Photography Set III

Jackie Ranken

Queenstown Hill Forrest Cloud - Skippers Canyon Corromandel Trees.jpg Nevis Rockface I Double exposure with Umbrella

Texture, Tone, Lines, Shapes, Value.

Jackie Ranken is an Australian-born, multi-award-winning landscape art photographer. She has over thirty-five years’ experience within the visual arts and has been an international awards judge since 2002. She learned her craft by working within the photographic industry as a darkroom technician, freelance and sports photographer, wedding photographer, commercial photographer, and photojournalist. In 1996 after gaining her Associate Diploma in Fine Arts she began working as a teacher of ‘Fine art’ photography. She combines her art practice with teaching and is a presenter in workshops and seminars internationally. Exhibiting and instructing nationally and internationally. Her passion is the creation of multi-layered narratives via in-camera multiple exposures and intentional movement.

Ranken’s work clearly has a focuses, and mostly on the perspective of nature. The shapes and lines were obviously from the landscape such as rocks and trees, editing them into black and white also outline the subject, shapes, and lines. Sometimes, Jackie also uses another picture as the background of the picture in front, which adds a layer that presents a slightly different message, for example, the first picture and the second last. The multi-layers also make her work seems more complex and has a deeper meaning. Having the effect of colors and natural views, Jackie’s work demonstrates a calm and peaceful tone, which gives the audience a lot of space to imagine and feel. With a variety of different elements involved in Jackie’s work, her focus is looking more toward the message that was hidden behind the picture.

My vision contains many different branches referencing the topic: the beauty of odds. Which sometimes doesn’t need color, lights, or decorations. It concentrates on not only the picture itself, but the odd part in which people couldn’t understand the message, and would have to think about it again, or even have totally different feelings every time looking at it, but jumping out from the odd area, many of Jackie’s work seems to involve texture of plants, which gives the audience a feeling that they are able to touch it. Even though there are no colors other than black and white in Jackie Ranken’s photo series, we can still feel them as the audience, for example, the contrast between land and sky helps us identify the difference between them, darker parts are leaning towards a darker color, and lighter parts towards white. There are also transitions that cause some parts to be the gradation of colors, either from dark to light, or light to dark.

Jackie once said: “Making landscape photographs in black and white helps me to connect to the quiet side of myself. I become beautifully lost in tonal spaces, rhythmic patterns, and sensual textures. It’s as simple as that.” Even though there are no colors other than black and white in Jackie Ranken’s photo series, we can still feel them as the audience, for example, the contrast between land and sky helps us identify the difference between them, darker parts are leaning towards a darker color, and lighter parts towards white. There are also transitions that cause some parts to be the gradation of colors, either from dark to light, or light to dark. Therefore, many of Jackie’s artwork is showing the other side of herself or even the other side of humans.

Double exposure with Umbrella

This is an image from 2003 when Jackie’s husband, Mike Langford, first moved to NZ. It is a copy from a darkroom print, where she was shooting on an old Lubitel 120 film camera, making multiple exposures to film. Also, it is pretty rare in Jackie’s work since it also uses another picture as the background, overlapping the man, which made it look like Mike was standing under the umbrella, and in the rain. I am surprised that it did not have the man’s face, or at least his head is shown clearly in this photo. Instead, it had trees representing the person’s upper body, but also an umbrella on top, which is somehow suspicious that Ranken totally skipped the face, and replaced it with a plant.

Here in the above photo, value is definitely the most important element. The sky is light, and the ground is dark, which represents two worlds in the photographer’s mind, as she said in the quote above, making her photos in black and white help exaggerate her quiet side. Yet there is also some sort of connection between the two worlds, and that is also how I think the gradations were being used in this photo. The contrast also plays an important role in the field of values, the tree in dark color is the only object that is different or has a huge distinction between the sky/the lighter parts. Similarly, the umbrella who is supposed to show as one of the dark objects also existed in its reversed color.

I really liked how this picture had a lot of contrast between only two colors, and how the two layers interact with each other, for example, the man is holding an umbrella because of the rain. And I will also seek to take pictures that have bigger contrast that implies bigger messages. My vision is to take pictures that people don’t really experience in normal life, and I will try to evaluate them by exploring Jackie Ranken’s work. However, I also kept my normal photos such as ones that were not edited to black and white yet, just to let the audience also remember what it should be like, instead of being overinfluenced by the dark color.

Blue photos:

Blues contact sheet link: file:///Users/sharon.wu/Desktop/set%203/set%203%20blues.pdf

Green photos:

Greens contact sheet link: file:///Users/sharon.wu/Desktop/set%203/set%203%20greens.pdf

My green photos are more narrowed down to my photographer – Jackie Ranken’s style, for example, black and white, some close shots and some far scenes, and also applying contrasting objects, with contrasting colors. I also tried to involve another scene other than the main subject, for example giving it a background such as a building, or the sky, some trees, etc. This way the back can set off for the front image, helping to make it more extrude. Linking back to the elements, here I used a lot of editing to make the connections between the black and white colors, so the most important gradation will be shown in most of the photos.

Red photos:

With the inspiration from Jackie Ranken, I attempted to take photos of nature, such as landscapes, plants, and water, feeling the connection between us and the world. Within the perspective of abstraction, I also tended to switch between shooting close-up details and further views. Through this process, I seek to identify the beauty in everyday objects, specializing nature as in one of the branches of my vision. Editing the photos into black and white also brings me to a slightly calm and peaceful tone and perspective of viewing the world. According to Jackie’s work, I tried to avoid fancy backgrounds in my photos, which responded to her style of putting her tone of photos at ease. Since Ranken’s work clearly has a focus, and mostly on the perspective of nature, I also tried to blur out every background of my photo, so the audience won’t be distracted by others, and only focus on the feeling and message that my images are trying to convey.

Speaking of the message, my intention was to develop another area of my vision ‘the beauty of odds’, and my message is that nature can be seen from a much different perspective than what they appear to look like. They are not constructed to be focused on the vivid colors, each one has different components, for example, shapes, lines, etc. To correspond to my photographer’s work, I followed her style, which is editing my photos in black and white and having simple arrangements such as only having one focus, and showing the contrast between the subject and the back. If there is a chance, I would also like to explore around the world, seeing different landscapes, and different views, perhaps in a wider, broader space, maybe travel to rural places, so that there are more species for me to explore and take photos on. To follow my photographer’s steps, I will also need to look for open space, and maybe construct my own scene to have a clearer subject and to choose what type of background I can use. Noticing how my photographer also had multi-layer photos, which I think is what I should be trying in the future.

18. April 2022 by Sharon
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Sharon

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Photography Set III

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