Focal lengths

I thought I would explore this exercise from the stock of pictures that I have, as I have an expectation of the outcome (I will go about the exercise shortly and see what if any differences I experience). My assumption here is that it is to do with perspective. Telephoto lens's have a technical feature that crushes perspective and the longer the focal length, the more telling the effect. It takes the effect of diminishing or widening the apparent distances between objects (dependant on the lens of choice) and the viewer.

12 mm lens - River and rocks155 mm lens - River and rocks

There are some obvious general things to be seen from these comparisons, such as the close-ups tend to abstract the subject from its surroundings; the subject's points of reference (which we can see because of the comparative shots). The wider angle shots provide scale, this is probably to do with having the points of reference. 

Rocks and river. the close up is what I expected from the shoot. I had jus received the 10 stop ND filter and wanted to do some comparison shots. The tripod was used and I exchanged lenses between the wide angle and the telephoto. Whilst the ND filter will affect the pictorial content considerably, generating an ethereal quality to both it is more marked in the close up. The tactile nature of the rock, with the glistening sheen and the semi-solid looking water flow with sensual curves are very evocative. The wider angle shot minimises this effect. I'm not sure if the colour has shifted to a bluer tone on the close -up and I'm also not sure that I would to leave it in at that density if I were to present the image. There are points of reference to scale both these images and the compression effect is not as tangible on these shots.

34mm lens

Potter

 64 mm

The Potter. Again the wide angle shot places the subject in the environment - this could have been much wider and it might have been better to have included some of his end produce and raw materials (I have other shots that do do this but closer in and decided not to include for this comparison, but one is shown below for information). Nevertheless in the wider shot we can see the potter at his work, with his "slip", his coat or jacket hanging on a nail top right and his wheel the centre of his attention; in this shot the wheel appears closer to him, not quite hemmed in but without a great deal of room to move. Whereas the telephoto shot actually appears to give the subject some freedom to his right. His stance on both shots is similar but the enlarged view seems to offer more space, more room to breath. The close-up is a much more personal shot; just because it is close-up? I don't necessarily think so, it is true we can see his face, his intent and focus on the job of work; the hold that he places on the pot - the wider shot has a stationary wheel and in the close-up it is turning at full tilt. I think the intimacy of the close shot comes about with the potter at one with his work, which is difficult to discern the further back the viewpoint is - diminishing emotional perspective?? Interestingly it is more apparent in the additional shot below.

12mm lens - Bridge of sighs

                                                                85mm lens

The Bridge of Sighs: ok, it's been done a few times before. I wanted to take the wider angle shot to include the frieze on the building adjacent to the bridge. I knew this would give context and add some interest, rather than have a straightforward heads on view - as per the close-up shot, even if I zoomed out a fraction to expose either some architecture or water. The wider shot has a few context realising features, the gondolier on the canal, the banks and buildings of both sides of the canal, the inner passage of the building on our left and finally the sky (albeit a flat blue Viennese summer sky). The close-up was taken with a zoom lens and is as much about the texture and tone as about it's architectural form. The relationship with it's environment was never required in this shot, but nevertheless as far as this exercise is concerned the compression of perspective and any points of reference decouples this object from any textual considerations.

12mm lens - Slats

 70mm lens

These shutters appealed initially as a wide angle composition, looking down the alley, a tumble down, derelict set of storage rooms at the back of the old government house in St John's, Antigua, soon turned into another opportunity of tones and textures on the slatted fronts. Again in the close-up, there's no context as I cropped the wall out to focus on the textures and the wider shot delivers depth, tone and texture, much as the others have done.

12 mm lens - Clock tower

85mm lens - Clock tower

This is the Samrat Yantra, an astrological monument in Jantar Mantar, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.

I had decided to take a number of shots of this, and similar, edifices in the area, focussing mainly on delivering scale. This is a tall construction, over 25 metres and all to tell the time! In the wider shot again there are a number of objects that indicate the scale of the building, the ground cover, the steps and the birds. I used the birds in the close up shot (by happenstance) and I was lucky to have one flying in the wide angle shot. The wider view gives a strong sense of size which the telephoto version cannot deliver. As one would expect the compression of perspective delivers the observation tower closer in the lower version even though the number of steps is about the same in both shots i.e. the contextual elements are consistent but the appearance of the object appears closer in the lower photograph due to reduced perspective.

I will undertake the exercise with the above in mind to collect images which either prove or disprove my understanding above

Initial exercises AoP

Getting on with the course - a few exercises to complete and a few things to occupy my thoughts on the day.
The AoP initial exercises leading to the first assignment, on paper it seems fairly straightforward, though in the end I don't get as much completed as I thought I would.

The first exercise of differing focal lengths I had this planned out, a viewing gallery and changing the focal point to differing arches. The aperture set at F1.4 and at 1/1000th sec

Focus at the far wall

Focus at the mid distance

Focus at the front wall (of which there is only the top left showing!)

Well it didn't really come off that well so I'll probably do it again. The focus point was changed from front the back and is obvious only in the third image  the other two images don't really provide the effect that the exercise was looking for i.e. image separation on the focal plane, so I'll change the subject and do it again.

Focus on the furthest prow

Focus on the middle prow

Focus on the nearest prow

The effect can be best noticed on the sign on the far bank.

Exercise 2

The next exercise seemed to go better - the object being to witness the effect of shutter speed on a image, the nicely positioned fountain delivered the goods. Keeping the focus point constant and varying the shutter speed to witness the effect. I suppose any moving subject would have provided the effect - the constant trade-off of shutter speed and aperture brings differing feelings to the image.

F16 @ 1/40 sec

F8 @ 1/160th sec

F1.4 @ 1/4000 sec

F16 @ 20 secs

The last image I added a 10 stop ND to emphasize the effect, water rolling over stones, or a weir work very well at exposure over 30th a second (depending on the speed of the water of course). What shutter speed one chooses is always a matter of what one wants to depict, and whether the item in focus is the object or the subject. For the pictures above only the second one down reveals what is at the end of the aisle behind the fountain, the rest depict the distance enigmatically either by lack of focus or blurring of the water, which could well be a device for image creation.

The picture below was taken with a zone plate  lens cap and depicts an ethereal view of the same subject. I will return to this in my next blog entry.

Exercise 5, filling the frame

Rousham House - about 3 miles from home has a particular resonance for me as Michael Kenna took pictures from near here and his "Rousham Folly, Oxfordshire, England, 1982" is plate 5 in his "Twenty Year Retrospective" Nazreali Press (and thoroughly recommended it is too). William Kent designed the garden for the house and there is a great deal of pomp about it. I chose the following subject for the exercise, it maybe that there might be too much space around it, but it provided scope to investigate the potential as described in the text. It may be because I'm a novice at posting images but on my screen they do not seem to coming out too well! I'll ask for help here when I've finished this posting.

"The Fallen Gladiator" is clearly in a state of terminal decline, his posture is fallen and on closer examination his limbs and skin are not in great shape!

I skirted around the subject for a while and came up with some different aspects.

If the artist's original intent was to depict imminent demise then I think these - albeit colour shots - offer more to that end. The statue is on a plinth, not shown in order to provide a clearer view, which when viewed as a whole limits the level of detail available to the viewer. Closer in and the viewer can appreciate not only see the resignation on the face of the gladiator but also the decay that has built up over the years; something the original artist could not have designed - though may have imagined. These closer shots do provide greater scope for creative angles, though with the statue on a plinth, maybe a ladder would have helped!

Contrast was important across all images and the most difficult was the wider view shot. Sat on a plinth with no real chance to bring any background in (unless I waited for a very cloudy day, preferably storm clouds!). I decided that generating an HDR image would be about the best I could do, to bring tone in to the background and enable some detail to be revealed in the statue. All the close up shots were much more straight forward in that the background was all at statue height and the evergreen foliage was contrasted very well.