Field of View: Berenice Abbot

I'd heard the name slung around the classrooms by tutors and fellow students alike since the course began. Before this, I'd read her name in a small photography book I have, Masters of Photography: Classic Photographic Artists of our Time (given to me for my birthday last year; one of her images features on the front cover). But something inside of me prevented me from fully looking at her work... Until now.

Born in Springfield Ohio in 1898, Abbot seems a perfect one to use to discuss filed of view. After the death of her key inspiration, Eugene Atget, in 1927, who she produced famous portraits for, she became the main advocate of his work, almost to the extent of suffocating the publicity of her own. However, according to Reuel Golden, "the clarity of vision that she saw in Atget's photography, its direct and effective grasp of the texture of reality informed her own work" (1).

Abbot set about photographing New York City vigorously in 1935, after being hired by the Federal Art Project, producing 305 photographs (exhibited at The Museum of the City of New York), that later became her her most famous book, Changing New York, which published in 1939. It will be this book I will be extracting examples from to show the wide range and field of view employed in this mammoth of works.

This medium focal length shot (for wont of a better description) was shown to us by one of our tutors. Shot from below, Abbot manages to capture both the silhouetted girder in the foreground and the misty ambient light that fogs the rest of the scene. Nice image.

Fifth Avenue Houses.
I know from the kinds of pictures I take of buildings, that not only is field of view important, but also its close bosom buddy, composition. More often than not, architectural photography is most striking when the whole building dominates the scene. An obvious point maybe, but then the vantage point is also of relevance. Naturally shots are taken from the side, as in this case, capturing the light on the facade and shadow on the side. Below is one of mine I quite like:

Mohawk in Blue.
f11, 1/320, ISO100, 24mm.
A similar vantage point to Abbot's, and one whose aspect shows both the front and one side of the building.

I am going to very lazily state that this image is influenced by Atget. I myself love 'lots of different types of the same things in order' in an image. To quote Abbot: "the shrewd business sense which plastered them solid over the entire window area produced, as it were by chance, an esthetic by-product: the whole has homogeneity and variety of texture, simultaneously, which give the picture interest" (Berenice Abbott, New Guide to Better Photography, 1953) (2).

Chelsea Hotel, 222 West 23rd Street, 1936.

I was about to say: "here Abbot has dramatically reduced her field of view". But this would be to confuse field of view with an image's overall composition. Abbot has merely chose to 'home in' on one part of the building, yet the field of view remains quite wide. 

1)  Golden, R (2008), Masters of Photography: Classic Photographic Artists of our Time, London: Carlton.

2)  http://www.artsmia.org/get-the-picture/print/abbott.shtml#

Field of View: My Examples

What better pictures to use as examples than the last series that I shot (for my Exterior Location Brief, set over three different car boot sales/outdoor markets)? In these- and other examples- I aim to discuss field of view (via the selected focal length) is one of the central creative decisions when creating my images.

f5.6, 1/50, ISO800, 29mm.
Ignore the fact she isn't looking at me. This would be a decent shot of  couple that share time together on a Sunday morning selling their home made wares on the car boot. It shows us the activity they are taking part in, but with little wider context.

f5.6, 1/50, ISO400, 18mm.
The wide angle of view places the couple within a much wider context. Its less intimate than the last, and the subjects themselves would be less likely to have this on their mantlepiece. It was exactly that wider context I was after in this shoot, though, so I much prefer this. This would never stop me trying different focal lengths, mind.

f5.6, 1/125th, ISO200, 29mm.
With enough cropping this is the ideal field of view. It is cluttered, but this is part of the feel I was going for, because of how it fits with the others in the series. 

f5.6, 1/125th, ISO200, 18mm.
This is obviously the wider of the three. If the above image encourages the viewer to search for the subject, which adds to the appeal of the image, then this- for me- takes it too far: its downright cluttered. Sometimes, some subjects do not benefit from a larger field of view.

f5.6, 1/125th, ISO200, 40mm.
Again, by zooming I have excluded a lot of the context/setting (i.e. extraneous boots and parts of stalls). Maybe it would work more if she wasn't smiling, but this is another post entirely. It looks to basic.

Below are more examples of how different fields of view, this time from a music gig I shot over the summer. To make things easier I've used the same band.

f6.3, 1/100th, ISO200, 18mm.
This is quite typical of gig photography: to get the whole band in I needed to choose a wide field of view.

f6.3, 1/100th, ISO200, 55mm.
For all five of the bands I shot that day, I took the same types shots: wide shots of all of band members, portrait-type shots like this (where two members are in the field of view, allowing us to see their actual personalities) and close-ups of the lead singer for extra rock n roll intensity.

f5.6, 1/125, ISO200, 90mm.
This is an example of the close-ups. It worked particularly well with this lead singer because of the sheer energy and wackiness she brought to the performance.

In the next few posts I will speak about field of view in terms of the work of other known photographers.

Field of View (& Focal Length)

The field of view of an image is determined by the selected focal length of the lens. As discussed in my post on Aperture, the focal length is also detailed on the lens itself. Prime lenses have a fixed focal length, thus a fixed field of view. Zoom lenses- on the other hand- show the two focal lengths from the widest to the narrowest (often called the 'zoom' end). Perhaps the most common lens to discuss here is what is called our 'kit' lens, meaning the one we get as part of the kit when we first purchase our dSLRs. These days, the most common focal range of this lens is 18-55, which makes a lot of sense when we consider the types of shots the more amateur photographer will be taking as a starting point (landscapes at 18mm and portraits towards the 55mm end). I believe a couple of decades ago, most film SLRs came with a 50mm prime as standard. These have become popular once more over the past few years.

Crop Sensors:

One thing we must remember when thinking in terms of focal length is that the numbers we used are generally based on the old 35mm film negative. The dSLRs most of us buy these days have sensors roughly one and a half (Canon's are 1.6) smaller than 35mm, meaning the focal length has to be multiplied by this difference to arrive at what is known as the effective focal length. These crop sensors are called APS-C (Advanced Photo System- Type C) sensors.

What do the numbers mean?

This baffled me for years. Why does the smaller number represent a wider view through the lens? Well, this number refers to the distance between the camera sensor and the point within the lens where all the rays of light intersect at the point of focus. E.g. 18mm means the point where the rays cross are 18mm from the sensor. So the more the lens is 'zoomed' the further away this point is from the sensor. Below is a simple diagram of how this works:

The site I found this picture on offered a very comprehensive explanation of 'focal length': it imagines the eye (image sensor) looking through a magnifying glass (lens): "you have to hold it a certain distance from your eye for it to be in focus. This is because the magnifying glass has a set focal length. It must be a certain distance from your eye to focus in on your subject. This distance is referred to as the focal length". So magnifying glasses are- in effect- Prime Lenses, for there is a set distance at which the 'subject' can be seen (1)

How does this translate into Field of View?

As with everything in photography, there is a point where the scientific/technical must be translated into the aesthetic, for this is only a means to an end (the end being the taking of photographs pleasing to the eye). We use the focal length of our lenses to determine a field of view to create based upon what we aim to show in the image, and the elements we want to show to represent our interpretation of the real world (the field of view of the human eye is meant to be 50mm). For example, for landscapes we tend to use a very wide plain of view in order to include as much as the scene as possible, whereas for images of people and still life shots we narrow this view to focus/highlight on our chosen subject. However, there is nothing to say a portrait cannot be taken with a wider focal length (I'm thinking here of brides stood in fields).

Needless to say, the more accomplished we become as photographers the more it becomes second nature to select the particular view we want to portray in any given situation. Field of view, perspective and composition are all linked in this respect, in that we are constantly evaluating these three things when shooting a subject:

*  How wide do I want the scene? (FoV).
*  From what angle do I want the subject to be viewed (P).
*  Where in the frame will I position the subject? (C).

In the next post I will show some of my own examples of how I have used different fields of view for creative effect.



1)  http://moodleshare.org/mod/page/view.php?id=630

"Are You from the Social?": Exterior Location

So I finally managed to prize myself out of bed last Sunday morning, at the rather disgusting time of 4am, and carry my weary frame down to not one, not two, but three car boot sales. To say the light was bad at the first two would be an understatement, for there wasn't any. I used my flash here, but apart from the fact this was going against the brief, the results were in the main terrible, full of harsh shadows and overly-lit faces (as one may imagine). Indeed, it was only towards the end of the second venue that the light became workable. It was upon leaving here that I shot what I now feel is the flagship image of the whole series, and what is probably the best portrait I have ever taken, and the one I felt all others would work around. This and the rest of them can be seen below. I will then show some that I felt did not work and say why I thought this was.


f8, 1/40, ISO200, 34mm.
I think some people are just so laid-back that they're almost asking t be photographed. This character was one of them. I shot three pictures of him. The other two were of him smoking; equally as good, but there was just something about the way he looked at me for this first shot. Also of interest is the fact we are given a look in his van, and how this adds context. The reason I used f8 was because I was in rush and didn't have time to adjust settings. This image is akin to the example I used in my research post from Nick Dawe in my profile (below):



OK, there is a white van and bits of tat, but the pose is completely different. This chap has a very regal pose, whereas mine looks too cool for school. Here we cannot see what is inside his vam, whereas many have said it is the wicker basket in 'my' van that adds context. I tend to agree.

Its good- the smoking makes it very good- but because he had chance to relax and pose for it, it took something way from what could be called 'the decisive moment' in my first shot.

f4, 1/40th, ISO800, 50mm.
This struck me as a novel composition, not to mention slightly humorous because of the randomness sausages hanging down. I just liked it because there's a lot in it. Some would say it is a bit cramped, but I kind of like that in these types of shots: how the subject doesn't fully dominate the frame to the extent of not being the subject at all. Below is a better example of this.

Completely cluttered this one. The viewer almost has to look for the subject in amongst it all. This was in my short list, but one of the others just about pipped it at the post.
During a trip to the Xmas Markets with the class, I managed to 'nail' this sentiment (below):

I really like this. You have the myriad different coloured bags leading you to the subject, who takes up a very small part of the subject.

A similar one (taken before), but not as strong as the above image, I feel. Still, she had such a cue face, which seemed to compliment what she was selling (whatever that was).

Obvious what I was going for here. I seen him from afar, then asked him to assume his previous pose. A friend of mine said it looks 'too posed'. What does he know?

f5.6, 1/80th, ISO800, 26mm.
Again, clutter = environment. Many versions of the same thing reminds me of the typology stuff we were looking at a few weeks ago (Gursky et al), and the fluorescent light really swung it for me. It is a posed shot masquerading as a candid one. Way I see it, by asking them first you risk them saying no and ruin your chances of getting anything. But there's the obvious chance the moment will be lost forever, so I feel it best to snap away, THEN ask them to recreate the 'missed' moment (meanwhile Bresson spins in his grave). Click here for a link to a similar portrait by the photographer Manny Valejo.

f5.6, 1/320, ISO200, 40mm.
By the time I'd reached Smithfield market at around 9am, the light was outstanding. So crisp! What struck me here was the shadow of the man adjusting his gazebo, and the fact I managed to capture the activity without him realising I was there.

f5.6, 1/50th, ISO800, 52mm.
This chap was perhaps the most compliant of all my subjects. I did shoot him directly in front of his van first of all for another cluttered one (below), but eventually decided it wasn't as strong. There was also a difficulty in printing this image, largely due to the lack of detail in where hi coat meets the van. I've recently been shown the 'Shadows and Highlights' adjustment layer in Photoshop, setting me in good stead in the future.

I mean for one he had his eyes closed, but I still think its a strong composition. Below is one with his eyes open, but I tried it from the opposite side, and it didn't work. Looking at it now, I'm having second thoughts, but no: his eyes are closed.

See what I mean? Something awkward about van & man leaning to the left.

f5.6, 1/320, ISO200, 40mm.
Went for the comedy angle here. I call this one Rooster because of the way his Vileda mops appear to be sticking out from his head. Again, I asked him to assume his previous position to take this picture, and explained the 'cockrel' point. He looked at me like I'd just stepped off a spaceship. Again, this seems to reflect the humour of Matt Stuart and Martin Parr, whilst still retaining the human touch of Nick Dawe.

f5, 1/50th, ISO200, 35mm.
Another comedic one. Goes well with the image above I feel. She looked glum when I first came across her, but changed her facial expression when I explained what I was doing. Its all about the smiley face for me. Would it have worked better had she kept her initial expression as a contrast to the smiley face? Probably, but the way she was sat and the composition just about clinched it.

f5, 1/40, ISO800, 50mm.
I like this. Again, he was smoking and looking right at me from the off, but It just didn't look right. Only issue I have with this is the focus point. Can't help thinking it'd look better focussing on the man and not the bears. Conversely, there's something to be said for highlighting the fact that a chiselled old-timer is selling teddy bears. Introduces the element of masculinity, or the lengths people go to make a living. At the first site I went to, a guy didn't want his picture taken because he didn't want his son to see what he had to do to make a living. Throughout the whole morning, at least 10 different people asked me: "are you from the social" or "don't take a picture of me, I'm on the sick"; hence the title of the series. 

f3.5, 1/160, ISO400, 18mm.
Was after something that typified the British experience of 'carbooting'. I found table full of homemade mince pies on a white lace tablecloth. I used the kit lens for these, so could only go as wide as f3.5. Soon I will have my 50mm, and there'll be no stopping me in terms of these types of projects. Below is similar shot that didn't quite work as well.

Very Martin Parr this I feel, but still don't think it was strong enough to make the final 'cut'. Still, a tartan biscuit tin next to a Bob the Builder toy... Magic.

f5.6, 1/60, ISO200, 18mm.
Thought it'd be nice to go for the wider shot here. Took one without the person in middle, but decided- by way of the fact tit says 'keep out' on the door he is evidently going 'in'- that this would work better. I like the repetition of carpets here. Below is another favourite, which I was all for putting in, but it just didn't go with the rest of them. Shame.

Really loved the uniformity here. Again, it reminded me of the typology stuff. Be good to revisit and do a study of the types of things that get stored in vans. I really love this shot.

Below are some of the images I liked, but decided against. Of course, in order to do this I had to let go of the emotional attachment I had to various sub-themes and different moods that I felt had developed whilst sifting through the many images I shot.

I loved the light in this. Not only do I like Environmental portraits, but I like ones where parts of the scene are quite evidently underexposed save for the key areas (e.g. face). Of course, I did take some of the explicit blackness out of this in Camera RAW.

Was going to stick this in instead of the sausage stall one, but  didn't want to risk overdoing it with the 'shallow depth of field with an object thing'. Plus I felt it didn't really fit in the end.

Really like this, but it was taken with flash (just briefly removed the light from it in Curves), which is- I believe- against the Exterior Location Brief rules. It was posed, of course. His wife in the background wouldn't allow her face to be in the photo. Its a strong picture, and I still feel it would fit well with the rest.

Another strong composition and facial expression here. Also nice colours (blues) and iconography (they look like stolen goods, sorry), which is what I was after from the off. Still, another flash one. If we were allowed flash, the mood would take a completely different turn. Oh well!

There's nothing wrong with this images, really- closest guy looking at me, furthest looking away- but it just lacked the dynamism and sense of theme/environment of the others. For this reason it was impossible to include it.

Like the image above, there is nothing terribly wrong with this picture... If I was giving  it to a client (the two subjects are smiling etc etc.) But its absolutely what I didn't want from the shoot. I wanted environment. I wanted the seller's faces to tell a story, (e.g. "why the hell am I getting up at this time?), and wanted a sense of the actual ritual of the car boot sale (as I mentioned in my proposal).

I had to shoot this for the sheer brazenness of the seller in including it within his stock. It also introduces a slightly seedy undertone to the stall. It also reminds me of a more refined shot by the photographer, James Medcraft, who has also covered car boot sales (below):

Its similar the way it focusses on the types of stuff that typify British life (nothing more British than people's love of Charles and Di). And let's not forget The Daily Telegraph, which is very possibly worse than Men Only Magazine.

The Printing and Selection Process:

It didn't take me long to choose my final ten, due to my enthusiasm at having produced what I thought were high quality images (its rare for me to be happy with something after the first attempt). 

The difficulty, however, came in sending them to print. This was partly due to my arrogance of not listening properly to the explanation on colour profiles given by my tutors. I knew I had to all images to DS Colour Lab's own colour profile (I had been doing it for a good year before starting the course; hence my arrogance), but I didn't know there were two separate profiles for glossy and lustre papers (I always go for lustre, for I feel glossy causes harsh reflections when exhibited). 

My images came back really dark. I don't know, I think there's something about my judgement of my own work that has me erring towards the dark side and not the light (no change there then). I must have a natural fear of blown highlights and empty space in an image, thus subconsciously allow dark images to slip through the net into print.

I was livid when I seen them: all that hard work (not to mention money spent on the things), and upon first sight you can tell they're not good enough to submit. So I opened the PSDs for the images again, this time opening a new curves layer and setting the white point of each image separately, then reducing the opacity of the layer to avoid any overkill in brightness. This was quite simple with the portrait of the man in the back of his van (my fave), but more difficult where lights tended to dominate the frame (the one with the homemeade mince pies and coke cans). An alternative was to increase brightness by 30 in a Brightness and Contrast layer (not as reliable). 

A Trip to London: 12th-14th November 2012

This was three days packed with exhibitions, plus a chance to put our own creativity into action in the country's capital. For this reason, I will use this blog post to put the two together, using it as a kind of photo-journal of the time spent there.

Soon after arriving, we visited the Barbican Centre for a look at their Everything Moving: Photography from 60s & 70s exhibition, which was a mixture of British, Indian, Chinese an other nation's photography from the period.

f11, 1/40th, ISO800, 18mm.

f11, 1/40th, ISO800, 18mm.
Sky (or what there was of it) completely blown, but nice picture of a complicated structure. Specifically like the high contrast look of wet concrete.

What I found most enjoyable about this exhibition were the portraits and scenes of  Raghubir Singh. I like the way he shoots his subjects in wide open spaces, as if to affirm the space as equally as important as the person themselves. I am mostly to environmental portraits now, and these seemed to sum this up perfectly. 

Pilgrim and Ambassador car, Kumbh Mela, Prayag, Uttar Pradesh, 1977.
There was a better one I had in mind as an example of this, but this is equally as good.

On the second day in London, we went to The Photographer's Gallery to see Tom Wood's Men & Woman series of portraits. I don't really go in for the whole sexual politics thing, but there were also some good family portraits (a theme continued by Thomas Struth in the National Gallery), and again environmental portraits that more than whetted my appetite in terms of the pictures I want to take (see: Exterior Location shoot).

This is spot-on the type of stuff I like: a man at work, in hi environment, and yet not actually doing anything but standing (not posing, but standing and looking) for the camera. And look at the way the overalls he wears is nearly exactly the same colour as the rust of the container behind him. Of course it was a conscious choice.

This is one of Woods' family portraits shot in Merseyside in the 80s. I really like it, but it is not the one I hoped to show. Unfortunately I cannot find this one.

After this we went to the National Gallery to view an exhibition called Seduced by Art: Photography Past & Present. On the way there I took the following picture. 

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f5.6, 1/60, ISO200,  82mm.
I spotted these two fellas texting at the same time, which reminded me of the kind of work Matt Stuart produces. Unfortunately the one in the background finished his text before I could take the shot. D'Oh!

The exhibition was based around how historical painting has been influencing photographers since the medium's inception right through to the modern day. For instance, in the first gallery we were shown Eugeune Delacroix's The Death of Sardanapalus, and how photographers since then have interpreted this into their work, in terms of content, but more perhaps composition.

Eugeune Delacroix's The Death of Sardanapalus.

The Destoyed Room, 1978, by Jeff Wall.
You can see the similarity of the chaos of the composition here. This was one of two postcards I purchased from the exhibition.

In one of the other rooms, the focus seemed to be on Still Life (as the letraset point out, still the most common form of art). In one corner was a 3 minute video installation of Sam Taylor-Wood's, featuring the rotting of fruit. Obviously, this was her take on the kinds of fruit still lifes that have been around for centuries.

Ori Gersht, Blow-Up: Untitled 5, 2007.
Gersht played liquid nitrogen in and around the flowers, then exploded them. Very original. This was the other postcard I bought.

After leaving the National Gallery & National Portrait Gallery, we pretty much had the day to ourselves. This gave me ample time to really explore the delights London had to offer, but because I am largely into street and candid now, this is largely what I produced.

f5.6, 1/60th, ISO400, 200mm.

f5.6, 1/50th, ISO 200, 200mm.

f5.6, 1/50th, ISO200, 200mm

f4.5, 1/100th, ISO100,  50mm

f5, 1/50th, ISO400, 125mm

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f4, 1/50th, ISO800,  24mm

Tourist Information Centre (near St. Paul's)
f8, 1/50th, ISO400, 18mm.
I've added this because it reminds me of the below image by Ed Ruscha:

From his book, 26 Gasoline Stations, 1963.

It was wet & a little miserable, but I think this represents how people generally carry on with their business in public spaces.