The effects of Vantage Point choices.

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En provenance du cours de Michigan State University

Cameras, Exposure, and Photography

1597 notes

Michigan State University

Cameras, Exposure, and Photography

1597 notes

Cours 1 sur 5 dans Specialization Photography Basics and Beyond: From Smartphone to DSLR

Welcome to Course One of Photography Basics and Beyond: From Smartphone to DSLR! In these first 4 Modules you will gain the knowledge and the confidence that will help you make good choices as you consider qualities of the camera you own, and the qualities of the other types of digital cameras you might be considering. You will learn about the basic functions that most digital cameras have in common. You will also go beyond the "technical" matters and learn about how you can make exciting pictures by emphasizing the aspects of Frame and Vantage Point to interpret old subjects in new ways. Discovering accessories that photographers find useful, and the types of camera bags from mini to carry-on sized, is also in store for you. You will also make your first photographs and, if you are a subscriber to the specialization, upload pictures to the web gallery and start interacting with your fellow learners in our "Gallery." Let's get started with Module One!

À partir de la leçon

Picture Decisions: The Vantage Point and Frame

In Module Four we will turn to concepts related to the way photographs look, and how practical decisions that are unique to photography can have dramatic effect in terms of what their creative content might be. We examine the aspects of Vantage Point and Frame as essential choices that must be made by photographers no matter what their ultimate goal for image-making. We also introduce the Peer Review process for paid-Learners, and the ways we can learn about our own ideas through using "terms of art" in written reviews the photographs of fellow Learners.

What is "normal" Vantage Point?10:06

The effects of Vantage Point choices.16:32

Responding to Photographs8:05

Rencontrer les enseignants

Peter Glendinning
Professor
Art, Art History, & Design
Mark Valentine Sullivan
Associate Professor
Music / Innovation Hub

[MUSIC]

Well now we're back, still looking at vantage point and

now besides thinking about that concept we're going to actually take a look and

see what some of the effects of vantage point can be.

As we've already seen sometimes the most successful vantage point

is the one that's the most normal.

And when I made this photograph,

I simple raised my camera to my eye, and there is was.

From the most normal vantage point that a six foot tall Peter could take.

That's how I saw this scene, and that's actually how it was meant to be seen to

reveal these words that were painted so carefully on the walls of the hallway.

We need to do something very often

that other people might call the wrong vantage point.

Now, if we think of normal eye level as normal,

and maybe the least likely to result in new insights in an unusual image,

maybe a new idea or new content.

And in this photograph, this was actually the normal vantage point for

me sitting on this horse.

What did I do wrong in this picture?

Well my goal was to make a photograph.

I was working for a client and

the people ahead of me were part of the party that I was photographing.

And as I sat in the saddle, I kept seeing this horse's head in the picture, so I

decided to stand up in the spurs, because I can ride a horse fairly well, and

make my photograph in a standing position to avoid having the horse's head in there.

And I got a photograph that was more about the beach in the foreground and

people in the background.

But it really didn't communicate very well about the experience

of being on that horse ride.

And I ended up with this photograph,

which is actually my normal vantage point from me sitting on the horse.

But it's a mistake according to some people, because of the way that

the horses head is inserted unexpectedly from the bottom of the frame.

And that idea of something unexpectedly emerging or

bursting into the scene, sort of blocking an element of the foreground,

that's something that we can associate with vantage point in a creative way.

I'd like you to think about starting to look for these blockages as we call them.

Look for opportunities to have something unexpected

in the foreground that literally blocks you, either in whole or

in part, from seeing what is called the nominal subject of the photograph.

For example, in this case the nominal subject of the photograph was the people

and the sailboat, and the fact that they were on the beach.

But by getting into the water and having a little wave come up here,

and create a blockage between me and the boat and the people.

I was able to make a photograph, that, like the horse's head,

communicated something much more exiting,

much more about the experience, of being in this place.

And it allowed me to discover something new and

fresh about communicating the experience much more successful and

just lining people up and photographing them with the boat.

In this photograph, there's a really interesting display in an antique store.

And I found gee, this is really interesting kind of grill work that's

blocking me from seeing what most people might think are the subjects,

these antique objects within the window.

And by photographing through that thing I was able to break

up the scene into various patterns that both spoke about

the objects themselves but a new visual experience.

And making people aware of what they don't see when they're trying,

as in this case, to see through the window, to actually sit back and

say, there's a pretty interesting picture about pattern, about shape,

about line that's there if you'll only look at it.

That's a result of these blockages.

Some blockages are physical objects.

Others, as in this case, are reflections.

Divisadero is a very famous street in San Francisco, and

from this vantage point, the reflection in the window created a blockage.

It didn't allow me to see into the nail salon, but

what it did allow me to see is the street itself.

And to make a picture now instead of as I originally wanted to do a photograph

of this kind of glare-y sign, neon sign and

the people inside getting their nails done without my polarizing filter.

I got the reflections in the window, and I made a new picture that was really

more about the street environment and this famous street, the buildings,

the cars, the other things that are in the street itself,

coupled with this strange sign about Divisadero Street.

Sometimes we have to take a vantage point that's too far away.

I wanted to make a photograph about the surfers that you can barely see here.

They're at the top of the wave scattered around.

Look closely at your screen, and you'll see them.

But I didn't have a long enough telephoto lens to accomplish that.

Some of them were quite skilled, and I was really quite amazed at what they were

being able to do with these waves crashing near the rocks.

But I found that my distant vantage point, and

the creation of the images of the surfers, just little tiny specks,

at the top of the wave form, it actually created a picture that I

felt had more significance, in terms of speaking about the experience of surfing.

Then, if I'd been able to zoom in close and capture one of the surfers in action.

Similarly, I was too far away from the skydiver.

You might not even be able to see them right at first here.

But if you look closely, they're right near the center of the picture.

Again, I didn't have my telephoto lens.

So, I couldn't really zoom in and and make an isolated photograph of the skydiver.

But then I noticed, wow.

If I just leave that little tiny skydiver there, it provides a reference point for

the vastness of the sky.

And my gosh, the pattern of the contrails of the airplane, and

the pattern of these power lines, that might initially have been an annoyance to

me, but I realized quickly, were a counter point of abstract line and pattern.

All of the sudden, I had a photograph with an entirely new content.

Not something just documenting the skydiver,

but really making a picture about visual expression.

If you've ever seen a photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco,

well you'll know that its golden, orange, rusty, red color is really

quite significant, and quite dramatic, and you don't see too much of it here.

Why is that? Well, I was blocked in essence,

by that fog but I was also too far away from the arches of

the bridge to be able to get through that fog, and to see the arches,

and to get that significant part of the bridge that everybody would recognize.

So what did I do?

Well, I didn't just put my camera down.

I realized that these foreground elements and

the background elements would have to reverse their roles.

The background elements weren't there, the arch wasn't there.

So what could I do with that foreground element?

Well, I could make it prominent and I could say you know,

my vantage point from what I thought I was interested in is too far, but

let me deal with what's close enough, what I can enclose in my frame.

When we take a vantage point that's, quote, too close, the ordinary content

of that subject, whatever was in front of the camera, can literally disappear.

It can be so transformed

by that close vantage point that it becomes something entirely different.

Are we looking from an airplane down at a strange jungle?

Are we looking through a microscope at some strange amoeba of some sort?

Or are we actually looking at a lily pad that's deteriorating,

floating in kind of a mucky lake?

Yeah.

Sometimes you'll remember Josie's nose and you'll remember my face.

Sometimes being too close to something turns it

into an element a subject that causes us great discomfort.

These pigeons were in the plaza San Marco in Venice.

Just minding their own business, waiting for people to throw bread and

when I got really down close with my really wide angle lens

all of a sudden they became something gigantic, looming up above me

from this vantage point that was too close and for most people too low.

In the picture I showed you a few frames ago of the surfers,

where I was too far away from them, I was not only too far, but

I was at a much higher than normal vantage point.

While I wasn't hundreds of meters away from these festively decorated tables,

I was certainly seeing them from a vantage point, and seeing a color pattern and

a pattern of the tables themselves, a whole new sense of what this place was,

very different from the people who simply walked into the plaza and

sat down to eat their meal.

So taking opportunities to get higher than normal, whether it's something as simple

as a person carrying a load of laundry across a plaza at a hotel in Mexico,

or a security guard, walking through the beach area.

kind of patrolling that, pool side area at the resort.

Both of these people are just going about their normal business.

Everyday.

Guy carrying the laundry from one side to the other, pool side guard,

walking around, checking things out, making sure everybody's fine and dandy.

And looking at them from the same level, that most people would have, and

just seeing them at eye level, well okay,

we could make a picture about them doing their job.

But, seeing them from above, they're all of a sudden transformed.

There's a little bit of mystery, maybe a lot of mystery.

What's in that bag?

What is this guy looking for?

All sorts of questions that might arise when we see something from a vantage point

that's not normal, and in this case higher than normal.

Sometimes that word higher is relative, and certainly I was

a lot higher than normal, three or four stories actually above the people that

were at the poolside and the guy carrying a bag of clothes, laundry, whatever.

But here, I'm only maybe a few feet higher than the Mexican sombreros,

which were on display in the tourist shop down there in Cancun, Mexico.

All right, here is a very normal vantage point snapshot.

It's an interesting object.

The guitar symbol for the Hard Rock Cafe down there in Cancun, Mexico.

And it makes a fairly good record of what the street looked like but

other than that it doesn't make much of a statement.

So, how do we approach something like this?

Well, change the vantage point, and in this case, getting a lot lower and

a lot closer, transforms this object into something that is,

I think, a lot more exciting, a lot more interesting,

maybe a lot more energized, which is what the Hard Rock Cafe is about after all.

So, we have to go for

a picture that's going to convey the excitement of something.

In terms of this Hard Rock Cafe, this is the way to do it.

Sometimes, that six foot tall vantage point

is something that I gotta adjust down to maybe two inches.

In other words, really get down on the ground, lay down there, and look up.

And by crouching down,

by kneeling, depends on the extreme that you want to go to.

You could lay on the ground, just like I can.

You can gain a vantage point that will really create new connections and

new insights and new creative expressions, such as looking up at this guy and

saying, my gosh look at the reflections of the trees and such in his glasses and

look at how strange he looks.

Interesting, exciting, friendly, but still kind of a little bit skewed.

This is especially so when you're getting to the point of abstraction.

In this view of a sail on a sailboat we're pushing the edge between document and

abstraction, to the point where you know we can still tell it's a sail,

but boy the picture, that really is about something else entirely.

It's about changing that three dimensional space

into something that's almost like a collage, a cut out of 2D pieces,

flattening things and making an expression about shape and

pattern and line and form and all of those abstract elements.

Just as the sky became a patterned element in that photograph of a sail,

so too, we can look at different areas of our scene and

pick a vantage point that will create a pattern for them to follow.

And by that I'm talking about here a window in a window,

a frame within a frame, seeing through something.

And by picking this vantage point I've created a pattern of

elements on the left and the right, a break in the wall

that allows me to see through to the cemetery beyond, to the sky above,

the sea beyond that, in this place near San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Taking a vantage point where you invite the viewer to see through something,

this can be a very exciting way to create a map.

To create a path for the viewer to follow and it can create a surprise also.

In the case of this picture, you might, at first, look at it and

see a pattern of columns, pattern of stones,

a pattern of the foreground and the background architectural elements.

But once you notice that person in the near right side, just to the right

of center, wearing a white t-shirt, once you see that person the entire content of

the space changes because you've allowed that viewer to be invited to see through.

There's a classical technique in architectural photography in which

photographing a building that's in the distance is accomplished by

using foliage that's in the foreground to frame that building in.

And it would really be remiss

of me not to show you an example of that, seeing through technique.

As cliched as it might be,

it can come to your good advantage if you do something a little bit more with it.

And I think I did, actually, in this photograph of a castle in Edinburgh.

That's photographed over and over and over again.

I found a vantage point where I could also include a cemetery in the foreground and

the traditional branches coming in and framing the building as well.

So with vantage point you want to see, you want to see again, and

you want to see some more.

All of these seeing experiences from as many different vantage points as you can,

to try to corral yourself into a place where you're seeing that subject from

a vantage point that's going to really allow you to reveal something new and

special and significant from your perspective as a creative person.

Being aware of this vantage point, what it allows you to see,

also what it allows you not to see, this is going to be a key element in

enhancing the possibilities for you in making creative pictures.

[MUSIC]

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