Each focal length brings more or less of the frame into focus, and inversely shortens the depth of field.
Going in the other direction, 85mm is often considered a ‘portrait’ lens (slight close-up), 105mm a medium ‘telephoto’, 200mm a ‘telephoto’ and anything beyond is for sports or space exploration. Since the ‘lingua franca’ of focal length is the ubiquitous 35mm camera, we can generalize here: 50mm being the so-called ‘normal’ lens 35mm is considered ‘wide angle’, 24mm ‘very wide angle’ and 10mm a ‘fisheye’. Each of these parameters impart a vital, and subjective, aspect to the image subsequently captured. Every lens has certain irrefutable properties: focal length and maximum aperture being the most important. One photographer is standing 6 ft further away (from my camera position) than the other, but the foreshortening of the 200mm telephoto appears to depict ‘dueling photographers’. Was Leonardo supposed to include the bird or not? Did he ‘manipulate’ the image by only including the parts of the image that were important to the composition? Would any editor or judge dare ask him today, if that was possible?Ī combination example of framing and depth-of-field. Painting takes time, it is likely that a bird would land from time to time on the balustrade. There is perfect symmetry in the placement of Lisa Gherardini (the presumed model) between the columns, which helps frame the subject. By this same logic, when Leonardo Da Vinci painted the “Mona Lisa” there is a balustrade with two columns behind her. Fisch had simply walked over and picked up the offending plastic bag before exposing the image, he would likely be the deserved recipient of his 1st place prize from National Geographic, but as he removed the bag during editing his photograph was disqualified. But what if the same exact result is obtained by cropping the image during an editing process – already we start to see disagreement in the literature. Is pivoting the camera a few degrees to the left to avoid an unsightly telephone pole “unwarranted digital manipulation?” Most news editors and photo contest judges would probably not agree. The choice of frame is completely subjective: it is the eye/brain/intuition of the photographer that decides in the moment where to point the camera, what to include in the frame. The initial choice of frame is made by the photographer, in concert with the camera in use, which presents physical limitations that cannot be exceeded. Whether the final ‘edges’ presented to the viewer are due to the limitations of the camera/film/image sensor, or cropping during the editing process, is immaterial. There are four edges to every photograph. Only a certain amount of what can be seen by the photographer can be captured as an image. The very nature of photography, from the earliest days until now, has at its core an essential feature: the frame. The only distinction is by how much, and in how many areas. All photographs lie, permanently and absolutely.
From a purely scientific point of view, there is absolutely no such thing as an ‘objective’ photograph – for a host of reasons. On the whole, I find this absurd and the logic behind such attempts at defining an ‘objective photograph’ fatally flawed. Steve McCurry, best known for his iconic “Afghan Girl” photo on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985, was accused of digital manipulation of some images shot in 1983 in Bangladesh and India. Examples are given, such as Harry Fisch having a top prize from National Geographic (for the image “Preparing the Prayers at the Ganges”) taken away because he digitally removed an extraneous plastic bag from an unimportant area of the image. There is evidently an arbitrary standard (that no one can appear to objectively define) that posits that essentially only an image ‘straight out of the camera’ is ‘honest’ or acceptable – particularly if one is a photojournalist or is entering your image into some form of competition.
Photoshopping) is present in many of today’s images, particularly in photojournalism and photo contests. The premise of the article is that too much ‘manipulation’ (i.e. There is no such thing as an objective photographĪ recent article in the Wall Street Journal ( here) entitled “When Pictures Are Too Perfect” prompted this post.