Masters of Photography - Carleton Watkins

Picture 1:

For this picture I set the vibrancy and saturation to 0. I actually decreased the clarity of the picture because I took this picture with my DSLR and I wanted to imitate the lower pixel quality of the cameras that Carleton Watkins used. Because the clarity was lowered, I put more emphasis on the shadows in order to make the picture not look too hazy and blurred out.

Picture 2:

I set the vibrancy and saturation to 0. In contrast to the first photograph, I increased the clarity in this picture. Even though I wanted to imitate the "feel" of the 1800's cameras, I was also inspired by Watkins to savor the fine lines of nature so instead of lowering the quality I tried to emphasize the lines created by the branches.

Picture 3:

For this picture, I set the vibrancy and saturation to 0. I increased the shadows and the blacks of the picture in order to contrast the grass from the sky. I also decreased the vignette of the picture in order to put the focus of the picture in the middle where my dad is.

Picture 4:

For this picture, I set the vibrancy and saturation to 0. Carleton Watkins mostly used deep depth of field which means he liked to put focus on the entirety of the picture rather than focusing on one thing. So when taking this picture, I set the aperture value high in order to capture an image in deep depth of field.

Picture 5:

I set the vibrancy and saturation to 0. For this picture I didn't change anything else.

About the Photographer:

Carleton Watkins was an American landscape photographer during the nineteenth century. He was born in November 11, 1829 in New York. He moved to California around 1851 during the time of the Gold Rush and started out his living as a carpenter for a dry goods establishment. However, his interest in photography was soon awakened when he was asked to stand in for an employee at a photography studio. From there he created his own business that made photographs for land dispute cases. Most of his pictures are centered around landscape, such as his photos on Yosemite. Watkins' expedition to Yosemite was able to secure him a reputation as a photographer. 

My View:

I specifically chose this photographer because of the consistency in all his pictures. His pictures all contain the same tone despite them being of different landscapes. Many of his pictures were able to capture the magnificence of the landscape by emphasizing the specific special feature of the object such as the size of a tree or the hole in the boulders. This photographer inspired me to  not only take notice of the subject of the photo, but also its surroundings. Through this project I was able to learn that deep depth of field can really take in a lot more of the landscape than shallow depth of field. By focusing on the overall picture rather than just the subject, it will bring an overall balance of the picture. I put this to practice while working on the project by taking a picture with the AV set high so that I could focus on not just the subject, but also the background and surroundings of the picture. This helped me to take a better landscape picture.