Assignment 2 One Acre

Photographer Nick Johnson

email: nickjohnson@lineone.net

This potentially was the most difficult project for me and I would think for many other students. Landscapes are often defined by their nature to be large expanses of land and this limited area makes you look all the harder for the differing views and images within a limited space. An extremely valuable lesson to learn!

After viewing several potential sites for this project I decided upon using Bolingbroke Castle just a few miles down the road from me. It is a castle with a rich history, now a ruin. It was built between 1220-1230 AD by Randulph de Blundeville, Earl of Chester (and Earl of Lincoln from 1217). More information http://community.lincolnshire.gov.uk/BolingbrokeCastle/section.asp?catId=21791

The castles site occupies an area of approximately 1 acre ideal for my project. With the location found I then had to decide how I would approach this subject. It became obvious to me as I wandered around the site the weather conditions would require me to be rather creative in my approach. Being brought up in photography in both the era of B&W traditional processing and colour film as well as digital. I am excited by the development processes digital darkroom techniques. I decided to shoot in RAW and process the work in ‘Lightroom’ all with the same or similar treatment to help the work ‘hang’ together as a 12 picture set.

I have been studying the work of Ansel Adams and although the scale of this landscape is dissimilar the treatment may be the same. ‘Adams’s manipulation of light and tonal values produce some especially dramatic cloud-covered mountainscapes of Grand Teton National Park....... thick, dark-shadowed clouds dominate the scene, stretching from foreground to background, pressing down on the landscape below.’ (Ansel Adams The National Park Service Photographs, Alice Grey p.9. 1995 Abbeville Press)

With this in mind I set about doing justice to a site that is full of history and interest and hoped to transcend a purely documentary approach to this project. As well as keeping a dramatic cloud filled sky I also hoped to show the texture and tones in the Spilsby Greenstone the castle was built from, maximising the details.

The pictures were shot on a Nikon D300 with  either a using a Sigma 10mm-20mm and a Nikon 18mm-70mm. For larger views of the pictures in this project please visit here -

www.nick-johnson.co.uk/Ass2/

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