Landscape - Rut Blees Luxemburg Research

Rut Blees Luxemburg is is a German photographer who is based in London. In addition to taking street photography, she is a tutor at the Royal College of Art. Her technique is to take pictures of Urban Environments at night. Her photos have lots of different tones, mainly a large contrast between the dark tones of the night and the bright tones of street lights and neon lights which are all around London. Many of her her photographs make use of puddles as a medium for showing light in contrast to the shadows around the streets. Here are some examples of her work.

This image uses lots of muted colours, other than the part in the puddle, which shows a saturated blue. There is some tonal contrast, with some dark tones on the pavement due to the time of the day, and some light tones shown on the bright tube station sign in the puddle. This image has a very simple composition, with only a small puddle with a reflection being featured on a plain London floor. The image creates a sense of negative space, in which the floor surrounding the puddle becomes negative. This does not use a very wide angle lens to capture lots in the frame like most landscapes, however, and it doesn't display any rural or urban scenery.

This photo is similar to the one previously featured, with negative space created by the puddle being in the middle of the pavement. However, this one contains a larger range in tones. Inside the reflection itself there are lots of very dark tones, with the only light tones being produced being in the tube station sign, similar to the image previously shown. There are also some very dark tones shown on the pavement behind the puddle. This image has been composed differently to the previous one, having been taken at a canted angle, creating a more interesting composition than in the previous image. There are more saturated colours in this image, as there is a larger area of a sign shown in this image, however, there are still lots of muted colours in the pavement. This has not been composed like most landscapes, as it doesn't show scenery and the horizon, but is aimed at the floor and doesn't use a very wide angle lens to capture lots in the frame.

This one has been taken from a bird's eye view, so we get a view from above of a reflection in a puddle. This one contains some lines, unlike the previous images, and two of the lines in the paving slab act as leading lines that draw your attention to the puddle, where the reflection is. There is a very large tonal range in this, with some bright and warm tones inside the reflection, and a contrast between dark tones where the pavement has been wet and light tones where it hasn't. The pavement is, again, made up of very dull and muted colours, however, there is a very saturated shade of orange in the reflection in the puddle. Because of the lines in the tiles, a square can be seen, which the puddle is neatly framed into.