Field of View: Bill Brandt

After basing my last research post on Joel Meyerorowitz, I thought the obvious choice for the next was his key inspiration, Robert Frank. But- since I've never been one for making things easy for myself- I considered    other influential photographers who made their mark shooting fine art Black and White photographs. I present to you, Mr. Bill Brandt.

Born in 1904, Brandt is famous for documenting British Working life using a trademark stark high contrast style. His work was often dark, epitomising Blake's 'dark satanic mills', a tag pinned to anything set against an industrial backdrop, "often achieved in the darkroom, by cropping under the enlarger and by emphasising tonal contrasts in printing" (1). Because of his use of cropping, Brandt is a good one to discuss in terms of field of view. The Victoria and Albert Museum (quoted above) offers a comparison of the full frame and cropped images of Hadrian's Wall taken in 1943:

Original full frame version

Cropped with heavy contrast added to accentuate one of the key contours of the rock face.

I prefer the original here, for I feel the latter compromises the level of detail and subtle tones of what is a pretty good landscape to start with (why fool around for the sake of the abstract?). That being said, this is a different story when considering Brandt's trademark urban scenes.

Newcastle, 1937.
Much of his work defies any kind of photographic technique, evoking age-old questions over what can be considered beautiful. This is hardly a photograph at all; more the harsh memory of light, or else a mere whisper from the darkness. Notice how the rich contrast highlights what is important in the scene: the train, the smog, the factories faded into the background. The is no foreground, but complete blackness.

Unknown Location, 1940s.
Now and again, in art, I think its important to try to appreciate the minimal. Nothing's happening here, but space itself; the dark empty space of the sky and the way the river intersects the mass of land in the foreground from right to left. It reminds me of some of Lowry's lake paintings, or others whose key motif is one of loneliness.

Fylde Farm, LS Lowry, 1953

Brandt also created abstract distortions of the human body, as he was equally conversant in making poetic images as he was the very real surroundings of working class Britain. 

Ear on the Beach, 1957.
Landscape or Portrait? Would it be fair to say what Brandt is doing here is merging the two? From my research it looks like he produced a series of images of parts of the human body shot amongst traditional landscapes, some more erotic than just an ear. In this we are able to appreciate the landscape in the background despite being drawn to the ear that subverts the image, prompting us to ask important question: "what does the sea sound like?" Maybe.

Camden Hill, 1949.
Here Brandt uses a slightly wider field f view to draw us into his sense of narrative, made more prominent by the silhouette of the chair in the foreground. However, the chair doesn't prove a distraction, for we know that- not only is there a figure in the background, but also that she is naked and looking forlorn. Why?

1)  http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/b/working-methods-bill-brandt/

Field of View: Joel Meyerorowitz

Joel Meyerorowitz is mainly a street photographer usually placed within the same bracket as the likes of Garry Winnogrand, Lee Friedlander and Tony Ray-Jones- big names associated with New York street photography from the 60s onwards- not to mention a  pioneer of colour fine art photography of the same ilk as William Eggleston. A key work of his, Cape Light (1979), is an influential work in the field of colour photography, shot using 8x10 Large Format film. He was also the only photographer responsible for putting together an archive of shots of the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, appropriately called Aftermath. I hope to take a cross-section of Meyerorowitz's work and discuss it here in terms of field of view.

New York City, 1975.

This is one of my favourite of his. Meyerorowitz has an interesting- almost mystical- view on his work and use of the frame, believing it to be more about ideas than pictures: "do the pictures sustain your ideas, or are they just good pictures?" (http://vimeo.com/38937942).

There's so much going on in the frame here. It stands to reason why Meyerowitz made a complete transfer to colour in the 60s. Everything is happening. Its the image I think about when reading the quote I used for the above caption. The 'happening' and the 'situation' were prominent in the 1960s, and I don't think I make too tenuous a point in linking these pictures to this.  In another interview he mentions 'multiple... fragmentary, simultaneous events" (http://timconnor.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/everything-is-important-joel.html), all happening within the frame together. True enough.

Fallen Man, Paris, 1967.
This image is perhaps more akin to this idea of the 'happening' of the 1960s. Its unlikely it is staged. Indeed, whilst honing his craft New York, Meyerorowitz states: " My timing was good, I was getting better at it, and I could see these things coming. It became too easy" (http://www.foto8.com/new/online/reviews/181-joel-meyerowitz-early-work).

One from the influential Cape Light series.
Meyerorowitz has a rich understanding of light and situation, an understanding which leads him to interpret atmospheric landscapes such as this in exactly the same terms as his earlier street photography:  "where life is tumbling into the frame and he must make crucial decisions. He may centre an event or he may move it to the side so that it becomes one of many things happening within the frame" (http://www.joelmeyerowitz.com/photography/article_02.html).

Meyerorowitz spent 9 months photographing the site of the terrorist attack in New York, producing a scale of work that is both mesmerising and inspiring. This one leapt out at me, again because of the level of apocalyptic detail and craftsmanship in the image. The shells of buildings remind mimic cardboard cut-outs; the dust, smoke and water adding to the spectacle.

What he can't do with light isn't worth knowing, really. He must have studied the surrounding area for hours before pulling a shot like this out of the bag. Of course, shooting as he did with Large Format, it only serves to widen the sheer depth of the image; rich and busy in the foreground, whilst soft and hazy (much like Cape Cod) in the background.

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