Tag: #Petzval85mm

  • Read This If You Want To Take Great Photographs of People by Henry Carroll

    So after reading Henry Carroll’s other book discussing how to take great photographs in general which I posted on this blog and absolutely loving it, a couple of months later I walked into Waterstones and found that he had written another one but this time it was only to do with people, my favourite subject to photograph.

    The Question

     The first thing Carroll tells us to do before reading this book is close the book and ask yourself who am I and why do I want to take photographs of people. I think what he is trying to do here is telling us as a reader that no one is born ready to do something and until you know what your purpose is then you are not ready. In my opinion the question he asks when rephrased would work for any subject so think about what job you want to do and ask yourself that very same question who am I and why do I want to do the job or hobby I want to do and until you know then you are not ready.

    The Answer

     The Answer is also personal because everyone will have a different answer to the question and the way I’m looking at it on a deeper level is that not everyone will be asking himself or herself the same question. My Answer is to the exact question Carroll poses who am I and why do I want to take photographs of people. My name is Lucy and I am a media graduate with a passion for taking photographs. Yes I love taking photographs but why people in particular, you ask? I love the way that you can tell a lot about a person by the way that they express themselves and I want to capture that in my photography. Photographing people for me tells a story and every person has a different story to tell and I want to convey that message in the photographs that I take.

    Composition

     Carroll states that when you are composing a shot of a human subject you need to trust your instincts and think about whom you are photographing. What is their mood? What is your mood? Where is the shoot taking place and what’s going on around you?

    In photographing people the rule of thirds is the most important aspect of composition because placing your subject in the centre of the frame or in the far right third of the frame creates an essentially perfect composition.

    Carroll depicts that linking layers is a brilliant idea as you keep one eye on the subject and the other on the background. In my eyes this means that you need to let the background compliment the subject and not the other way round.

    Think about who you are shooting and where and play around with different camera angles to change the perception of a subject.

    Lens Choices

    My favourite idea Carroll has is that nothing impacts your composition more than your choice of lens. I have three lenses now and for my first studio shoot since university I only had the lens that the camera came with (18-55mm) so this was restrictive as you could see too much of the background which was distracting. Now I use a Nikkor Telephoto Zoom lens (70-200mm), which is a lot better for portraits, and you can see more of the subject. A couple of months ago I bought a brand new Petzval (85mm) Lomography art lens, which so far I have only had the opportunity to test once. This lens is made for portraits but on a recent shoot to Crosby I used this lens to get a different perspective of Anthony Gormley’s Another Place because I had already shot it a year before. The Petzval lens comes with fixed aperture plates that allow me to change the aperture according to the setting. It is also manual focus, which means the lens pushes me to find my own clarity to the extent that I want it to be. The best thing about this lens is that it allows me to obtain different shaped apertures where the light hits the out of focus areas of an image or reflects off a subject.

    Breaking the Rules

     It is important in photography to create your own rulebook by thinking outside the box or recreating interesting images. In life I always go with my instincts and I feel that these rarely fail me. Carroll illustrates that the same rules apply with photography: “Shoot what your comfortable with, step outside of the comfort zone but don’t shoot anything that makes you feel uncomfortable to be shooting.” In my opinion if you abide by this then you will develop your own style and others will be able to know your images by sight.

    Context

     The subject has to blend into the environment and you can also use a plain backdrop to isolate your subject so nothing distracts you from them. When taking an image of a person always be on the lookout for juxtaposition because in photography opposites attract. You can reveal a lot about a subject by the traces they leave behind. So don’t always photograph a person photograph things that belong to them in order to obtain a different dimension to their story.

    The Gaze

     One of the hardest things that you aim to do when photographing people, is to achieve a natural look because in order to do that you have to appear unobtrusive. This statement is one of the most accurate descriptions of my beliefs about photographing people that Carroll expresses: “ A smile is a mask that a person wears, you can see a lot more by breaking your subject out of their shell to see another side of them.” This means a lot to me because only when your subject gets comfortable with you do you start to notice what they are trying to tell you through their body language and their attire.

    Control

     There are many different techniques you can use in order to photograph a subject. You can make them feel a little bit uncomfortable for a different dynamic to a shot or you can give them something playful in order to expose their subconscious.

    Nobody is perfect so looking for flaws in a subject is what makes them unique and interesting. But always remember the only subject you have complete control over is yourself. This last statement has stuck with me and I am planning an exciting new self portraiture project that so far until I complete it, only one person other than me knows what I’m planning which makes it all the more intriguing.

    Black and white or colour

     I tend to shoot in colour and when I envision the shot as black and white I use a Silver Efex Pro filter taken from the Google Nik collection on my photoshop and typically choose the high structure black and white effect as it is usually images where I want to add depth to the background that I add these too.

    Conclusion

    To conclude in referring back to Carroll’s original question who are you and why do you want to take photographs of people? This post is my answer so yes I love taking photographs but why people in particular, you ask? I love the way that you can tell a lot about a person by the way that they express themselves and I want to capture that in my photography. Photographing people for me tells a story and every person has a different story to tell and I want to convey that message in the photographs that I take.

     

     

     

     

  • Petzval 85mm Lomography Lens

    Last Thursday I went on a photo walk to Crosby and as I had already been before and I knew I was going to get exactly the same shots I took a gamble. Rather than my telephoto zoom lens I took the Petzval 85mm Lens which is a Lomography / art lens. This lens is made for portraits but I challenged myself to test out the lens with a landscape.

    This lens comes in black and brass so of course I bought the brass lens cause who doesn’t want a gold lens and I’ve nicknamed it the bond lens. I first saw the Petzval on Emily Soto’s (A Fashion Photographers) Instagram page and I fell in love with it the moment I saw it and I knew at some point I was going to have to buy it.

    QMEH9116

     

    This lens comes with fixed aperture plates that you slot into it and when the light reflects of a subject or object it creates a bokeh effect. According to the lens manual a “bokeh” is the visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photographic image, especially as rendered by a particular lens. Boke is a Japanese word meaning “blur” or haze.

    When you shoot with a wide depth of field such as an aperture of f 2.2 you get something called “A swirly bokeh effect” where the out of focus areas in your image will be encased in a blurred swirl so that you can see your subject more clearly. However today as I was shooting a landscape I used an aperture of f11 because I wanted the entire landscape to be in focus and to get a subtle bokeh effect where the light reflects of my subject.

    This lens is a reinvention of Joseph Petzvals’ 1840 lens as upon discovering that f15 was the fastest aperture that a portrait lens could manage he designed a lens that would go to an aperture of f3.6 and portraiture lenses are now based on his original invention. So that is how the Petzval 85mm lomography lens was born.

    Below are my first shots taken on the Petzval 85mm lens and there will be many more to come:

    If you enjoyed this post keep reading for more lomography and other types of photography.