of photos of the National Park System for the department of Interior Museum and produced 225 prints, now kept in the National Archives in Washington. The second World War stopped the project but some of these photographs were reproduced from negatives and these are of particular interest to me.

Ansel Adams 'Road'

I particularly like this one as I'm obsessed with the cloudscape while capturing images. I also like roads that lead to "somewhere". It leaves a lot to the imagination. I am fond of images that let you think and make up your own conclusions. I like the bluntness on the title ; he hasn't tried to complicate matters, he simply states the obvious and leaves the rest up to the viewer. The composition is positioned nicely, as it seems to be rather symmetrical.To me the distance stands out the most in this picture, it just goes on and on and on...

Branches in Snow - Ansel Adams

This picture is a close up of thin pine branches at the base of a tree, weighed down by snow. It is a balck and white photo taken round about 1932. It is part of the Yosemite Special Edition Photographs. This particular picture has been used in books and as prints. The reason I like this photo is that it veers away from the usual photos of vast landscapes that I normally like. Although it is a close up, I feel that there is plenty to see as it is very detailed. Looking at it long enough you could almost imagine it as a landscape. It provides a contrast with the other photographs that I have chosen for my research. I like the shape and form of the pine needles and the texture contrast.

His photgraphs are in black and white and far from simplifying the scenery, it adds depth and awe. The scenes are powerful and strong and have an emotional pull on the viewer. Great effect is made of the play of light shadow and it brings to mind how small mankind is when compared to the nature around us.


I would like to try and emulate his style but with the British countryside which is a softer and less harsh enviroment but which still has its mysterious and dramatic side.

Blurb...

A few lessons back I had a discussion with Marie on some different ideas on how to present my work for the final draft. Besides me choosing to do a woodland theme, I may try experimenting on something else aside. This being me creating my own book of Images that I took whilst venturing the States on my holiday and comparing the Landscapes in America to the Landscapes of Britain ( juxtaposing the two).

I could use the site Blurb and create my own book and then use this to display my images. For now it is only an idea as of course I have my Woodland theme to carry on with. But it is something I am interested in. Autumn over in America, particularly the states in which I visited is a lot different to how Autumn looks over here. Britain is much darker for starters and automatically looks colder in the pictures and maybe in some ways less modernised.

Below are just a few images of me comparing the two Countrys:


The First Image is taken in Britain whereas the Second Image is taken in America. Both were taken of sunsets coming to their end.