Depth of Field - Minimum

A Large Aperture (e.g..f/2) will result in one thing being in focus and the rest of the image will be blurred. This is known as a Minimum Depth of Field (for information on Maximum Depth of Field click here). This image above is by August Sander (Young Farmers, Westerwald 1914) shows the three figures clearly but the background is a blurred haze due to the use of a Minimum Depth of Field.

In this black & white image by Linda McCartney 'Through a Glass Teapot' 1996 the tree is projected upside down in the water of a glass teapot (like a lens or a camera obscura). She has focussed our eye by using a shallow depth of field to blur the back ground and keep us focussed on the projected tree. Her use of burnt edges frames the image beutifully.

In this image Irving Penn has used a minimum depth of field to blur out the background. He has focussed on the glass bottle and so it is in sharp focus. However, the background is blurred – we can see a woman about to smoke a cigarette but it is fuzzy and atmospheric. Penn has guided the viewer’s eyes towards the glass and the sharp focus of the glass is contrasted against the blurred figure in the background. The glass is working as a lens – just like the lens used to create the image.

Penn is an interesting photographer who combined commercial success with his own artistic projects. His portfolio includes high class fashion photography, intimate portraits of key figures and beautiful close up shots of cigarette butts and old containers. Penn was able to mix glamourous high fashion photographs with more thoughtful personal work.

Rinko Kawauchi is a contemporary Japanese photographer who creates beautiful and elegant images that find the beauty in the everyday. Kawauchi uses a Minimum Depth of Field (for example f/2 – a large hole) which results in only a fraction of the image being in focus – these images have a shallow depth.

Kawauchi explores the poetry of the common place – a dead wasp on a window sill, a brief glance of the eye and a piece of chicken hanging over a table. These are none events – the kind of thing we may notice briefly and possibly dismiss or contemplate in a day dream.

The everyday has been a fascination for many artists – the things they immediately experience as part of their existence. Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin worked in the 18th Century. His images were often simple and focussed on the remains of a meal left on a table. This humble scene became poignant in Chardin’s hands.

The Starn Twins work together to create strange and atmospheric images. These images above are from a series called ‘Attracted to Light’ were they looking at moths. They have used a Minimum Depth of Field to capture a close up image of a moth and this has resulted in the head and legs being sharp but everything else being blurred. Often using a minimum depth of field creates a more intimate, atmospheric and subjective result. The viewer’s eyes are guided to a particular part of the image while the other areas are ambiguous blurred forms and hues.

With this series the Starn’s were interested in Moths who are the ugly cousin to the beautiful, colourful, flower loving butterflies. Moths in comparison are monochrome, dull and are mainly seen at night attracted to light – and if it is a candle it can lead to their own death. The Starn Twins believe this makes moths more like humans – imperfect and craving things that will lead to our demise. To reflect the fragile quality of a moth they print the image on thin photographic paper that seems like it will crumble if touched like a moth’s wing. Their use of reproducing the same image again and again comments on Photography’s ability to be endlessly reproduced.
Further reading -
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin

an example of 'tilt-shift' Kris Kros photography

At first glance these images seen like toy models. In this image above the horses seem plastic where in reality they are actual horses. They have been created using a tilt shift lens - this involves tilting the camera lens to distort the plane of focus and shifting the lens to distort the perspective. Today, most photographers simply take a digital photograph and apply the tilt-shift distortions via software. Ronaldo Fonseca uses the traditional method to create tilt-shift images with no digital manipulation.

Ronaldo Fonseca

These images do what art does best - reflect the real world back to us and allows us to see it in a new light. The eye is drawn to the focused center of the image and creates the illusion of scenes from a dream. Here is a fascinating video using time-lapse and the tilt and shift effect - 'The Sand Pit' by Sam O'Hare. It creates a moving surreal dream.

Thomas Allen

Thomas Allen has taken an old pulp fiction book and cut into the front cover - creating a three dimensional image. These mini sculptures are then rephotographed from a particular angle for added drama. In this above image one man punches another who then falls backwards. It has all the drama of a pulp novel or film noir. Allen has used a minimum depth of field to blur out the punching man and draw our eyes to the falling man. Are these works book art, sculpture or photography?

'Thomas Allen, in essence, is a still life artist who through a very creative process disrupts the stillness. By carefully selecting from primarily vintage paperback novels and science journals, he brings two-dimensional images forward into three dimensional space. With simple lightning and the use of simple tools (i.e., scissors and razor-sharp knives), figures are cut out, bent and juxtapose in ways that present the tension and dynamics of staged drama. Other techniques are applied in achieving a pure sense of humor that also defy the original use of these materials and their ultimate destiny of being read once and retiring for eternity on the nearest bookshelf.'

Depth of Field - Maximum

The world is three dimensional; a photographic image is two dimensional. The act of turning the 3D world in front of you into a 2D image creates an image with depth. That depth – what is in focus and what is not – can be manipulated by the photographer.

This photograph of Whitehall from Trafalgar Square, taken by M. de St. Croix in 1839, is probably the earliest surviving photograph of London, and certainly one of the first photographs taken in England.

Take a magnifying glass and study it from corner to corner – what can you see? A ghost like coach? A figure near the statue?




Depth of Field - Technical Information

All Cameras have an Aperture.
An Aperture is the hole that lets light into the camera.
The Pinhole in your pinhole camera is your aperture.
On your SLR the Aperture is just a more sophisticated version of the pinhole – but you can make it larger or smaller.

• The size of the aperture affects your final image. 
• A large Aperture means One thing is in Focus (e.g.. f/2) - Minimum Depth of Field

This image of toy soldiers by David Levinthal uses the blur created by a Minimum Depth of Field. This gives the artificial scene a strange atmosphere.

• A small Aperture means Everything is in Focus (e.g. f/22) - Maximum Depth of Field

Winston O. Link has used a maximum Depth of Field to capture this classic image from 1956. We can clearly see the couple at the front, the train speeding past and the movie being projected onto the screen in the distance.

Maximum Depth of Field - References 

Andreas Gursky is a photographer who uses a Maximum Depth of Field (small hole). Gursky was taught by The Bechers. His images are on a large scale when they are displayed on the gallery wall. 

This allows the image to be explored from corner to corner – because the image has a lot of depth. The objects closest to the camera lens are as sharp as the objects furthest away.

Gursky often photographs large landscapes where people appear like ants. This is a characteristic of The Sublime in art – were people appear dwarfed by nature. Like the feeling you get when you stare out at sea or up at the stars and you feel small in comparison – this is the sublime. Often images that use a maximum depth of field have a cold, distant, objective quality.

This is the middle section of 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' a triptych that depicts the garden of eden, heaven and hell. It is by Hieronymus Bosch who was a 15th century painter from northern Europe. 

We don't see the world as one large pin sharp image. We see lots of fragments of the world - a corner of a table, a hand, a lamp - and then our minds piece this information together to create the world (closer to a minimum depth of field photograph or a cubist painting).

Pre-Modern Paintings and maximum Depth of field Photographs show us an abstracted view of the world where everything is in focus. This image by Bosch can be explored like a Gursky photograph - from corner to corner - It has the look of the camera’s unforgiving objective eye.

Ansel Adams was a giant of 20th century photography. He was a founding member of The f64 Group. F64 refers to their use of a very small aperture – creating very detailed and objective maximum depth of field shots. A tripod would have been used to create these shots as the small aperture means a slower shutter speed is needed.

The objective, detailed results represented the new Modernist aesthetic – cold harsh reality over sentimental pictorialism.

Adams images are full of detail. An ephemeral cloud formation becomes a permanent structure in his above image.

In the above image Adams creates this iconic image of the never-ending road that seems to stand for the vastness of the American landscape – and the American Dream. The history of the pilgrims, making their journey from the East coast to the West, seems wrapped up in this image and the myth of America.

Bill Brandt created a varied series of work throughout his life from Portraits, Social Documentary (see Mass Observation) to strange surreal images.

In these above images Brandt has used a maximum depth of field to create Surreal images. He has played with foreshortening to place an ear on the same visual plane as a Sussex beach. In these images fingers become rocks and Brandt reflects himself in a mirror.

Rene Magritte was a surrealist painter and his images share qualities with this series from Brandt. The Surrealists were interested in the world of the unconscious and dreams. In dreams the everyday mixes and creates strange juxtapositions.

Most of us have seen rain and we have seen men in suites (Magritte used these figures as short hand for the bourgeois) – they are fairly everyday. In dreams our it could rain business men - as in this above painting by Magritte. These are the kind of Juxtapositions the Surrealists like to play with.

Above is a portrait of Magritte by Brandt that incorporates elements of both artists work.

A still from Orson Welles' - 'Citizen Kane (1941)

We can see depth of field used all the time in cinema. A film camera follows the same rules a normal camera and so many of the same principles apply. Often a minimum depth of field is referred to as 'shallow focus' and maximum depth of field is referred to as 'deep focus'.

In this scene from Orson Welles' 'Citizen Kane' you can clearly see how Welles has used deep focus. This has allowed the viewer to see three figures clearly - the closest figure on the left, the figure on the right and, in the centre, a figure in the doorway. The scene also uses The Rule of Thirds - the figure on the left dominates the left-hand third, the middle third is empty (bar the distant doorway with a shadowy figure) and the right-hand third has another character.

Once you start looking at different scenes from 'Citizen Kane' you can see how Welles (and his cinematographer Gregg Toland) used deep focus (Maximum Depth of Field) with the rule of thirds. The stark black and white emphasise the structure behind each scene. For more references click the Pinterest icon below.

Shutter speed - FAST

This is a Daguerrotype from the 19th Century by Gustav Oehme. Before photography only the rich and important could have images made of themselves. With the invention of photography anybody could have an image to prove they existed. Everybody, thanks to photography, has been given an identity from family albums to Face Book.

The exposure would have lasted for minutes and these three girls would have had to remain perfectly still. They could have gone on to live long and fruitful lives – seeing the huge changes between the old world of the 19th Century and the Modernism of the 20th Century.

However, here they remain frozen and unaware of their future – locked in time.

·       The big bang happened 13.7 billion years ago according to current estimates. ·       The earth was formed 4.54 billion years ago. ·       Though harder to define humans have existed for a million years (this answer can vary). ·       The earliest images found are about 32,000 years old. ·       The Renaissance was over 5oo years ago. ·       Photography was announced in 1839 – 170 years ago. ·       The average life span is 79 years. ·       It has taken a minute of your life to read this.

(see Al Jarnow's - Cosmic Clock)

Most photographs you take today consist of fractions of seconds.

This image shows the exact moment Rocky Marciano knocked out Jersey Joe Walcott in 1952. Shutter was open for about four thousandth of a second (1/4000th – captured with a Flash).

Try and count that in your mind – I can only manage about half a second.

Most photographs record fractions of seconds invisible to the naked eye – a photograph is both cold harsh truth and an abstract image.

Henri Cartier Bresson was one of the first photographers to use a 35mm camera. This meant he could go onto the streets and take more impromptu images and capture the ‘Decisive moment’.

He would find a position, frame the shot and wait.When a figure appeared he would wait until the exact moment and take his shot. This is the moment when the chaos of the world is captured and organised into the Decisive moment.

Many of his images employ ‘the rule of thirds’. This is where the rectangle frame is broken into thirds and the point of emphasis takes place on the side, rather than the centre. The rule of thirds is based on the golden Rectangle.

In 1877 Eadweard Muybridge helped the governor of California to win a $25,000
bet that at some point when a horse was running; all four hooves would leave the ground.
He set up a row of multiple cameras and each time the horse tripped a wire a photograph was taken. He ended up with a series of images that when combined created the first moving images. Without Muybridge there would no cinema, TV or most of the content on the internet.

A similar technique was used in the film ‘The Matrix’ to create the Bullet Time effect.

Without the experiments of Muybridge and others Cinema would never have been born. Some of the most exciting early cinema came from George Melies and was truly realized in 'A Voyage to the Moon' 1902. For contemporary artists using animation look at William Kentridge.

Etienne-Jules Marey created similar images. Marey was a scientist who used art whereas Muybridge was an artist who created pseudo-scientific images. However, Marey's images were slow shutter speed shots and he used a strobe light. As the strobe flashed it created an image of the figure - therefore creating multiple figures showing the subject move though time and space. 

In this sculpture above the futurist artist Umberto Boccioni has captured in three dimensions a figure moving through time and space. Notice how the calf muscles are repeated - like a  slow shutter speed photograph made solid. It is similar to Marcel Duchamp's 'Nude Descending a Staircase' where we see a figure repeated going down stairs.

Sam Taylor Wood is an artist, photographer and film maker. Her 2001 Film/animation ‘Still Life’ has the visual look of a 17th Century Dutch still life. Sequences of still photographs are taken over a period of time to show the fruit slowly decaying. This is shown as a piece of video art in a gallery space - it is almost displayed like a painting on the wall. It is similar to time lapse photography used to capture the growth of plant - who move at a completely different pace to ourselves.

The series on images above are by Bernd and Hilla Becher. They are a husband and wife team who are famous for taking photographs of obsolete industrial architecture. The beauty of the buildings comes from their form following their function. These images are photographed a systematic way, from the same viewpoint and displayed in a uniform grid formation. From this pseudo-scientific approach a simplistic beauty emerges.

Idris Khan is a contemporary photographer who overlays the work of others on top of one another. The top image shows where Khan overlaid the Bechers water tower series. This has given the image the feel of a charcoal drawing and the images have an eerie, ghostlike  atmosphere. Although these images are not fast shutter speed examples they show a life times work in an instant – warping time by showing the work in an instant.

 

Jacques-Henri Lartigue grew up surrounded by cars. The effect of oval wheels leaning forward seen in his photographs were produced by slightly panning the camera to follow the car and releasing the shutter as he did so. The result is an image conveying a remarkable sense of speed and motion.

In 1911 Jacques-Henri Lartigue was not merely as unprejudiced as a child: he was a child. The picture reproduced here was made when Lartigue was fifteen, but it was not one of his early works - by the time he was ten he was making photographs that anticipate the best small-camera work of a generation later.

His early images show a world about to disappear - the old world being over taken by machines and the onset of the horrors of the first world war.

These images above are by the photographer Harold Edgerton. 

Photography is, in many ways, where art and science meet and these images show Edgerton’s experiments with high speed photography. The top image shows a drop of milk landing onto of a red biscuit tin lid – creating a beautiful crown. The bold white contrasts against the rich red and the rim of the lid adds an unusual horizon line to the composition. This is one of Edgerton’s most famous images and is actually the result of years of experimenting. He produced many of these images and many were not successful. This image is the result of experimentation and dedication. A flash would have been used to capture this moment in time.
The image on the bottom was created by having the camera on a tripod and using a slow shutter speed. However, Edgerton used a strobe light – each time it flashed it captured the figure in mid movement.

This classic photograph was taken in 1970 by George Krause and was initially intended for a poster. Krause has taken a moment in time and turned into a static image - the boy seems to be emerging from the water like a sculpture out of a piece of rock.

Krause's image has a similar feel to these unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo. They were commissioned in 1505 but were never completed instead human forms try to burst out of the rock. The delicate nature of Michelangelo's sculpture contrasts with the solid form of the natural rock.

Sirrka-Liisa Konttinen has captured a young 'girl in on space hopper' mid-flight. It is 1970's working class Newcastle and she is on the cobbled streets surrounded by terraced houses. This is a world on the brink of disappearing - community and history about to be replaced with modern tower blocks and the alienation that comes with our modern world. This comes from a series of work taken over a 11 year period.

This image captures a figure suspended in mid air. Aaron Siskind has positioned himself lowdown and aimed his camera upwards to place the trampolining figure agaisnt the sky.

Shutter speed refers to how long the shutter is open for.

A fast shutter speed means the shutter was open for a fraction of a second – freezing time.

A slow shutter speed means the shutter was open for a long time – creating blurs.