Soft Focus

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blinkers, blur, effects, lens, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Velvet 56 f/1.6, macro, photography, soft focus, Velvet 56, vision

I recently picked up a second hand copy of this lens –

– the Lensbaby Velvet 56mm f/1.6.

It’s a well-built metal manual focus/manual aperture lens that sends no electronic information whatsoever to whatever body it is attached to, so using it relies on how well your camera can meter for the aperture presented to it (stop down metering) unless you augment this with an external exposure meter.

So far, I’ve only used the in-camera metering on my Canon bodies. Results have been variable. Wide open, it tends to overexpose but becomes more reliably on target with smaller apertures. Even when off, the metering is only about 1 stop away from the ideal making this a very easy lens to use with both film and digital bodies.

Unlike most of my other lenses, this lens’ particular property is the introduction of soft focus into your images, radiating in effect from the center and increasing in intensity as the aperture is widened. The effect is most pronounced between f/1.6 (where even the center softens) and f/5.6 where the center is sharp and circular zone of softness inhabits the mid to outer limits of your frame. At f/8 and smaller apertures the edge softness diminishes towards levels associated with normal lenses, become quite sharp at f/11 and f/16. Using the lens in this smaller aperture range is no different from using any normal lens, giving this particular effects lens a usefulness beyond that simply associated with its softness. The lens is also a useful macro lens, not true 1:1 macro but a 1:2 macro, easily good enough for a lot of close-up photography – such as this fern leaf:

But this not why I bought this lens. I bought it for the effect you see as the top of this post, a delicious radial blurring that looks not that dissimilar to that produced by Petzval lenses. Indeed, judging from a look through the lens at the seemingly fairly simple internal optics and mechanism it may not be that different in design. Nonetheless, different it is, and by all accounts has a visual quality that is unattainable in any other currently produced lens, harking (according to Lensbaby’s promotional material) back to mid 2oth century portrait lenses.

It’s a lovely ethereal effect, serving to draw the eye into the center of the image. Tack sharpness becomes irrelevant. All that really matters is relative sharpness, and how you, through your composition, apply that to your image.

This is an enormously refreshing way to photograph. True, it’s possible to generate similar effects with a digital image with Photoshop or some other imaging program, but that, like all Photoshop manipulations, takes you more into the realm of the digital artist and less into the world of lenses and light, the elements that I value most in photography and that remain somewhat (but only somewhat) indifferent as to whether you capture your image digitally or on film.

I, for one, am wholly sick of sharp images. It’s instructive to look back at the great photographs of the past and subject them to the kind of single-pixel defined microscopy that obsesses many current photographers (and serves to sell pricey and ever more optically ‘perfect’ lenses). None of them hold up to such modern digital standards, not least because of all that pesky film grain, but even in situations where grain is greatly diminished (such as large format images) there is nothing approaching the clinically clean effect that now so common and so seemingly desired.

Others can work with that. I think it’s a red herring, an obsession with technical perfection that can work to swamp artistry. The draughtsman’s approach. One leading to precisely the kind of blinkered vision that is the thread running throughout Peter Greenaway’s film masterpiece, “The Draughtsman’s Contract”. Not that most photographers are ever likely to have such a plot woven around them, the point is that they could. It’s a lack of imagination, something I find curiously prevalent in the field.

So here’s a lens that works best with imagination and creative vision. Lots of fun to use and one I keep with me most of the time.

 

 

 

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Ever Expanding

Tags

artistry, growth, history, learning, photography, purpose, technique

One of the joys of any hobby is the never ending process of learning and experimenting. As long as you remain curious, there is always something new to learn and master.

Photography has been as exceptionally rich source of such pleasures from the time I seriously began to explore it as beyond a simple means to an end. I can trace that moment back to 2000 when I bought my first digital camera, a Casio point-and-shoot, and found myself beginning to become interested in the hows and whys of taking photographs.

It was a slow learning process. Nonetheless, with each new insight into camera technique, I became more adept at producing an interesting photograph. That process continued up until about 2013. At that point I was not only an effective master of my equipment, at that time a near-top-of-the-line Canon 5D Mark III and a clutch of ‘L’ lenses, but I was pretty much up to date with the latest technology too.

It was at this point that I began a radical reevaluation of my photography. I had reached some sort of apogee, but I was increasingly missing the point of what photography was all about. I had become seduced by technique and equipment and was in the process of losing whatever artistry I already possessed. In other words, I had become a commonplace competent digital photographer. I knew how to take the sort of photographs that get ‘oohs’ and ‘aaahs’. What I did not know was how to take the sort of photographs that spoke to my soul.

Something pretty radical was required. So I deliberately decided to step back, by-pass decades of technological advances, and move into older and by now decidedly unfashionable photographic techniques. Hence film.

Again, the learning process was steep. Although I began as a film photographer in my youth, I never really paid much attention to the doing. Now I was not only applying all the camera expertise I had acquired with my digital experience, but going much further into doing my own film developing and gelatin silver printing. Wet chemical processes far removed from the tidy world of a computer and keyboard.

As radical reinventions go, it was most effective. As film cameras are no longer made in any quantity, certainly not with today’s technological advances and are most often discontinued completely, I was compelled to hunt down used cameras. Beforehand, I rarely bought old or used equipment, caught up as I was in the thrill of the new. Soon I had a clutch of Canon EOS film bodies to match my lens collection. A Rolleiflex and a couple of Contax camera came my way from my father. My digital cameras were put to one side, not abandoned but far less used.

Concurrent with the use of these wonderful film instruments, I began to explore the history of photography. The aesthetics, artists and trends. It became clear that much of what was touted as new was no more than a reinvention of much that had been done in the past.

It was wholly liberating, this process. I began, perhaps for the first time, to feel like a real photographer. Not the best or most popular, but true to myself. That’s where I am today and this is exactly where I want to be.

 

 

5 Things I’ve Learned since taking up Film

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cameras, equipment, film, photography

1. Every improvement in camera technology since shutter/aperture control, effective light metering, the introduction of flash lighting and the use of roll film is convenient but unnecessary for everyday use. I might even leave light metering out that argument.
2. Old cameras are frequently easier and more ergonomic to use than the latest models.
3. Complexity is an enemy; simplicity a friend. This is truer now than ever with the absurd amount of marginally useful features built into the latest digital cameras.
4. Photography is not the product of the medium; it is the product of the vision of the photographer. The technology used is largely irrelevant to the realisation of that vision despite the entire photographic industry’s attempts to convince you otherwise.
5. There is no ‘right’ way of taking a photograph.

 

These insights are not much the product of using film per se. They derive from simple fact that once you remove yourself from the mainstream of photographic thought, the type that dominates the many photographic websites, current books on the subject, camera advertising and forum discussions, a remarkable clarity descends on the process.

It is astonishing how much photographic practice is driven by prevailing fashions. You see it everywhere. The desire to conform seems overwhelming. Vast amounts of words, images and videos are devoted to emulation and to technical discussions about the road to that conformity. Next to none are devoted to articulating and demonstrating an artistic vision that is stamped with true creativity and individuality.

It’s disheartening. The only joy is the realisation that photography is not wholly ruled by blanket conformity – some artists do rise above it and take you further into opening your eyes to new ways of seeing.

But, in reality, much the same sorts of observations could be made about any form of human endeavor. That’s why it’s essential to have developed some sort of critical facility. To see beyond the chaff. I can thank film for that.

Thank you, film.

A Lot to Think About

Tags

aesthetics, analysis, artistry, expectation, feelings, photography, purpose, social interaction, success, vision

Ever since I took a short online course in photographic aesthetics through MOMA, I’ve found myself going over and over the reasons why I take pictures.

There are plenty of alternatives. To garner acclaim, through display or competition entries (and winnings if lucky). To document my life. To transform my view of the world. To express, through choice and technique, a particular vision. To keep myself busy. To encourage me to visit new places. To look again at familiar places. To accumulate images to manipulate digitally. To generate artifacts. To play with chemistry. To put pictures up on the web, here and elsewhere. To be seen. To see.

All of these elements – and more – play some part. But perhaps the most pronounced divide that affects my photography is that between the social and the personal. Bridging this is the most difficult aspect of my art and one that I have not yet fully achieved.

How does this play out? Firstly through expectations. When I photograph with a social purpose in mind, essentially an image that is placed for public display, I find myself caught in a conundrum. Do I put out images that I know people will like? Or do I put out images that I like, even though there is no guarantee anyone else will? This relates crucially back to the making of the photograph. Am I making a piece that is deliberately crowd friendly? Or am I making a piece that is truly meaningful to me?

In the early days of my photography this question never really arose. My improvements were all technical and I was proud of them as such. I was learning how to make a photograph. As such, I frequently emulated what was out there and was satisfied with the emulation. But as time went by and I became more assured that I could make a technically competent photograph, it was no longer enough to emulate. Even when such emulations garnered a lot of praise, often from fellow photographers. Technique was no longer enough. Praise was no longer enough. Indeed, I began to become distrustful of both, realising that I was becoming boxed into a set of expectations.

This is how it stands today. Because I have become suspicious of the social aspects of photography, I do not enjoy making social photographs. Even though, for example to enter and maybe win competitions, social photographs are more likely to succeed and be judged successes. Instead my art has become more introspective, moving in directions away from the mainstream (such as embracing the niche interest of film photography). Whatever technical accomplishments I have gained remain, but my work is moving ever more towards the personal and my own peculiar set of passions and involvements.

I might still feel deeply unsettled and uncomfortable about this, ever nagged by the desire to fit in to some perceived standard of what photography should be, were it not for the insights provided by that dip into the world of photographic art. Successful art – the best successful art – works according to its own particular vision, a vision that is often at odds with prevailing fashions and fads. The greatest artists have always been willing to transcend expectation. It’s this insight that is helping me integrate into a coherent concept of what and who I am as a photographer. As I indicated at the beginning of this post, I’m not there yet. That’s why I am writing this! But I will get there, even if it is at some cost (like pulling myself away from seductively pleasing social interactions that work to undermine my particular vision by fostering conformity under the banner of excellence). Ultimately, everything boils down to what do you want out of your photography? Love of process – yes. Acclaim – yes, but with many caveats. Permanence – yes, but with no expectation of recognition of such, a contradictory concept I know. A historical record – absolutely. Artistry – yes, yes, yes.

A convoluted and perhaps over-thought analysis. In truth, my photography is simply an expression of my own character. I am and have always been an outsider. Whenever I get in with the in-crowd, I want out. I feel suffocated by conformity and expectation. Social success provides seconds of pleasure and a lingeringly bitter aftertaste. All I really need to do is to accept and acknowledge this. The art will follow.