Your Zoom is for Framing!

This is another in the series of pieces that began with The Photogenic Moment, and continued with It’s all about Patterns.

The vast majority of digital cameras sold today are sold with a zoom lens. Your average entry level Point and Shoot will have a 3x zoom. 4 and 5x zooms are becoming the norm for anything above entry level. The top of the line P&Ss come with 15-20x zooms today: the equivalent of a true wide angle to a fairly long telephoto lens on an old fashioned 35mm film camera (witch still sets the standard by which we judge relative focal lengths and fields of view) or a full frame DSLR: that is equivalent to a 28mm to over 500mm lens. Even entry level DSLRs come with a kit lens that is generally a moderate wide to moderate tel zoom (35mm-105mm).

Most beginning photographers (and many advanced ones, if truth were told) think of the zoom as means of fitting in more of the room or more faces inside, or taking in the majestic sweep of a landscape outside, at the wide end, and then being able to zoom up to high power to bring distant things close, outside, or to fill the frame with a single face out of the crowd inside. They think close or far: zoom out, zoom in.

And, once more, if truth were told, most photographers use their zooms either at the full wide end, or the full telephoto, wishing for more at either end…and rarely anywhere in between.

In reality though, as you grow as a photographer, you will realize that the main function of the zoom on your camera is simply to control the size of the frame you are filling with image. A big frame, as in a group shot or wide landscape, is at the wide angle end of the zoom. A small frame, as in a portrait or a more intimate landscape, if found at the telephoto end of the zoom. And there are an infinite range of frame sizes in between, each appropriate for some image.

You could grow a lot as a photographer by making a commitment to yourself to use the full range of your zoom…to take images at every possible setting.

Here is a classic case. All examples here are from the Sony DSC H50 with a 15x zoom: 31mm to 465mm equivalent.

A wide angle shot (31mm equivalent), cropped from the bottom to look even wider, and…

A telephoto shot taken at the about 70mm equivalent from the same position. I did not use the zoom to bring the trees closer. I used it to adjust the size of the frame within which the trees appear.

Or another pair from the same day.

Framed at about 70mm equivalent.

Framed at about 250mm equivalent from the same spot, and cropped from the bottom and top to make it look wider.

Or take this pair:

At full wide (31mm equivalent) and then…

this, taken at about 300mm equivalent from the same spot…framing just a segment of the foam in the shot above.

Of course, this is not a question of right or wrong…good zoom or bad zoom. I am consciously using the zoom on the camera to adjust the size of my frame. What I fill it with, once it is adjusted, is another matter (see It is all about patterns… ).

In this shot, I used the camera zoom, at about 250mm equivalent, to isolate (frame) just a portion of the cactus…the part I was interested in. I could have accomplished the same thing by moving closer to the cactus, of course, but, hay, that’s what the zoom is for!

Here is a sequence of three shots, all taken from the same spot, with different zoom settings, for dramatically different effects.

By using the zoom to alter the size of the frame, I am able to create everything from landscape to abstract, without moving a step.

For the following shot I wanted to emphasize the Rhodora at the foot of the trees. Zooming in to 180mm equivalent allowed me to frame shot so that there is a balance between the flowering shrubs and the trees.

Or, again, two shots from the same position with very different zoom settings: full telephoto at 465mm equivalent, and full wide at 31mm equivalent.

Chances are very good you have zoom on your P&S camera. Think of it as a framing tool…the means by which you control the size of the frame you fill with your image…then use it…use every setting. Experiment with all the different size frames you might apply on any scene, from any single location.

Your images will be the better for it.

It is all about patterns…

One of the points I made in a recent post about the Photogenic Moment (they are all photogenic moments) is that photography is really all about patterns:

“Look for patterns…look for patterns to fill the frame of the image. Big patterns, as in a landscape, and little patterns, as in a macro. It is all about patterns. Line and form and light…the way shapes are arranged to fill frame the camera is able to capture, just a little rectangle after all, and the way the light molds the shapes with highlight and shadow. The way the colors, which are the second aspect of light, fall within the frame. You are not photographing things or people. You are capturing patterns within a frame. The things (or people) that make the patterns may be more or less important, but their importance is controlled by where you place them in the pattern you have captured (composition…rule of thirds, point-of-view, etc. See The Really Strong Suggestion of Thirds, Point of View, Shopping for Color in Old Town Albuquerque, and Lupine Lesson: Point of View). It is the pattern that will make or break the photograph. It is the pattern that the photograph is really about.”

In my next few posts, beginning here, I will explore this subject in more detail.

There are, of course, images which are simply about pattern…no apologies needed, and no explanations. Pure pattern.

Take this shot from a recent trip to the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix Arizona.

It is a picture of cacti, part of a display of native species, but it is clearly not about cacti…it is about the shapes, the forms, the curves and swirls that the growing cactus has made…and what the flat open shade light of the moment was making of them. It might even be about the contrast between the intricate covering of sharp thorns and the gentle forms underneath. I can see this at about 3×2 feet on a wall behind a couch. It is, imho, an image that you could look at every day and enjoy every time you looked…because there is simply a whole lot going on in an apparently simple image.

Or here is another cactus shot from the same day.

This one is about the light and molding as much as the shapes and patterns, and there is, honestly, a lot less going on…but it is, as I see it, still a strong image: strong graphically with a powerful central focus which is not apparent on first glance. Study it a moment and see what it does to your eyes. Where do your eyes go, and where do they come to rest?

If we pull back and look at a landscape/architectural shot from Cape May, New Jersey…the famous Cape May Light, we can see how a more detailed analysis plays out.

Here is the shot:

Taking it into PhotoShop Elements and using Poster Edges brings out the basic shapes.

Making it black and white makes it even more obvious:

And, we can even draw the basic patterns to make it really obvious.

The image is composed, on this basic level, of three intersecting shapes against a background or field…and is a very simple shot.

While composing the shot (I took several from this vantage point), I was actually, after the first “for the record” shot, very aware of these three shapes against the field, and composed and recomposed, shifting point of view slightly, zoom in and out for framing, until I got them where I wanted them: filling the frame with this pattern.

It is not really a lighthouse picture…or rather it is, at least I hope it is, just a bit more: satisfying as both portrait of lighthouse and as graphical design.

If we go the other way, and apply an Oil Painting effect in Paint.net to blur out detail and emphasize color, we see a different, somewhat contrasting, pattern.

Reducing it to its most basic tonalities by painting rough shapes over, we really have only six basic blocks and five tones. It has to work on this most basic level as design as much as at the shape level.

And of course, back at the top detail level, it is as much about the contrast in texture between the feathery phragmities  in the foreground, the intricate foliage in the mid-ground, and the solid stone shape of the lighthouse in the background as it is about anything else.

Lots going on here.

Once more, I did not actually think all this through in the field…but I was aware of it. I sensed it. I saw it. I worked the view until it all came together into an image I wanted to take with me…until the patterns satisfied.

Here is another shot from the Desert Botanical Gardens, this time of glass sculptures.

This one is pretty obvious and works on three levels. Basic shapes:

Color:

And the top level detail.

All combining to a pleasing image:

But what about images where it is really about the subject?

Take this image of two Giraffes nuzzling from the Alburquerque Zoo.

 

Pretty basic. But I took quite a few shots of these two. This is the one I kept because of it’s patterns…because of its graphical design elements :

Maybe even easier to see here:

Another sweeping landscape: from the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park on a perfect sky day.

Look at the basic shapes to see why this shot, of the 100 or more I took from the top of the mountain that afternoon, made it into my portfolio.

And the basic color tone pattern.

Any photograph has to work as pattern first, before it will work in any way.

Portrait of a bird, a Cactus Wren, again from the Desert Botanical Gardens: look at the basic patterns underlying the detail.

It is least obvious, but perhaps most important, in pictures of people. It is the underlying patterns that set the really satisfying images apart from the rest, at least in my opinion.

This shot of three attractive young ladies (my daughters so I can stay that) is, in reality, all about the basic patterns and the way they fill the frame. In your mind’s eye, break it down into the kind of basic shape drawing I have used above. The girls are more than ornament, of course, but it is the underlying shapes that draw the eye to where it can appreciate the beauty of the girls, and the tone patterns that hold the eye there. IMHO.

Once more…same three girls, and again, in a very carefully composed shot.

Carefully composed does not mean staged. It was a matter of seconds to reposition myself and use the camera zoom for framing to get this relatively spontaneous portrait…but that does not mean that in those few seconds I was not fully aware of the compositional elements…of the play of shape and form and placement within the frame that makes it all hang together, at least for me. Draw the shapes out and see how it looks and you will see (hopefully) exactly why the girls are where they are, and the lighthouse is where it is.

You will not develop this sense of pattern…graphical design…overnight, but if you persist in your efforts at photography, and if you look carefully at the images that satisfy you most, you will begin to be sensitive to…more or less consciously aware of…the basic patterns that fill the frame. You will begin to work with them. And your images, imho, will be the better for it.