13-AUG-2012
Driveway, Wildcat Hill, Carmel Highlands, California, 2012
When I visited the Carmel area, I searched for vestiges of one of my favorite photographers – Edward Weston – who lived, worked and died here more than 50 years ago. I had been reading his journals, and knew what to look for. I spoke to locals at both a photography gallery bearing his name and at the retail shopping building that was once the site of the studio where he made some of his most famous images, including iconic nudes and peppers. I photographed at nearby Point Lobos, where he made many of his most important landscapes. And I visited the site of his home on Wildcat Hill, now owned by a grandson. The modest house on the hill where Weston lived and died is now hidden in the trees covering the hill, but there is still a mailbox bearing his name, along with the entrance to a driveway, just off the public road. I made this photograph of that driveway and converted it to black and white, the medium Weston used to make his own images. A curtain of trees clings to the edge of the driveway, a virtual screen of privacy. The road curves away from these trees, rising towards the unknown. The focal point of the image is the small, hand lettered sign that simply says “Weston Private Driveway.” By using a 24mm wideangle focal length, I am able to move close enough to that sign to make it legible, yet also retain the curtain of old trees, most of them dating from Weston’s lifetime, as well as the curving roadway that carries the eye through the image.
16-AUG-2012
Cityscape, Downtown Los Angeles, California, 2012
The towers that soar over downtown Los Angeles are at their best late in the day. They rise here from the palm-lined street, reaching towards a rich blue sky streaked with delicate clouds. Two starbursts of light bounce off the highest of the structures, providing the focal point for the image. By using a 24mm wideangle lens to make this image, I am able to frame that skyline with the sign-bearing home of the California Jewelry Mart at left and the street light at right, which seems aimed at the highest of the buildings in the middle of the image.
08-SEP-2010
At water’s edge, Mission Beach, San Diego, California, 2010
The tracks of lifeguard trucks patrolling Mission Beach offer leading lines that seem to energize this lone runner sprinting along the water’s edge. Made with a 24mm wideangle lens, the image expands the flow of the tracks, the sand, and the overhead clouds, minimizing the scale of the beach houses in the background.
10-JUN-2009
Library, Scottsdale Civic Center, Scottsdale, Arizona, 2009
An enormous golden quill pen hangs over the atrium of the Scottsdale public library. I moved outside the building to photograph it, backing up until my 14mm wideangle lens would include not only the pen but also the soaring ceiling that supports it. The quill pen appears twice -- once as itself, and again as a reflection in still another window behind it. I create scale incongruity with this lens by comparing the huge building with its enormous decoration to the tiny figures emerging from the door at lower left.
11-JUN-2009
Convention Center, Phoenix, Arizona, 2009
The towering grand atrium entrance, shared by the Phoenix Convention Center and Symphony Hall, features a 40-foot tall sculpture in the form of a mirror, entitled “Art is guaranty of sanity,” by Louis Bourgeois. I photographed this man sitting below the mirror with a 14mm wideangle lens turned vertically. By using such a wide lens, I stress the size of the building by incongruously juxtaposing it with the lone figure. The lens is so wide, that it not only includes the huge sculpture, but lifts the eye all the way up to the ceiling as well.
26-MAR-2008
Dog day, Fatehpur Sikri, Indian, 2008
One of Emperor Akbar’s huge windows dwarfs the small dog sleeping below it. My 28mm wideangle lens, held vertically, allows me to come close enough to stress the textures and detail of the 16th century palace, yet still manage to include a dog seeking shade and rest on a brutally hot afternoon.
06-APR-2008
Taxi, Mumbai, India 2008
There are 60,000 taxis roaming the teeming streets of Mumbai. We rode in three of them during our brief one-day visit. (Two of the three drivers got lost.) The taxis are tiny, and uniquely Indian in décor. I made this picture with a 28mm wideangle lens from the backseat, and was able to embrace the driver, the back of the front seat, the windshield, and the mirrored ceiling that added so much character to the journey. This was the final image I made on my three-week journey through India in the early spring of 2008.
29-DEC-2007
Commerce, Saigon, Vietnam, 2007
Not only have western products found success in Vietnam, but western advertising techniques have taken hold as well, particularly on the main shopping streets of Saigon. I observed this cross section of business in action on Saigon’s busy LeLoi Boulevard. I moved in within a foot or two of the large poster of the hamburger, fried chicken, and French Fries, making it the anchor of this shot by filling half of my 28mm wideangle frame. Yet the wideangle format still leaves me enough space to include part of another poster, a doorway with a motorbike parked within it, and finally someone standing in an ATM alcove. The beauty of wideangle photography is its inclusiveness and emphasis. However we must move in, not out, in order to take advantage of this resource. And when I say “move in,” I am talking about being a matter of only a few feet from the prime subject.
08-NOV-2007
White House ruin in context, Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, 2007
The thousand foot high cliffs of Canyon de Chelly rise straight up from the canyon floor, overshadowing everything down below, including the ancient ruins known as The White House. The magic of a “cliff house” comes from its setting in a niche carved into the walls of a vast canyon. To give a sense of he sheer scale of this house’s setting, I used a 28mm wideangle lens here, embracing the old ruins at the site’s base for the sake of comparison. I fill in the top with leaves and branches. Their downward thrusts echo the downward thrust of the directional flow on the rock itself. By using a true wideangle format, I can get close enough to express the detail on both buildings and rocks, yet still express the nature of the Canyon itself – vast in scale, brilliant in color.
20-FEB-2007
Devil’s Golf Course, Death Valley National Park, California, 2007
The floor of Death Valley is a vast evaporating dish covering 200 square miles. Here it is crusted with lumpy salt pinnacles, the residue of a lake that evaporated 2,000 years ago. In the summer, the ground temperature here approaches 200 degrees (F). The point of this picture is its vast flat scale. Only a wideangle lens can do justice to a subject this wide. Using a camera with a 28mm lens, I moved as close as I could to the salt pinnacles in the foreground without losing a sense of the vast place itself. This demonstrates a great strength of wideangle photography. A true wideangle lens of 24mm or 28mm will allow you to get as close as you want to the subject to stress detail, yet still retain enough sweeping content to provide an idea of scale.
24-DEC-2006
Dinner in the square, Place Jemaa el-Fna, Marrakesh, 2006
Inexpensive yet ample dinners are served by the thousands each evening in the Place Jemaa el-Fna. Locals, as well as tourists, throng to them. I used a 28mm wideangle lens held vertically to stretch the scene, anchoring the image with a pair of hands at the bottom, and allowing a twisting line of twelve soft drink bottles to draw the eye into and through the image. Meanwhile, a family of eight enjoys dinner around the perimeter.
15-OCT-2006
Boulders, Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, California, 2006
In this image, the sky plays a bigger role than usual because of the thin clouds radiating out from the group of massive boulders. The 28mm lens allows me to move in and stress the textures of the huge rock that anchors the image. The boulders incongruously lie upon its top like giant walnuts. The clouds and sky offer a third layer that completes the image. The warm evening light creates rich coloration in both rock and sky, celebrating the work of nature.
29-SEP-2006
How far is far? Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2006
I made this image with a 28mm wideangle lens about one hour after I made a 230mm telephoto image from the same spot (To see it, click on the thumbnail at the bottom.). They are two entirely interpretations of the same subject. In this image I am speaking of tremendous distances and wide-open spaces. It exaggerates an already sweeping scene, a long straight road, and a vast sky just after dawn illuminates its clouds. It is all about convergence. The double yellow line, the two white lines, and the rough edging of the highway itself all lead to the same vanishing point and the disappear altogether. Note Druid Mountain in the distance. Compare it to how Druid Mountain looks in my telephoto shot. This comparison between wideangle and telephoto optics speak volumes about the camera’s ability to distort reality in order to express an idea. Perhaps the most sobering fact about this comparison is that 230mm is not really a very long telephoto, nor is 28mm really a true wideangle lens. We can go a lot longer and much, much wider, which would make the disparity between this pair of views even greater.
27-SEP-2006
Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2006
By far the most spectacularly colored water in Yellowstone is this hot spring. There must be a particularly large algae colony of Rhodophyta (Red algae) in this water, because the color was so vivid. Since the presence of algae depends upon the degree of heat in the water, coloration is a byproduct of this heat as well. As you can see from the steam rising in the background, this spring is very hot. I used the 35mm end of my zoom on this shot. This focal length is probably the most commonly used focal length of them all, because so many zoom lenses begin at 35mm. It is wide, but certainly not a true wideangle. I would call it a semi-wideangle or semi-normal lens. It certainly does its job in this image. It allows me to get close enough to the algae to make detail work, yet I am also able to get a significant amount of it into the frame. It also lets me include important background context. Grand Prismatic Spring is still recovering from the 1988 wildfires that scorched this area. Note all the fallen trees on the hills beyond. We have the ugly and the beautiful, side-by-side. The 35mm wideangle lens makes it all happen here.
20-OCT-2006
First Light, Mono Lake, California, 2006
When I use the wideangle lens for landscapes, I will often try to create an emphatic foreground subject by moving in on it, while squeezing the background into the image at the top and leaving out as much sky as I can. (The only time I will include the sky as a major element in my images is when it contains dramatic cloud formations or expressive coloration.) In this image, made with a 28mm wideangle lens, I stress the day’s first light as it grazes the flowers of the massed sage in the foreground. This light is then repeated in the background along the edges of the ancient limestone towers that line Mono Lake. It is a surreal, primitive scene, giving the viewer a unique sense of place.
16-OCT-2006
Sage at Mount Whitney, near Lone Pine, California, 2006
Mount Whitney, at the upper center of this image, is over 14,000 feet tall. It is the highest mountain in the US, except for Alaska’s Mount McKinley. By using the 28mm wideangle lens, I make it incongruously small, far smaller than the colorful mass of sage at my feet. My concept is a simple one: the sage and the mountain are both the work of nature, and in the natural world, the highest mountain is really no more important than a single bush of sage. By using the wideangle lens in a vertical format, I can create this incongruous difference in scale.
10-JUL-2006
La Posada’s front porch, Winslow, Arizona, 2006
Trains have rumbled past the front entrance of La Posada, a historic railroad hotel, for almost 80 years. Once they hauled passengers. Today they move freight cars that stretch as far as the eye can see. Using a 28mm wideangle focal length, I extend the length of both tracks and train, diminish the size of the distant train watchers for scale incongruity, and turn day into night by placing the sun behind a light tower and shooting directly into it.
03-APR-2006
Choices, Lijiang, China, 2006
Another critical advantage of wideangle photography is tremendous depth of field. This simply means that with a wideangle focal length, you can get everything in focus from near to far. This came in handy, for example, when I made this shot of my hosts in Lijiang, pbase photographers Alister and Allie Benn
http://www.pbase.com/alibenn studying the menu at a local restaurant. I was able to get reasonably legible focus on everything from Alister’s budding beard to the patient waitresses expression and beyond. Usually, the closer we get to the subject with our lens, the smaller the area of sharp focus becomes. But with a wideangle (even a moderate wideangle such as this 35mm focal length) lens, we can get very close and still get plenty of focus depth in our images
28-MAR-2006
War Memorial, Ishigaki, Okinawa, Japan, 2006
A soaring eagle in a city park memorializes Ishigaki's casualties in World War II. To make that eagle seem to soar, I had to move in very close to the pedestal and shoot straight up at the statue. Yet that pedestal was relatively low – the eagle was only about eight to ten feet off the ground. The closer I got to the pedestal, the less eagle I could fit into my frame. I zoomed the lens as wide as it would go (35mm) and the eagle still did not fit. I solved that problem by going to another camera with a wider lens (28mm) and it worked perfectly.
02-APR-2006
Long walk, Baisha, China, 2006
I saw this lone figure walking the early morning streets of this small farming village outside of Lijiang and wanted to create a sense of scale incongruity between him and his environment. I needed to stretch my picture and make the house in the foreground as large as possible, the road as long as possible, and the man as small as possible. I shot this scene at three different wideangle focal lengths (35mm, 28mm, and 24mm) to see which worked best. This time, my choice was 24mm. It was an ideal tool to solve this challenge.
09-FEB-2006
Heaven and Earth, Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada, 2006
This park received its name from the appearance of its red sandstone formations.
I used the Leica D-Lux 2’s 28mm wideangle lens and its 16:9 aspect ratio to produce an image relating the explosive burst of clouds at upper left to a similar outburst from a bush at lower right. The wideangle reach was essential in relating both top and bottom elements, yet keeping the sandstone formations caught between them at a reasonable size. A wider lens would make the red rocks and distant mountains too small to notice. A longer focal length would have cropped out either the cloud or the bush or both.
26-OCT-2005
On the Avenida Jaurez, Guanajuato, Mexico, 2005
This image is about space and depth. The wideangle lens excels at implying depth, but in order to do so, it needs a strong foreground anchor. In this case, I anchor the image with the woman and child. They were only a few feet in front of me, but a 24mm focal length can embrace not only their full length, but the shadows they cast as well. The people in the background are really not as far away they seem, but the wideangle lens tends to make distant people or objects very small. The Basilica of Guanajuato, which rises in the background, seems to be a great distance from the camera, but it’s only about a block away. By making everything smaller than it looks to the eye, the wideangle lens spreads the image not only in width, but also in implied depth. I converted this image to black and white because I wanted to create a double abstraction. I am shooting straight into the sun, which is just over the Basilica and out of the frame. A streak of flare suggests its presence. This strong backlighting, along with my deliberate underexposure, has turned everything into a silhouette, and stresses the roughened texture of the cobblestone street. Black and white is a medium of abstraction, and by choosing to make this image monochromatic, as well as underexposed, roughly textured and deeply shadowed, I’ve tried to make time stand still. The wideangle perspective puts us all into this image – we might as well jump in, and start walking.
25-MAY-2005
Pyramid, Scottsdale, Arizona, 2005
By angling my wideangle lens upwards and tilting it to one side, I was able to turn the corner of a simple stucco building into a pyramid-like structure. The wideangle distorts perspective at close range, and I’ve used it here to do just that. Wideangle lenses also make it easier to shoot images built as a series of layers. The bush in the foreground is my foreground layer, anchoring the image. The building is the middle layer. I noticed birds flying overhead, and kept shooting from this position until I able to freeze one of them to create my third layer. Its outstretched wings echo the thrust of the leaves on the plantings in my foreground layer. The pyramidically shaped building now resembles a monument, symbolizing man’s dreams of eternal power. The plants surrounding it reach towards the sun, a reminder of nature’s vitality. The bird soaring overhead repeats shape of the leaves with its wings, adding the promise of freedom to this image.
Mekong River Welcome, Banlathan, Laos, 2005
This is a simple scenic subject, yet the use of wideangle perspective has added a sense of layered depth that pulls the viewer into the scene. It also gives a sense of scale to the vastness of the Mekong valley itself. I used my 24mm conversion lens to stress the rocky, rugged quality of the land itself, filling the foreground layer with sand and rock. This leads the eye to the middle ground layer, where we see a thatched roof boat shelter, a river boat, and up on the hill a group of boys who served as our welcoming committee. By deliberately placing the boys in the middle ground layer, I made them small enough to be symbolic, rather than describe them physically, as well as giving the scene a sense of grand scale. A thin trail of boats and rocks along the shoreline draws our eye into the background layer of this image, where large hills give us a sense of the Mekong Valley’s topography.
21-JAN-2005
Four Nagas, Luang Prabang, Laos, 2005
These dragon like creatures guarding Buddhist temples in Laos actually represent serpent-gods called Nagas, which have long been associated with wisdom and immortality and appear in various forms at places of worship in Egypt, China, India, South and Central America, and Indochina. They are intended to proclaim ferocity as well, and to stress that point I use the wideangle lens turned vertically to create a three-layer image. The Nagas occupy the foreground layer. My low vantage point causes the points on their heads to carry the eye up to the lavish and ornate golden façade of the temple they protect, which is the middle ground layer. The dark negative space within the façade is the background layer – curving black arches, which echo the thrusts of the horns in the first layer. The eye moves back into the mysterious darkness of that background layer, adding a third measure of expression to the image. Ferocity, Wealth, and Mystery – all organized in space by the use of the 24mm wideangle lens.
23-JAN-2005
Buddha Image, Vientiane, Laos, 2005
By getting down low, moving in, and shooting up with a 24mm wideangle lens, I tried to create a tremendous feeling of authority. Since Buddha represents divinity, and divinity is another form of authority, this effect is appropriate. Once again, this is a three-layer image. The statue, or “image” as it is called in Laos, dominates my foreground layer. But the middle ground layer – a flowing decorative golden panel rising towards heaven, is equally important. Because of this low, close angle, and the distorting optics of the wideangle lens, the ribbon is much wider at the bottom than at the tip. Because of this, it seems to rises toward “heaven,” and as it does it seems to carve an illuminated path through the background layer of darkness. Buddha, the subject, stabilizes the photograph and gives it its identity. But the golden path cutting through darkness on the way to heaven adds critical context for meaning. Without it, it would just be another statue picture.
30-JAN-2005
At Rest, Khong Island, Laos, 2005
Wideangle environmental portraits can be highly effective if you move in on your subject and wrap critical context for meaning around it. I was shooting very close to the young woman, the subject of my photograph. I placed her head near the top of my frame and her feet near the bottom, yet I was still able to embrace much of the bed upon which she sits, and upon which her mother rests. The young woman is my foreground layer, the bed and mother the middle ground layer, and the neighboring yards and houses the background layer. This layering stacks the picture in substance – the subject herself is a study in relaxation, confidence, and Laotian costume. She contrasts both in size and attitude to her mother. She is upright, her mother is not. She is much larger, implying her primacy as a caregiver. She is relaxed and confident, while her mother seems frail and quite vulnerable. The background gives us the atmosphere of a Laotian house – the lower flow is open on all four sides and the earth floor stretching back into the picture tells us even more about the nature of this dwelling. All of this is made possible by two things: my choice of vantage point, and the 24mm wideangle lens.
Corner Stall, Pakse, Laos, 2005
I carefully used the optics of my 24mm wideangle lens to imply a sense of depth by selecting the corner stall of this market as my subject. It was open to traffic on two sides, and allowed me to move in just behind the corner of the stall, and anchor the picture with the table in the lower left hand corner and the mat at lower center. This foreground layer is very important because it provides a base upon which everything else rests. The subjects themselves dominate the middle layer of this image – the products on sale here are arrayed behind a woman holding an umbrella and her daughter who reaches out to fix something just as a woman walks past – only inches away –with her lunch in her hands. She pays no attention to the stall she is passing, or the people within it. The background layer adds context for the busy marketplace – we see more stalls, people, carts, and umbrellas. The wideangle embraces all of this and more, including plenty of negative space for that woman to walk into. The ebb and a flow of the market itself is symbolized within this little scene.
Thousand-year-old Buddha image, Ananda Temple, Bagan, Myanmar, 2005
This an excellent example of how a wideangle lens can get large subjects into a picture, even in tight quarters. I wanted to not only include this huge Buddha statue (it stood more than 30 feet tall) as my background layer, but also a foreground layer featuring a silhouetted worshipper seated within rectangular prayer area, and a middle ground layer holding a soaring softly illuminated archway. I was limited in how far I could back up, because of the height of the arch. If I walked back any further it would have chopped into the decorative area behind the giant Buddha image. The vertical sweep of my 24mm wideangle lens allowed me to place all three layers in a coherent relationship. Neither a 35mm nor 28mm wideangle would have allowed me to make this picture.
22-JAN-2005
Big Baguettes, Luang Prabang, Laos, 2005
Laos, like Viet Nam, was once part of France’s overseas empire. The French brought the baguette to Laos, and while its empire is long gone, its bread remains. This picture is a good example of “having your cake and eating it, too” as I indicated in my introduction to this gallery. (I should have said “having your baguette and eating it, too.”) This image offers that “richly layered sense of depth,” I mentioned. By moving closer to exaggerate the scale of the baguettes as my foreground layer subject, I make their textures and rhythms far more detailed. Their stacked vertical placement creates leading lines that draw us into the image. The middle layer remains just as sharp, and features the determined young sandwich maker himself and the fixings he uses to make them. The background layer retains the same level of sharpness and provides context for the market itself. You can see how a sense of depth is implied – the baguettes are larger in size than the boy who runs this stand. And the boy, in turn, is much larger than the people who move through the market behind him. These contrasting scale relationships are the key to suggesting the illusion of depth within a two dimensional image. It is the 24mm wideangle’s control of perspective that allows me to organize this picture in this manner.
Fishing Nets, Yangon, Myanmar, 2005
You can readily see how quickly the piles of fishing nets decrease in size as you move from the solidly anchored foreground layer into the middle layer of this image, which features two steps and smaller stacks of nets. That’s because I placed my 24mm lens so close to these nets that it was almost touching them. I knew this close vantage point would create a massive foreground anchor on the left hand side of the picture. The first two layers provide context to the man in the background layer, who becomes the subject of this picture. His rather tentative attitude, and the delicate net he is working on, expresses the point of this picture.
New Paint, Old Building, Yangon, Myanmar, 2005
This image offers a good example of barrel distortion. Note how the doors on either end bend towards the middle of the picture, and how the sidewalk seems to curve. Actually, the doors stand perpendicular to the ground, and the sidewalk is really straight. To some, this distortion may be a flaw. There are expensive wideangle lenses that do not exhibit such barrel distortion, but not for cameras such as the one I use. I regard such mild barrel distortion as an asset, a form of emphasis. The appearance of this crumbling building in Yangon’s Indian Quarter is subtly altered. It appears to stretch, to be larger than it actually is. Since there is only one layer in this image, the illusion of the curved street serves to imply depth. The only time that barrel distortion is distracting is when a human face or body is bent or stretched out of proportion. Such a problem does not exist here. The three men, wearing longyi sarongs, the Burmese national costume for both genders, are not distorted because of their central position in the frame. Only the information towards the edges of a wideangle image is subject to such bending. These men await customers in front of their paint store, while their own antiquated building, which has seen empires rise and fall in old Rangoon, incongruously very much needs the product they sell.
Reclining Buddha, Bagon, Myanmar, 2005
The Manuha Temple was built in 1059 by a king held captive in Bagan. Its sad reclining Buddha figure, cramped within the narrow confines of the pagoda, is said to symbolize the distressed soul of the defeated king. It would have been impossible to get this much of the head and shoulders of this massive sculpture into my frame without using a 24mm wideangle lens. The pagoda was a long narrow building with barely enough space for small passage running the length of the figure. Another advantage of a wideangle lens is that it is able to emphasize the form of the subject itself by stressing either its horizontal or vertical thrust, depending, of course, upon how the lens is oriented. In this case, I use the wideangle in its horizontal orientation. A reclining Buddha figure is strongly horizontal subject -- a good match of form and content.
01-FEB-2005
Reclining Buddha, Yangon, Myanmar, 2005
This is a similar subject to the preceding example, yet it takes advantage of an entirely different use of the wideangle lens. The great reclining Buddha of Bagon was located in very tight building. The wideangle lens allowed me to some how make a photo of it. Yet this even larger reclining Buddha is housed in a massive structure with plenty of space to maneuver. Here the problem was not to somehow fit the Buddha into the frame. Instead, the goal is to stress the huge scale of the Buddha figure itself. The 24mm lens does this very well. I found a solitary monk praying to this enormous figure and used a vantage point that allowed me to create scale incongruity by contrasting scale relationships. I anchor the photo along its left hand edge, stressing the huge arm holding up the head, and I compare that big arm to the tiny monk in the lower right hand corner, who also uses his arms, but for a quite different purpose. The three layers in this image are stacked from left to right rather than from bottom to top. The foreground anchor is at left, the middle ground embraces the head and body of the Buddha figure, and the background features the point of the picture -- the tiny monk praying to the huge sculpture. Another incongruity stressed by the wideangle lens is the nature of the building itself. It could just as well be an industrial warehouse. Yet the Burmese use it as a house of worship. The wideangle effectively frames the Buddha in a mass of girders, panels, and towers, adding one incongruity to another.
Rice Farmers, Salavan Province, Laos, 2005
The rice farmers we saw in Southern Laos were all women. They worked long hours under a blazing sun, hacking and cutting -- backbreaking labor, work essential for survival. This group stopped working for a few moments to talk to us about their lives and problems. All were married with numerous children. Medical care and education were minimal. Their prospects for a better life are grim. To best tell their story, I chose to use my very small Canon G6 with its 24mm wideangle conversion lens, and placed it on the ground amidst the rice within a few feet of the woman at right. Because it has a flip up viewfinder, I did not have to lie face down in the dirt to frame my picture. I simply looked down into the viewfinder. The woman in the foreground, who is listening to the tales told by the woman in the middle ground, is my anchor layer. Her face is abstracted in silhouette. Her rusty rice cutting machete in hand, she could be all of us. The focal point of this image is the woman in the middle ground. Her face is turned to eloquently catch the light, a study in vulnerability. The third woman becomes the background layer. Notice how the heads diminish in size from layer to layer. All of these women are within six feet of my lens, yet each becomes a separate figure, receding in scale and lending the illusion of depth to the image. All of this is the result of my very low and very close vantage point using the 24mm wideangle lens.
Motor Row, Indian Quarter, Yangon, Myanmar, 2005
An entire block is devoted to selling reconditioned motors of all kinds in Yangon's Indian Quarter. As this street flows on, doctors ply their specialties, Indian foods are sold, and signs featuring plastic letters are cut by hand. To best capture the flavor of this hectic street market, I chose to shoot unobtrusively from waist level, using the Canon G6 with its flip up viewfinder and 24mm wideangle converter lens. These men were looking right at me – I was only a foot or two away from them. But they could not figure out what I was doing, since I did not have my camera up in front of my face like most photographers. I could make eye contact with them, nodding my head and giving them a big smile. I wanted to engage them at close quarters, encouraging a response, and respond they did. Each of them intently studies me, and in turn studies you. And you study them. The wideangle lens used up close like this can be an intimate story telling tool, particularly when used at waist level. The men become the focal point as my foreground anchor layer. The sweep of the street behind them becomes context as the middle ground and background layers are filled with mechanical objects and busy people. It just keeps on going like this in Old Rangoon’s Indian Quarter, blocks and blocks of people doing business from their doorsteps. This image easily could have fallen apart into incoherent chaos, as often happens with wideangle lenses used on busy and complex subject matter. My close up wideangle vantage point, creating this emphatic anchor layer and the diagonal thrust of the image from lower left towards upper right, turns potential chaos into both order and meaning.
Street Phones, Indian Quarter, Yangon, Myanmar, 2005
I saw no pay phones in Yangon, the capital city of Myanmar. Very few cell phones, either. Instead, people can cheaply make or receive calls at street side tables such as this one on a crowded street in the Indian Quarter. To tell this story, I brought my 24mm wideangle lens within inches of the three soiled telephones, creating a foreground anchor layer that tells the story of hard and long use. I build my middle ground layer out of the paper and pen this woman uses to record her business activity and the tea she drinks to keep her going. In the background layer is the proprietor herself, passing the time between calls by studying. She brings her hand to her mouth nervously, no doubt wondering what I am doing there with my camera. A garbage dumpster fills half the image. She does not acknowledge its existence. Nor do her customers. It is life on the street in Old Rangoon, and the wideangle tells its story well.
Hindu Offerings, Indian Quarter, Yangon, Myanmar, 2005
A young girl staffs a street stall selling floral offerings just outside of the Hindu Temple in Yangon's Indian Quarter. Her face is painted heavily with Thanaka paste, traditional makeup worn by Burmese women and children as sun block and to make the skin healthy. She looks at my camera without showing emotion of any kind, which was very typical of Burmese. Many are not yet aware of the custom of smiling for the camera, which usually works to my advantage as a photographer. My wideangle lens spreads the scene for me, allowing me to flank the young girl on both sides with offerings yet still make her face large enough to see the incongruous detail of the Thanaka paste. The offerings, which are closer to my camera than they look, provide a foreground layer that gives the image its context. The middle ground layer holds the subject – the detached, painted child, crouching in the shadows. The background layer is subtle but still important, a row of bars symbolizing a barrier that may well keep this child in this place as she grows into adulthood.
22-JAN-2005
Tangerines, Luang Prabang, Laos, 2005
The 24mm wideangle lens is a favorite tool of photojournalists. To me, expressive travel photography is a form of photojournalism. My goal is make a picture that tells a story, and few lenses are as effective storytellers as true wideangle lenses. I simply could not work without one. In this case I am expressing the frustration of those who must sit all day in a market and sell their products for a pittance. The hands of those involved in it tell the story. Using my Canon G6 at waist level, and looking down into a flip up LCD viewing screen, I was able to unobtrusively move in between these two customers to shoot down on the two women doing the selling, choosing a tight, intimate vantage point, yet embracing the entire story within the scope of a wideangle lens. (Something I could not do as unobtrusively if I had been working with a DSLR!) One of them sits sullenly, watching the transaction that is going down over her shoulder. The woman doing the selling is thrusting a bag of tangerines at her customer, who already has two bags of them in her basket. With her other hand, she holds her head. She is either very tired or bored with her job. Because of the optics of the wideangle lens, the hand holding out the bag appears to be larger than the other hand. It is also slightly blurred. The woman at right counts out her money deliberately, keeping the bored tangerine seller waiting. Meanwhile, the customer’s son uses his hand to stuff a slice of tangerine into his mouth. You, the viewer, are stuck in the middle of this transaction. You ride on the shoulders of these customers, and stare into the faces of those disinterested and perhaps frustrated vendors. I anchor the image with a foreground layer featuring the shopping basket and the masses of tangerines on the ground. The two frustrated vendors become the middle ground layer. And the empty street, symbolizing a scarcity of customers, becomes the background layer, adding context for additional meaning. To embrace such a story as this, I have thrust myself into the midst of the transaction itself, and with a 24mm wideangle lens stressed the story the hands are telling us.