mercredi 27 juillet 2005

Playing with Prisms... Elvis Costello didn't like it! Sometimes photography needs an injection of fun... because it sure has become serious of late! If you dare enter the lion's den of internet photo news-groups you risk serious damage in your mental and wallet regions. I kid you not... there are more ill-informed opinions floating around in these virtual chat rooms from so-called experts on equipment that hasn't been produced or even announced - and usually the same critics of equipment they haven't even handled - that you lose sight of the practice of photography [see footnote 1]. It's another prime example of what I said in yesterday's art page about, "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach." A number of times I've spoken to a well-known photo magazine writer who often, and in exasperation, starts with, "God, I've just had another fu*k-wit lecturing me about (enter your own photo subject)... he thinks he's an expert on (that subject) but knows less that three-sixteenths of f*ck-all about anything!" My friend is generous to a fault with his expertise, help and time, but it becomes increasingly obvious that he, you and I, are far better off taking, and enjoying making, photographs... doing it... period. But I digress... "Photo fun" can be had with anything from interpreting any regular theme, to experimenting with a new trend, or digging out that quirky accessory from the bottom of your gadget bag... the essence being that you do something out of the ordinary for a change. Note the, "For a change," because it won't be fun if you do it all the time. For years I kept a "multi-prism" lens in my bag... for that unexpected photo opportunity... but it was hardly ever used. What I then did was take it out of the bag and use it intensely and specifically on one day to explore it's potential... for fun. These accessories aren't often seen on photographer's lenses and yet many have been made - the catalogues of the two most popular filter manufacturers Cokin and Hoya list them, and there are probably examples from Jessop in the UK as well as others such as Kenko in the USA and Japan. Even Hasselblad listed a 6-sided prism lens in the catalogue a few years ago. Note that I say prism "lens" and not "filter," which is a common error in photo magazines. Coloured filters "filter-out" certain wavelengths of light... whereas non-coloured, shaped, glass lenses change the magnification or drawing of the primary lens. Close-up lenses are clear glass accessories of different diopter strengths and allow closer than normal photography without using a macro lens or extension tubes. A multiple-prism lens changes the image according to the number of facets on the prism and the focal length of the lens it is fitted to. Generally, a multi-prism lens is intended for use on a standard 50mm lens. Used on a 20mm wide-angle it produces vignetting at the edges and corners of the frame and too-sharp a delineation of the prism effect. And with a telephoto lens, above 105mm, the multi-prism effect is only partial... the longer lens only seeing through the centre of the accessory. As usual with trick photography it's easier to show than to describe... and from the top of this page my multi-prism enhanced images are of a) Elvis Costello on stage - taken with a 200mm Nikkor, b) Silhouette of the Cathedral in Sienna, Italy showing a coloured multi-prism lens off camera - 20mm Nikkor, c) Elkie Brooks on stage - 105mm Nikkor and d) Modern architecture in Swindon, Wiltshire - 50mm Nikkor. It can be seen clearly that any multi-image effect is heavily distorted with the longer 200mm lens - and seen to it's best effect with the 50mm lens. However, the most interesting image visually is the one of singer Elvis Costello where the background scenery designs have become partially superimposed over the main subject. The leading image in my "Solar Flair" article, that of the Jodrell Bank radio telescope in the UK, was taken using a similar maltreatment... on that occasion I used a red filter as well as a multi-prism lens on a Nikkor 200mm prime lens to add extra impact to the scene whilst shooting into the setting sun. It's worth noting that multi-prism lens effects are not just for amateur photographers. Admittedly, Parisian based photographer Francisco Hidalgo was being sponsored by Cokin at the time, but he made thousands of such images using all sorts of filters and trickery which were seen in many magazines, books and as millions of postcards. And the highly revered war photographer David Douglas Duncan spent some time with an extraordinary custom-made multi-prism contraption (from memory there were something like 64 prisms on some of his lenses... rotatable using a geared hand-crank) from which the best examples were made into a coffee-table book "Prismatics : Exploring a New World" published by Harper & Row, New York in the early 1980s. This was a different departure for D.D.D. whose seminal work "War Without Heroes" showed an eye and passion similar to his book on Pablo Picasso's "Silent Studio." Footnote : I'm enjoying the "artwork" side of this weblog - I can do things that certainly beat digital for outright speed (1 minute drawings) - and intend to alternate the photo and art themes... so the next article will be concerned with some aspect of visual art. Remember, though, that both photography and art are inextricably linked... for which it's unfortunate that Paul Delaroche is so often wrongly quoted as having said, "From today, painting is dead," because he recognised, and was an enthusiastic advocate of, the new photographic art form called the Daguerreotype, and did not forecast the decline of an old one using brush, paint and canvas. 7:53:21 PM    comment []