My Photographic Reaction to the Don McCullin Exhibition, extending Ex 2.7

Having seen the exhibition of Don McCullin’s work at Tate Britain, Don McCullin – Tate Britain. Feb 2019, I tried to produce some images in his style. In the absence of a local war zone, I decided to use landscapes to do this. I completed Exercises 2.6 and 2.7 with that intention, and selected a site where I could photograph into the setting sun to try and get the effect McCullin has achieved in these images.

My attempts shown here are Black and white versions of the images in my exercise 2.7.

2019-02-14 Exercises 2-5+-11 — Etherow Country Park 1

2019-02-14 Exercises 2-5+-20 — Etherow Country Park 2

2019-02-14 Exercises 2-5+-34 — Etherow Country Park 4

2019-02-14 Exercises 2-5+-41 — Etherow Country Park 5

2019-02-14 Exercises 2-5+-56 — Mill Brow 1

2019-02-14 Exercises 2-5+-60 — Mill Brow 2

The cloud formations on the evening I chose were not really suitable to get this effect I was trying to achieve, however I remembered this image from exercise 1

2018-10-22 EYV Ex1-4-14-3 — Swineshaw Reservoir

and rendered it into black and white and adjusted the exposure locally to emulate McCullin’s landscapes.

2018-10-22 EYV Ex1-4-14 — Swineshaw Reservoir

Overall I think that this image achieves what I was trying to do.

I initially rejected this one as the lens flare makes it quite confused, but I do think it has some qualities in common with the abstract landscapes of John Virtue.