More on photography and its games: two articles expose issues with our relationship to the world through photography. One is an architectural photographer's story on photographing a house in two seasons; the other is on the origin of the standard 50mm lens.
The idea of photographing a house over two seasons sounds interesting, but the matter of photographic tricks and illusions is again raised: see -
Photographing A House Over Two Seasons, Jiří Alexander Bednář Gives Us the Complete Picture
Here we see a set of images of the house in the landscape that are all much the same, with seasonal variations as the idea intended. A few specially selected detailed images of the house are included in this set. The text tells us that Alex does a beautiful job of showing off this lovely piece of architecture as it relates to its environment.
It is as though the photographs prove and confirm the fit, the subtle relationship of the building to its place in nature; that the images define the connection just because it has been photographed. The thought that one might be critical of the proposition remains completely alien.
Then, as soon as the camera goes indoors, we get the typical array of detailed pieces all artfully composed; images that have little relationship with any context or season other than that one might get a glimpse of a snowy exterior.
It is the article on the origin of the 50mm lens that tells us what is happening here: see -
https://casualphotophile.com/2023/04/22/standard-50mm-lens-changing/
But something interesting has happened in the last decade or two.
The most popular cameras in the world aren’t made by Canon or Nikon or Kodak, and they don’t come with a 50mm lens, as they had between (basically) the 1930s until the late 1990s. The most ubiquitous camera in the world today comes attached to a phone with an half-eaten apple on it, and the focal length of the “standard” lens on this most-used camera has an equivalent full frame focal length of approximately 26mm. In terms of “real photographers” that’s perilously close to ultra-wide territory. Not even wide-angle. Ultra-wide!
So, without even trying, iPhone and smartphones at large have essentially shifted the “standard” focal length away from 50mm into the realm of the ultra-wide.
I, for one, love it. I love wide angle lenses. I think they’re more dynamic, and it takes more work to get a good picture. With a wide-angle lens we can’t rely on the crutch of subject isolation and bokeh.# We have to concentrate on filling the frame with interesting things. We have to get close to our subject.
The result is that we have pictures which, in fact, don’t look like the everyday. The new normal lens makes images that contrarily don’t look like what we see with our human eyes. Which gets us closer to the whole point of photography, the very reason why we should even bother making pictures with a camera: that is, to show us something we can’t see every day.
#bokeh – out-of-focus blur
out-of-focus blur
Bokeh is defined as “the effect of a soft out-of-focus background that you get when shooting a subject, using a fast lens, at the widest aperture, such as f/2.8 or wider.” Simply put, bokeh is the pleasing or aesthetic quality of out-of-focus blur in a photograph.
https://www.nikonusa.com>bokeh-for-beginners
The critical and most revealing words are:
We have to concentrate on filling the frame with interesting things. We have to get close to our subject.
The result is that we have pictures which, in fact, don’t look like the everyday. The new normal lens makes images that contrarily don’t look like what we see with our human eyes. Which gets us closer to the whole point of photography, the very reason why we should even bother making pictures with a camera: that is, to show us something we can’t see every day.
This is the problem with architectural photography: we are constantly presented with impossible images, visions that we can’t see everyday; but these beautiful shots define our expectations and ambitions as we try to recreate these fantasies as real places - the whole point of photography, the very reason why we should even bother making pictures with a camera is that we can create images that don’t look like what we see with our human eyes: and yet these images become our inspiration.
The aim of photography has rarely been so concisely stated. It is this intent to fabricate unreal, 'unseen' images that lies at the heart of the problem of architectural photography. What we see in the seasonal images of the house are images that don’t look like what we see with our human eyes: and yet we are asked to use these to gauge the marvellous relationship between house and nature as if it might be an unquestionable reality worthy of our admiration.
With the world knowing and learning so much through photography, one can only express serious concern with these matters because this situation leaves all concepts known photographically, rooted in pure make-believe; with daydreaming speculation shaping a truly unreal world that is so familiar to us that we treat it as real. We need to get back to understanding our world and learning about it through our own experiences rather than drooling over impossible dreams and being distraught with outcomes that have, ironically, to rely on photography for their realisation; their revitalisation.
This understanding allows us to know exactly what the text is telling us: that the photographs play games with us by adding interest, and helping us understand the complete story as shaped by the wide-angled lens, as if our everyday eye does not see the complete story:
Throughout this project you’ll find that Alex is so good at showing scale and life, adding interest to his images, and helping us understand the complete story of the villa’s design and usage.
And inside:
Inside, Alex used almost every available inch of the house to fit the camera in the right place for the right compositions. Not using a Camranger or tethering at the time, he had to squeeze himself behind the camera to make these beautiful shots.
We must come to understand just what photography is doing to us. We live in the everyday and see and experience the world in this ordinary, ad hoc, nonchalant way; yet we photograph it to present illusions that become and shape our dreams of things ‘real’ and ‘complete,’ as if seeing things better trough a microscope; but we are only creating visions that will never be and have never been other than existing as an image cast by the popularised wide-angled lens of everyone’s camera that makes us concentrate on filling the frame with interesting things. The result is that we have pictures which, in fact, don’t look like the everyday.
The manipulation of the images is very self-conscious:
“Once I download the photos to Capture One, I back everything up twice via Time Machine. Backing up is very important to me personally, as an ex-programmer,” Alex explains. “Then I go through all the photos and since I shoot 3–5 exposures, I always choose the ideal one and mark it.
I then select from this selection until I have selected only the best photos with 5 stars. But I will send the client all the photos taken (except the technically bad ones) and in a separate folder, I will send them my recommended selection for editing. It is then up to the client to send it back to me for editing. In exceptional cases, I will add photos at my discretion and the client will receive them for free.”
The second most important part after the selection of photos is the most accurate editing in Capture One that would reflect my final idea. I won’t go into the whole process, but the first step is to unify all the photos from the entire shoot in terms of color, contrast, and exposure. Photoshop is there for everything else. I send the final photos to the client for approval – and it is very important for me that the client approves the photos. It may happen that I forget something, or overlook something, and this is how I ask for feedback. Then I deliver the final photos with Dropbox.
This is the blatant manipulation of our perceptions and understandings, all in the guise of an aesthetic preference for the manufacturing of certain, ‘ideal,’ ‘intriguing’ appearances to be used to promote an understanding of place. This is a dangerous paradise. The great worry is that we are being trained to see the world as photographs: as though framed with a wide-angled lens that has to be filled with interesting things. It is a situation that makes ordinary life 'boring,' establishing a circumstance that drives the desire to be different; cleverly bespoke.
I appreciate how, throughout this project, Alex uses different figures – and animals – to convey purpose and life. In the autumn images, we met the sheep on the property. In the wintertime interiors, we meet the herding dog. It fleshes out the story of this home and adds plenty of character.
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