Rut Blees Luxembourg: Urban Landscapes

One of my most admired photographers is Rut Blees Luxembourg, but likely for the wrong reason. The overall aesthetic of her work truly inspires me to follow in her footsteps and choose to shoot ambient evenings with urban cityscapes falling off into the background. The photography she employs holds lesser significance to me in regards to the depth and meaning behind the long exposures, the technique of using longer exposures in these darker urban places truly gives a nocturnal ethereal aesthetic that is unique in itself, and that inspires me to create a unique brand of style for myself whilst shooting my own photography.

I often find that she has brought me closer to my photographic ability, the style has aided me in my work countless times as I try to replicate the ambiance she holds so brilliantly. The interesting colours certainly influence my choice in modifying the candid colours of a regular photograph I've taken. I make it my own work by using colour filters that give it a visual signature that hopefully translates clearly through my photography. Her work, to me, is less about meaning and more about visual appeal.

Rut Blees Luxembourg chooses to challenge herself when framing an image by finding difficult angles and unusual vantage points. In the first photo we are greeted by a extremely low down shot to create a sense of depth trailing up the photo, but down the stairs. The rounded edges of the wet stairs reflect the ambient light from the streetlights whilst the rain/water has simulated a flat sheet look due to the longer exposures she chooses to use. 

In the second photo, you're given fragments of reflected light through the multiple puddles created through poor road maintenance, this creates a jagged photo of mosaic like highlights. the closer light at the bottom of the photo shows the lighter (likely dry) pavement with all its cracks shown in the frame. This run down area has become something aesthetically beautiful with the usage of light. 

In the last photo, the interesting hues of colour differ from the usual orange tint we expect in an urban landscape, combining that with the top-down view and the leading lines, you have a urban piece of art even before you know the story behind it. The contrast in all three truly brings a sense of mystery, the hidden attributes of the character deep within the frames. 

Edward Burtynsky: OIL

This incredible photographer (based in Toronto, Canada), completed a series with very vivid and colourful images that looked upon the great industrial landscape of oil refineries and facilities with a powerfully critical eye. This impressive project resonates completely with the message I intend to portray within my own work, albeit his imagery is both devastating and beautiful at the same time.

“[we] come from nature.…There is an importance to [having] a certain reverence for what nature is because we are connected to it... If we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves.” 

His complete connection with nature and the awareness of our actions implies he is knowledgable about this subject, and the imagery certainly shows his knowledge through the beautiful photographs he creates. The desolation resonates so truly with a world we are hidden from. In the image below, the landscape is almost alien to us, where we would expect green fields and a bluish water running through it - yet we are presented with the opposite, a black landscape with bright red waters flowing though.

What a world we live in. The image above scares me, although in reality it holds little harm. This orangey-red deposit is the leftover of oxidation of iron whilst the nickel separation occurs. The image below shows a plethora of nodding donkey oil wells on the 'oil field' taken in Belridge, California, 2003. The very idea that we as a society must usurp our planet dry so that our landscapes hold little left in the form of oil or gas presents us with a world where we would need to come up with a solution that avoids using something of limited supply to fuel our energy-hungry world. In Burtynsky's oil images, it is the insatiable human hunger for the world's raw materials of which is primary interest to me. The tools of manufacturing are sometimes important, but they often function simply as a true measure of the immense scale of the scene before us.

The rest of the worlds I will leave in the hands of Edward Burtynsky himself, as they truly explain my feelings for such industrial behaviour. The origin and use of the materials has dawned upon me as something we must all be concerned about, not just photographers. His artist statement reads:

"When I first started photographing industry it was out of a sense of awe at what we as a species were up to. Our achievements became a source of infinite possibilities. But time goes on, and that flush of wonder began to turn. The car that I drove cross-country began to represent not only freedom, but also something much more conflicted. I began to think about oil itself: as both the source of energy that makes everything possible, and as a source of dread, for its ongoing endangerment of our habitat. I wanted to represent one of the most significant features of this century: the automobile. The automobile is the main basis for our modern industrial world, giving us a certain freedom and changing our world dramatically. The automobile was made possible because of the invention of the internal combustion engine and its utilization of both oil and gasoline. The raw material and the refining process contained both the idea and an interesting visual component for me."

The rest of his images within the set can be found at the web address below for all those who with to continue exploring his work and his important message he is putting across through it.

(http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/site_contents/Photographs/Oil.html)

A Quick Look At 'Six Degrees: Our Future On A Hotter Planet'

This sobering book by Mark Lynas gives us a scientific look into a conceptual six-degree breakdown of what the world would come to roughly, if it were to endure these minute temperature rises. The book aims to show what each degree increase would bring, chapter by chapter. He speaks of endangered coasts, towns, rivers, croplands, and even mountains somehow. He brings a convincing argument to the table at the beginning of the book:

"Consider this: 18,000 years ago, during the deepest freeze of the last ice age, global temperatures were about six degrees colder than today. In that frigid climate, ice sheets stretched across North America from sea to shining sea."

This breathtaking fact truly puts the fact into perspective - if we can go from ice sheets covering all of North America to our currently acceptable habitat now with just six degrees increase in heat, just thinking of the implications of a further six worries me a little, the living conditions before dangerous for all of the world, not to mention the sheer damage it would bring to the extremely well established 1st world culture, with all the buildings and roads placed, homes built with current lifestyles in mind, and much more. The UK is barely ready for extreme weather, if anyone can recall what any winter is like here in the UK, then you'll know what a disaster it is. A layer of snow can disrupt even the biggest of cities. If our planet is to get hotter, the general idea is that the heat will melt the ice at both the North and South Pole, creating a rising sea level and massive increase of weather change.

The first degree speaks of changing landscape, dust bowls back in America, but with vengeance. Already, the world has risen 0.7 degrees in the last 10 years. A dangerous number to hear for such a small period of time. This one degree will bring an increase in hurricane activity. The second degree would begin the release of all green houses gases, and they will surely affect the ocean. There will be severe crop losses at a cost of billions, and forest fires would become common. It's predicted a 3rd of all wildlife would die off as a result of this second degree. At the third, Africa will get rainfall back, but the southern part would dry up to become almost inhabitable. At this temperature, sea levels are easily a metre higher. The fourth degree would see a collapse of civilisation, leading to worldwide conflict, and 70% of the Mediterranean summer rain would fail to fall for an additional 65 days. At the fifth, there will be no ice, no rain forests, floods, droughts, and the Earth would become unrecognisable, deserts would expand dramatically. The certainty of humans living is unknown at the sixth degree.

If I may, a quote from the film "The Day After Tomorrow" talks about the reversing of the North Atlantic current, something which brings about devastating weather as you may witness within the film. This source may be fictional, but the danger is there. Needless to say, Mark covers all of this in his book and more. The stark contrast of rising sea levels with sandstorms and droughts would be thought as common, we as a society should want to avoid such a perilous world. As a photographer, I feel as though I should make my contribution towards convincing those who are skeptical, by showcasing the damage which is kickstarting this destruction upon our planet.