Project 1 - Exercise 2.1: Zoom
"Find a scene that has depth. From a fixed position, take a sequence of five or six shots at different focal lengths without changing your viewpoint. As you page through the shots on the preview screen it almost feels as though you're moving through the scene. So the ability to change focal lengths has an obvious use: rather than physically move toward or away from your subject, the lens can do it for you. But zooming is also a move towards abstraction, which, as the word itself tells us, is the process of 'drawing things away' from their context."
18mm
24mm
35mm
45mm
55mm
The two series of shots on the left and right were both shot using the specific focal lengths indicated on the lens barrel of my DSLR; 18mm, 24mm, 35mm, 45mm and 55mm. I also used a tripod to keep framing consistent and the camera was set to aperture priority.
There is a sense of steadily travelling through the image in both series to a central destination in the background which serves as the viewpoint of both.
The two shots taken at 18mm are the closest to a 'real life' view of what we would see if we were to take the place of the camera and look at the scene.
With each zoom we loose part of the scene and what makes up the depth of the photo leaning the shots towards a more abstract piece of work. This for me makes the original 18mm shot loose some of its purpose. I mostly use the zoom for a reason - to create an image with meaning and that is pleasing to the eye.
18mm
24mm
35mm
45mm
55mm
18mm
24mm
30mm
36mm
40mm
48mm
55mm
The series of shots to the left were mistakenly taken on shutter priority mode and my ISO setting wasn't quite right but I wanted to include them in this exercise as I feel out of the three series, they display the most effective view of depth. I also played around with the focal lengths a bit more and didn't stick to what was on the lens barrel. They were taken in the underground at Marble Arch Station in London.
The shots show a good use of depth and each new image is like you are taking a couple of steps forward through the tunnel edging slightly closer to one of the recent climate change protesters walking through the tunnel.
"Create a final image for your sequence. In EYV the important thing is to present your work in context, so make it clear in your notes what you've been looking at and reading. The focus here is on imagination and research skills rather than the technical aspects of zoom."
Original image
Final image after cropping and editing in Lightroom
After watching Antonioni's film 'Blow up', where a photographer thinks he has witnessed a murder with his camera I have created the image above.
The photographer sees a couple in the park and follows them to sneakily take some shots for his new book. The woman spots him and confronts him. The photographer takes more shots as she walks away across the park. After blowing up his images to inspect them and see where the women's eye line is looking, he sees a man hidden in the bushes holding a gun. He then blows up another image and sees the dead body of the man the women was with hidden in the bushes.
The photographer blows up the images so large they become grainy and hard to make out. Using Lightroom I continuously cropped the image above and played around with colours and light to create an abstract image.
As I said above, the original image was taken in Marble Arch station near where part of the recent climate change protests have been happening in London recently. At first glance at the original photo you may not realise that the person walking towards the camera was a part of the protest. By zooming in and cropping the photo for my final image I have made something that was quite subtle at first become blatant and obvious.
For me this creates a meaning behind the image - If we take the time to look a little closer at something we may see what we didn't before - something we didn't expect.