Environment progress

Since the beginning of the environment unit, my ideas have been a slow moving development, and it was only until recently (the past few weeks) that I've been fully forming my idea. Obviously this isn't ideal as we've had a fair few weeks to get this part of the way. But since then I've been steered in the right direction in where I can take my idea and who I can look at. My idea is very much based around the idea of Light Pollution or Luminous Pollution, specifically on how much light our big cities and towns around the world are actually emitting, and making sure I reveal that and make people aware. You'll find that roads with streetlights and big buildings with large illuminated signs are actually fogging up the midnight sky, making it more difficult to actually see the beauty of the lights in the sky - stars, that is.

I've looked at Ori Gersht who has done some work very similar to my objective and he is spot on with his series called "Rear Window" which rightfully depicts landscapes with misty colours and soft focus which can all look quite beautiful - until eventually you find out what it's all about. Here below is one of the photos from his series that really shows attention to the sky, but merely peeping out of the bottom is a reference to the city skyline at his destination. It definitely picks up on the overpowering orange colour in particular, that is emitted from streetlights etc.

This work is a monumental help towards my goal, it will have to be my obligation to not copy his style, and be creative in making the work I produce, actually my own. For that, I turn to one of my most favourite Photographers Dan Holdsworth, to pick up on some key ideas that can help me make my work independent. He has done a series named "Hyperborea" that depicts a night sky with some unusual green colours due to the Reciprocity Failure of doing a long exposure lasting up to hours at a time. This creates a nice effect aesthetically, but it truly shows the sky's pollution at it's fullest. Here is an image from Dan himself showing it in action:

In terms of aesthetic, I can also turn to David Spero who's work is very similar to Dan's and has a some wonderfully soft imagery with perfect gradients that may be worth looking at so I can achieve a unique style of my own to present, here is one of the pictures from David's series so aptly named "Star Series", that presents quite clearly something I can aim for.

So I intend to work from here in terms of my idea, and I hope I can truly represent this as best I can, even  being limited to a medium format Black & White film stock. I hope to achieve this using a bulb setting through a timer which could indeed last up to hours, especially at an ISO 400, but it should be quite exciting and I look forward to shooting. Contact Sheet of my Pastiche attempts should soon follow. As a last look at other options of presenting my idea, there is also a photographer/artist named Elger Esser who takes a normal landscape and transforms it through overexposing the photo and putting it through a one colour filter attached to the camera. This does not show the light pollution, but does infact imply it through the use of over-saturation in one colour.