From: Christina Z. Anderson (zphoto@montana.net)
Date: 12/18/02-10:56:07 AM Z
Jack,
(Can you tell I am avoiding grading?)I have totally related to this
thread all along. In fact, there is a student doing senior thesis now that
is standing in the same place taking, with a telephoto lens, the same shot
of the same landscape. He takes each shot focusing on each element in the
landscape so as to get a series of pictures of the landscape that are all
sharp from foreground to mountain. Then he is layering these all in one
image, strongly vertical, in Photoshop, to get a unified landscape with
everything sharp. He is reducing atmospheric perspective in the distance by
filtering out blue, brightening colors. He is trying to end up with the
flattened perspective of a Japanese or Chinese image/scroll/woodblock. It
is subtle. I see all kinds of other ideas to try in this project, one being
to use different focal lengths at the same spot and combining those--harder
to do. But a cow could be slightly humongous in the foreground, for
example.
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack Fulton" <jefulton1@attbi.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 9:38 AM
Subject: Just how does one see DIFFERENT
> I've been thinking about this scale thing for a while . . actually been
@
> work finishing school and computer lab stuff . . and got into checking
> astronomy sites. You may all know there are many double stars in the sky
but
> many of them are not twins but one star is waaaay behind (or further in
> space) than the other.
> This gives rise to the aspect of perception I alluded to in sating that
> most folks don't use the tele (long) lens in landscape or other work
because
> the "reality" is not real enough, hence me saying it was
'anti-photographic'
> thereby making it not useable, so to speak for photographers.
> What happens in very long lenses (such as those on TV to make the center
> fielder bigger than the pitcher) is actually distortion. It is the
physical
> mechanics and you might say aberration of the lens design. It seems to be
> one of the limiting aspects of lens design and would ultimately require
such
> a humongous affair to correct the "error" it would be an unwieldy tool.
> However, if a more intellectual photographer understood this 'infirmity'
> and did get into Chinese (for instance) where a vertical narrative of a
sort
> of truncated time is what landscape is thought to be, one could create
some
> mighty interesting photographic images. To give you an idea, look @ Alvin
> Langdon Coburn's work when he was heavily influenced by Hiroshige and
> Hokusai the highly respected Japanese woodblock printers. An unusual
> perspective of peering through foreground obstruction gave on a sense of
> place more than a looking out.
> Another person(s) influenced by a different visual perspective is/are
> Lazlo Moholy-Nagy and Berenice Abbot. The skyscraper (named after the
> Clipper ships that sailed from New York to San Francisco) was the first
time
> photographers outside of Nadar's Le Geant, his famed balloon, had achieved
> such a high visual perspective. When you observe their work you'll notice
> that influence in the same way such unusual perspective seeing aided
Coburn.
> I hope this clarifies my original meaning.
> Jack
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