Determining perspective..

“It is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph. -Robert Frank

“My photographs are not planned or composed in advance, and I do not anticipate that the onlooker will share my viewpoint. ” -Robert Frank

“Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk.” -Edward Weston

“I hate the idea of composition. I don’t know what good composition is. I mean I guess I must know something about it from doing it a lot and feeling my way into it and into what I like. Sometimes for me composition has to do with a certain brightness or a certain coming to restness and other times it has to do with funny mistakes. There’s a kind of righness and wrongness and sometimes I like rightness and sometimes I like wrongness. Composition is like that.” -Diane Arbus

“There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that’s impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants.” -Arnold Newman

“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.” -Ansel Adams

“A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” -Ansel Adams

My stupid view is that one either feels the image in the gut, as it is coming together, or not. If not, one’s picture is likely not there.

Granted..

but I don’t mean to learn this for re-creation, but for being in the photographer’s shoes as viewer; I am pretty spatially dyslexic (don’t ever ask me directions even if I’ve lived somewhere for years, and I fail miserably at those test where you have to say how many times you turn the object to make it match another picture of the object, and as a kid I had a really hard time understanding relative size the earth vs.a state or country)..So I find it disorienting to not know where “I” stand, as the viewer (from the eye of the lens).

So help me..eh?

I could be wrong but I think she is asking how to determine the perspective (lens to subject distance) from looking at a photograph already taken and not seeking some perspective/ compositional “rule” for good photography.

Sorry, true to my stupid name, I completely misunderstood the question, and have no idea how to help.

Yes, that’s the question, and also above/below and tilt ..I want to learn to be able to tell where the camera (center of lens and its angle) was in relationship to the subject when looking at a photo (and approx what lens?)

(Not so) Stupid, I bet you read this information intuitively all the time, no? Or is this hard for everyone?

In the Dijkstra above, she must be relatively close, and low to the ground, with a ‘normal’ lens?

In Penn’s I’d guess he was above a bit, but just a little, also close?

Arbus low/close, tilted up a bit, wide?

But what about using converging lines and horizons to figure this out?

Just use the damn equipment and stop trying to intellectualize the process. Take the picture in your head before. If you what “rules” then you’re not an artist. Just do it again and again and become the lens.Sorry but…:):):)

Gotta disagree completely here, Gregory.

Intellectual understanding can be one of the most freeing things available to us..it’s only one part of the process, and some may thrive without it (I think I’ve done fine so far) but it’s a tool that once internalized can allow for previously unfelt gut responses to arise..

Anyway, I’m conceptual and that is part of my strength..I’m not going to go in another direction because some find it pedantic.

And come on now dear brother..do it again and again and become the lens..and also…then one is not an artist?..I find this unfair (not just to me). There are many ways of being an ‘artist’ and I do shoot again and again and am quite at home with it..please don’t patronize by suggesting how I should work..my question wasn’t about how to shoot.. love you though Greg..just please think this through a bit..

Sorry E… What Im saying is don’t look for answers. Love ya!
G.

S’alright friend..I think that it is in fact an asset to a degree that I am largely self taught, but I am finding that this is a time in life (a blossoming, thank god) when I would be grateful not for answers per se, but perhaps some nourishment for the questions that stir me..

We all have unique ways of working, of developing into our better selves as creative beings..and I can feel that when this missing piece of knowledge is filled in for me, it will be something of a blessing for my creative machinations..

xo

Ok, it’s sort of easy to tell what lens was used, roughly, by loking at the relationship between the foreground, middle and background. Wideangle lenses tend to make things in the foreground look larger and they often have more dramatically receding backgrounds. Pictures with a WA lens often appear to have more depth since the foreground looks like it is a long distance from the background. Long lenses tend to flatten out the perspective, and make the foreground look closer to the background.

For this you might want to check out some photo texts to see examples. Or, I hate to say it, some camera brochures. I haven’t looked at a camera catalog in years, but I remember an old nikon one I had back in the day that showed examples of photos shot from the same point with different lenses, could be helpful if you want to understand the differences.

As for the angle and up/down tilt, look closely at the subject and its relation to the horizon line or line of the floor. Clearly, if you’re shooting a person in a big field and you put the camera on the ground, the horizon line will be very close to the person’s feet. Conversely, if you shoot from a high angle, the horizon may be closer to the person’s waist, and if you go higher still, the horizon could be over the person’s head.

The dijkstra pic looks like it was shot about waist level of the subject or a tad lower, with a normal-ish lens (I belive she shoots 8×10). For the arbus, it looks like it was about waist level of the big dude with a wide-ish lens, and the other two look to be a bit higher, maybe somewhere around chest level and also with normal-ish lenses.

The penn may be confusing since it’s shot on a set with two walls at a narrow angle, not a normal 90-degree angle corner.

Hope this is of some help.

http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/calc.htm

Scroll down to Dimensional Field of View Calculator and Angular field calculator.

E… All artists are alone with themselves…there are no answers. I’m in the phone book and on LS. SO…?

Stupid has actually proven (over & over) that he/she is absolutely not so…
I agree with Gregory. I think.
“Intellectual understanding can be one of the most freeing things available to us.” Also quite valid a statement.
But there is also something to be said for just pointing and grunting. Because in the end, it’s just our eyes and guts, and how they are perceived by their eyes, and guts…

Lighting is much easier to analyze. Perspective in relation to (lens/format selection) x (camera position) = quite difficult I think. Too many variables. Perhaps there is in fact a method/science to it. But all too often the resulting effect of lens/format choice and perspective is measured in degrees. For example, I am very tall. The wider the lens I use, the more important a mere inch or two of me squatting is to the final result. Inches. Really. But learning how to effectively communicate through those mere degrees has (and is still) taken time. Though it becomes more and more intuitive.

But in photography, control and understanding can actually be very difficult to harness and mimic. That’s why trial and error, and tests, and notes, are so necessary on every variation of lens, film, format, sensor, meter… That’s why shooters find what works for them, and generally stick with it. It’s also why often times, photographers gets a look they are comfy with, or find success from, and never stray from it. “They” often call this a ‘style’ or a ‘look’. But all too often, it’s really just laziness, or a a fear of evolution. Then again, finding a method that allows one to successfully share their viewpoint is about as satisfying as it gets I suppose.

The woman asked a rather simple question. Why is everyone trying to change her mind and start talking of personal shooting philosphy? And who are you to say “all artists are alone with themselves” Why are people always stuffing all artists in one tiny box?

If you don’t know the answer…perhaps maybe yall could help her find it?

Noah, thank you..that makes sense. I think I will get a drawing/perspective book. One of the things you learn early on as an artist, why not as a photographer?

Interesting how this is turning pholisophical..Jethro, you say “in the end, it’s just our eyes and guts, and how they are perceived by their eyes, and guts…” again, I disagree..where is your mind in all this? Not to go Yale on you, but much I what compels me about my/other people’s photography has to do with the intellect.

Billy..I wish I understood how to apply that info, but I don’t, yet. (and thank you for your support..)

G..I don’t understand your point about the phone book..Isn’t there a film showing now about the (correction..) humanist and the fatalist (I had remembered it as nihilist and fatalist, anyway it’s Vivre Sa Vie..)? I believe in answers, I hear them/experience them..so I don’t think you can say there are no answers, rather you can say there are no answers in your experience..in mine, there are..though who knows if we are talking about the same thing..this may be one for over a drink.

And why are you, Erica, always posting while I’m typing:)

what time is it in thailand?

Erica,

I have to say first that I have no experience in large format where film size, aperture of a given lens, etc. are very important information to have as to know how the photographer got a particular image. For the last hour or so, I have been studying my book, Viewcamera Manual, in Japanese. (I never got to buy a large format camera, but I went as far as pricing one)

I think you might find it useful to get a similar book to understand the principle of large format photography. In mine, they give you a number of photo examples with the format size, lenses used, and what kind of camera movements are used. Also you need to understand the principle of image circles. My impression is that all that information is necessary to get the answers you are looking for. Just the pictures would not be enough.

Just my two cents. Hopefully it would not be too far off the mark.

It’s 10:21AM here.

huh, it’s 11:35 here..

Tomoko, probably a good idea to read some direct application info..though I have a hunch i may need to start doing drawing exercises to really grasp 3d to 2d..

ooh.. a small thought.. maybe part of my confusion is this..in perspective, the horizon is always at the eye level of the viewer (so if the photographer squated and shot with the camera’s eye low, the horizon would be low in that photo). But then when I am looking at a print I don’t necessarily hold the horizon line that the photographer created at my eye level, so my horizon line is differnt from the actual horizon line (which would make it harder to understand the conditions under which the image was made.

Is that logical?

Perspective works pretty much the same way regardless of camera format, but once you start using camera movements on LF things can get more complicated.

Also, depth of field at given magnifications will vary from format to format. So a 300mm ‘normal’ lens on an 8×10 will have much less depth of field at a given distance than an 80mm on 6×6 or a 50mm on a 35mm camera.

There are no rules to all of this, but having an understanding of the technical aspects of photography doesn’t hurt, even if you are doing purely conceptual work.

Anyway, yes, read, and draw. Those things will help. And they’re fun anyway so it’s a win-win.

Erica,

My Viewcamera Manual book has illustrations showing 18 different ways the camera movement can be used to affect the way a given object looks on the film. There are five different movements, namely tilt, swing, rise, fall, and shift. Although I have not used the large format, I have used a shift lens on my OM bodies.

I think it might help you to actually use your camera and note what movements you used with what lens. Use Polaroid so that you can study the results immediately. Perhaps the book like my Japanese book will be handy. If it is necessary, you might want to rent some wide angles to see what kind of exagerations you can produce yourself.

Tomoko, I am actually interesting in being able to read other people’s images for this info..this query was not for my own shooting at this time..I am not a shoot and note kind of gal..but I am sure it would help one who was.

OH good..it’s not my fault that this is hard!

The distortions associated with linear perspective can be seen in photography. It is interesting to note that, because light moves in straight lines, the mechanical eye of the traditional camera captures light onto a two dimensional plate in much the same way that the view pyramid of linear perspective organizes space into two dimensions. The healthy human eye has a roughly 140-degree angle of view, but when shown a photograph representing a 140-degree angle of view, we immediately note the distortion that takes place with close objects in the middle of the picture and distant objects at the edges. This discrepancy between camera and physical eye is accounted for in part by the fact that in our eyes, light projects not onto a flat surface, but the curved inner surface of our eyeballs. Furthermore, a large portion of our perception comes from having two eyes that can triangulate relative depth (known as stereopsis, which is a form of parallax), and the ability to move our heads to accrete multiple views of a single object. Parallels exist between the functioning of our vision and photography or linear perspective, but because our vision exists not only in the light that enters our eyes, but also the passage of time, and the interweaving of binocular pictures of the world by our brains in conjunction with our mental image of what we expect to see, the parallel becomes problematic. Artistic practice that developed contemporaneously with photography, such as impressionism and cubism, in many ways reflects this difference.

Andrew Gale

http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/perspective.htm

Hi e,

No, it’s absolutely not your fault this is hard, everyone has different levels of spatial perspective. I think it’s good that you not only recognize this in yourself, but are taking steps to try and work with it.

I’m a bit late responding on this thread (been off where internet access was a bit of a challenge), but I do have an idea you might find helpful. This is something I did for a while (and still do, anytime I get a lens in a FL I haven’t used). It’s an exercise I read somewhere a long time ago, I think designed to help get familiar with FL and FoV of lenses, but it might help you.

Please forgive me if this is such a basic exercise that it shouldn’t be mentioned.

I’d suggest doing this with a digital camara, so you’re not having to bother developing film. Go outside, or somewhere with some room, and find a subject that you can frame in a way so that it has a fair amount of space around it. You’ll want to pick something that doesn’t move, since you’ll be taking several shots. Then take one shot. Leaving your focal length the same (if using a zoom lens), take 2 steps towards your subject, and shoot again. Continue this until you are so close you can’t focus. Then take 2 more shots – one from your knees, looking up at the subject at an angle, and another lying on your back looking straight up at it.

But wait. Here’s where you’ll want to do this in a park or somewhere without a lot of people around (a long hallway?). Do the same thing, starting from the same distance, but instead of standing, kneel for each shot. Lastly, do it one more time, but lying on your stomach for each one.

I usually end up taking about 10-12 shots for each “phase”, and it’s pretty enlightening when you look at them side-by-side. And since they are in order, you really don’t need to take notes while shooting – it’s pretty obvious which shots are which.

Thinking about it, it might be fun to do the same thing with a stepladder or something, to get the perspective looking down. I think I’ll try that.

Anyway, might be something to try. Doing this every day for about a month (back in the day, with my Pentax K-1000) with a different lens or subject or f-stop helped me tremendously.

Sending good vibes to you and all LS’ers…

A.

hi Andrew,

thanks, sounds really fun – but indeed I should get my hands on a digi before I try.

One question: you said “Then take 2 more shots – one from your knees, looking up at the subject at an angle, and another lying on your back looking straight up at it.” Do you mean while you are so close you can’t focus, or do you go back to another distance for these?

thanks a bunch!

Erica, I am still confused by this: are you asking if there’s some way of telling how far the subject is from the camera by just looking at the photograph?

In part, yes, distance, but more so the overall relationship of camera to subject and lens used would be intresting too, tho you sort of quess..

Erica,

Sorry I wasn’t clear – I meant do the last two (looking up and on back) from as close as you can and still focus. Obviously, you don’t need to do those over again when you go from your knees and your stomach, since it will be the same….

Digi is def the way to go, although the first time I did it I was also learning to develop, so it was a good 36 exposures on which to practice…

i drive my partner nuts by unconsciously lining things up, altering the position of my head side to side, watching how the rest of the world alters as i move, relationships between objects change, spaces/planes/angles open up, others close down etc etc.

one simple ‘rule’ that’s easy to see for yourself is that in a three-way alignment of photographer-object-background, as the photographer moves in relation to the object, the background appears to move in the same direction (in relation to the object).

as i lower my shooting position, a point on the background at head-height will appear below the objects head. if i am above the object, the same point on the background will appear above him. same thing moving left or right.

is this vaguely what you’re trying to get at, or am i overstating the obvious?

2 other things occurred to me, although they may be much too obvious: you cant see the bottom of anything unless you’re below it. so in Dijkstra’s botticelli pic, he’s definitely quite low or you wouldn’t be able to see her nostril.

the other is that light (of course) travels in a straight line. so in the arbus pic, you could draw an imaginary line from the edge of the shadow to the edge of the head and bringing it back in a straight line you could determine more or less where the flash was.

At the risk of sounding utterly uncool to the people here who seem to think trying to learn the technical aspects of photography makes you less of an “artiste” (I don’t even own a scarf!!), I will admit that in a former life, I worked on a computer system (NASA’s SVS) which did just this (determined the position of the camera from the image). The way we did it was using dots on satellites of a known distance from each other, and you could determine the position of the camera based on the distance and orientation of the dots relative to each other.

With normal photos, you can train your eyes to do the same. You don’t have positioning dots but you know roughly how big a human head should be relative to a foot and if the foot looks large in the image, you can say it’s probably perspective distortion where the camera is low and using a wide angle lens. The convergence of vertical lines such as the sides of a building, wall, etc… also tells you if the camera is tilted up or down.

The key is proportions and lines. For instance in the Dijkstra photo, the horizon is below center. In order for that to happen, the camera has to be tilted up slightly. However, in spite of being tilted up, the girl is more or less centered. In order for that to happen, the camera has to be lowered to the ground. Therefore you can tell the photo was shot low, and camera tilted slightly up. The somewhat shallow DoF but vast background tells me it was likely done at a medium-low aperture with a 35mm equivalent focal length between 40 and 80mm.

Because it is still a 2D image and you don’t know the exact geometry of the objects though, optical illusions can occur such as with the Arbus photo. No doubt the giant is a very large man, but by looking at the placement of the feet of the people, you can tell the giant is closer to the camera, and therefore perspective distortion makes him look larger than he is.

hight of camera: if you make a hard copy of the photo and extend any lines in the image ie wall/floor and wall/roof lines where these cross is the horizon line/hight of camera…

distance from camera: once you have established the hight off the ground of the camera you can gauge the distance from subject to camera and judge the lens that was used.

lenses. a 35mm lense is what you will see if you make a fist and look over it when you hold it horrizontal just below youe eye. 50 mmm lense is what you see if you then extend the index and baby finger.

easy!j

thanks for these great answers..

John R..re: height of camera, in the Penn, wouldn’t the floor/wall convergence point be quite low? To my eye, it appears the camera would have been higher up.. ??

Erica:

In the Penn, I would guess that the camera height is around the subjects forehead, based mostly on how his nose/nostrils look (they are usually a good gauge of above/below/even) and to some extent, how his shoes look. Kind of like geometry…a line from the camera to his nose is slightly downward, and to his shoes is much more downward….

John:
I like the fist tool (always have it with you! little to memorize!). Two questions…first, I’m guessing that you hold your fist knuckles away from your eyes? That would make sense with the “then extend the index and baby finger” part.

Second, wouldn’t the fist alone be the 50mm, and the extended fingers the 35mm, as 35mm is wider than 50?

If not, I’m missing it entirely, I think….

“Optical illusions can occur” -Tommy Huynh, worked on a computer system (NASA’s SVS) which did just this (determined the position of the camera from the image).

No stupid argument here! I mean, at which particular point in time, what length of exposure, and which precise nanosecond of it?

Slow slit shutter while panning? ;)

Duh. So where was it positioned, exactly, 1/234th of the stupid exposure? Wasn’t still, like this one:

http://www.nytstore.com/ProdDetail.aspx?prodId=15971

hi andrew hold your fist with your cheek against the back of your wrist… extended fingers are upright to give longest length. does this help. due to hand sizes this is only rough guide. j

erica on the penn pic i work the camera hight to be eye level or just above. j