Focal lengths are for controlling background to foreground presence

I often feel that many of us are attracted to different focal length lenses simply because of the difference in angle of view they provide.

Wide angle lenses allow us to fit more into the frame, but at the same time, they make everything smaller. Conversely, zooming up the focal lengths, allows us to fit less into the frame, and what is included, tends to be more present.

So changing focal lengths affects two things in one go: angle of view, and subject presence. Only, most of us really only think about angle of view.

In this post, I'd like to discuss how using a fixed focal length and zooming with our feet, can radically change the compositional balance between foreground and background subjects.

In the above image, this is how I perceived the location in my mind's eye.

I had decided I loved the background mountains so much that I wanted them to have as much presence in the frame as the foreground bush.

However, as soon as I got close to where the bush was, I ended up with the shot below (note how the background mountain is smaller, and less present in the frame compared to the bush):

What happened was that as soon as I got close to the bush, I realised I needed my trusty wide angle lens (24mm) in order to fit in the bush and also the mountain. I put it on my camera, and all of a sudden everything in the frame got smaller - the mountain and also the bush.

My next step was to walk  closer to the bush to give it more presence. This certainly worked - the bush became pretty dominant in the frame, but the background did not change in presence at all. And this is a key point to think about here:

"When you put on a wide angle lens, everything gets smaller, and if you move closer to your foreground, it changes dramatically while your background remains the same."

My foreground became more dominant, while my background became less dominant.

Here is the same location, shot at 24mm again, but in this instance, I moved  about 3 feet back:

Notice how the background mountains have not changed in size, but that the foreground bush has become less dominant. The key point to this is:

"By keeping a fixed focal length (in this case 24mm), and moving closer to, or further away from the foreground subject, only the foreground subject changes in size and becomes more dominant, or less dominant respectively"

Ok, so you may be asking - well how did Bruce manage to get the first shot then? And the simple answer is that I used the same focal length as my eye - I used the equivalent of a 50mm lens, to ensure my background mountains were the same size as I had originally perceived them. I then walked back until I could fit in the bush. The key point about this is that:

"When you zoom in, everything gets bigger, but you can only influence your immediate foreground. By moving back 10 feet or so, you can radically change your foreground, while keeping the background the same size."

For this very reason, I prefer to set a fixed focal length, and zoom with my feet. It's also the reason why I prefer fixed focal length lenses to zooms (at least until you fully understand the properties of using different focal lengths).

The key points about doing this are:

1. When moving around a landscape with the same focal length, the background does not change size - even if I move 20 feet back, or 30 feet back, the background remains the same. The foreground however, changes dramatically.
2. I figure out how big I want my background to be and zoom the lens to fit the background it in the frame.
3. I then zoom with my feet. By moving nearer towards / further away from my foreground, I am able to get the right amount of proportion of foreground to balance with the background.

Those of you who have attended workshops with me, will know that I spend a lot of time balancing objects within the frame. I often think of proportions and spacial distances between objects and how they relate to each other. For many of us, this is as natural as computing where to put our hand to catch a ball, while for the rest of us, it's something we have to work at very much.

By zooming with a zoom lens on location, you make composition harder - because you move two goal posts at the same time: angle of view, and presence of objects within the frame.

"I find it is rarely a good idea to stand at one spot and zoom, because although I may fit everything I want into the frame, I'm not giving the background and foreground the correct amount of proportion to each other."

By using a fixed focal length, I have decided how big my background is going to be, and I use my feet to change the foreground presence to balance against my background. In the examples above, I chose to make the background mountain a certain size in the frame, and I then moved back and forth with my feet to increase / decrease the size of the foreground bush in relation to the background.

In other words, I spent a bit of time balancing the dominance of foreground subject with background subject.

If you own a zoom lens, then try to avoid zooming in and out to fit a subject into the frame. Instead, determine what size you want your background to be, and then zoom to fit that. Then keep the focal length static and move with your feet to fit in the foreground.

"Focal lengths are really for controlling background to foreground presence."

Subliminal Inspiration

When I turned 12 years old, I found music for the first time in my life. Up until that moment, I had been an arty kid who spent a lot of his time drawing and painting. The arts I guess had always featured largely in my future.

One of the bands that I got into at the age of 12, was OMD. Initially attracted by the pop singles they produced, I found this album to be completely opposite to what I had imagined. It was dark, atmospheric, inspired by the sounds of Joy Division more than pop. I loved it as soon as I heard it and it opened up my mind to the possibilities of atmosphere in music. This is not the OMD of chart success that we all know, it is a brooding album and I think it's perhaps their best. If you like dark brooding electronica, then try 'Statues' on this album.

Anyway, the album was released in 1980. I've grown up with it and I've never tired of it. Sure sometimes there has been many years between listens, but I still come back to it from time to time to get re-acquainted with the teenage me.

Tonight I'm listening to it and I'm looking at the cover, and I can't help wondering if that cover has been more influential for me than I had ever considered before. The photograph, I had assumed, was of Glencoe for a long time. It encapsulates everything that is moody and dark about Scotland.

Since I got into photography, I've always been attracted to mood and atmosphere. I think I'm a product of the environment I've grown up in. With parents from the north east of Scotland (Sutherland) I've spent most of my free time up there on holidays and I think the landscape has always rubbed off on me, even if I didn't really know it at the time.

Looking at this album cover (which is not of Glencoe, but somewhere else that I know really well - can you guess where?), It strikes me that my love for atmosphere in music seeped through into my photography. The stage was set when I was a teenager so it seems.

Popular culture influences us in many ways. I'm sure the photograph on the cover of OMD's Organisation album has played a much bigger part in my development as a creative person, than I can ever know. Maybe there is a similar album cover in your collection which has had a similar impression on you?

The invalidity of spirit-levels

I've been in Norway for the past three weeks running two consecutive tours. While I've been here, I've had a few discussions with participants regarding the validity of using spirit-levels when composing.

In this post, I'd like to put forward a counter-argument for using spirit-levels when doing landscape photography. I'm sure some people will disagree with me or feel that spirit-levels have helped them a lot, but this is really just my point of view, so bear with me on this one.

Many of us use a spirit-level of some kind to help us get our horizons level. There are a couple of issues with this as I see it:

1) The first is that we are only levelling our camera with gravity. We are not balancing the objects within the frame when we use a spirit level, and this is where we get it wrong.

Many horizons are what I call 'false-horizons'. A false-horizon is one where the contours of the land are not in sympathy with gravity. In the image example below, the edge of the lake appears to be higher at the right-hand side of the image and lower at the left-hand side. The camera had been levelled with a spirit level, yet the false horizon is not level with the frame of the image.

What is happening here is that the contour of the lake rises as we move further towards infinity in the frame. Leveling with gravity makes no sense because the horizon is actually rising. If we are to level our horizon, there is only one thing we must level it with - and that is the edge of the frame. Here is an adjusted image to illustrate how the image was recomposed to ensure the false-horizon is in balance with the frame of the picture:

I now no longer use a spirit-level for a few reasons:

a) I need to level  objects within the frame - with the actual frame, and not with gravity.

b) balancing objects without the aid of a tool such as a spirit-level means I am more in control of the overall composition. I have to think more about where all the objects are and how they balance with each other. I believe using a spirit-level takes this level of awareness away from me, and thus the compositions I would come up with are less focussed as a result.

2) The second issue I have with using a spirit level is that they allow us to compose images while we are not able to interpret the composition correctly. The reason why many horizons can be so far off the mark for many photographers is to do with how we physically stand behind our camera. Many of us often cock our heads sideways to view either through the eye-piece, or at the live-view screen. Most of us are not aware we're doing it, but what we're attempting to do is balance a composition while our head is not level with the viewfinder. This may not seem like a problem, but it really is. It is extremely difficult to balance a composition when viewing sideways because we simply can't interpret the scenery so clearly when we do. Take this image for instance:

I've rotated this image by 40 degrees to simulate how you would see this composition if you were viewing it through an eye-piece or on a live-view screen with your head cocked to 40 degrees. In the process of doing so, we find the image a little harder to interpret and understand compositionally. But here is the point: it's not easy to tell if the horizon is level in relation to the picture's frame. It looks level within the context of the frame its in, but is it really?

In the image below, I've rotated the entire frame to 0 degrees, to simulate how you would see the above composition if you were viewing it through an eye-piece or live-view with your head level to the camera:

Looking straight on to the picture, we can now see that the horizon is actually off. That's because we're able to interpret things more easily when we are head-on with the camera. Not when we've got our head cocked sideways.

But let me ask you this... what exactly is the horizon in this image? We actually build up an 'imaginary horizon' based on the contents of the frame. In the instance of this image, it's a strange combination of vertical lines in the red house, and also the struts of the pier. But there's a degree of 'keystone' effect to this image because I actually had the camera pointed down toward the ground. If I show you the levelled image, you can still see distortion in the house:

You could argue that the image is still not straight. I think the real answer is that the image is as straight as it can be, taking into consideration all the keystone distortions that are apparent in the composition. We've somehow balanced the left-had side of the house with the right-hand side, and decided there is some level of balance in there. We levelled the contents of the picture within the context of the frame. Not with gravity.

Ok, I know it's not easy sometimes to get your head level with the eye-piece of your camera, but I always make a concious effort to try to get my head as level as I can. If it means I need to lie down on the ground to keep my head level with the camera, then I do it. If it means I need to bend my legs to keep my head level, then I will do it. Because when I am level, I'm not only able to notice if my false-horizons are level, but also if all the objects within the frame balance with each other. In other words, having my head level with the camera enables me to improve my compositions.

A spirit-level only levels our camera with gravity, but it does nothing to help us understand and fine-tune our compositions, and it does nothing to help us balance false-horizons. We must learn to level our images based on what is within the frame, and the only way to achieve this, is to keep our eye level with our camera.

Let your eye, rather than a spirit-level decide what is good. It's really up to your own internal sense of balance and composition to get it right.