[HN Gopher] How does perspective work in pictures? ___________________________________________________________________ How does perspective work in pictures? Author : todsacerdoti Score : 184 points Date : 2022-03-02 14:31 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (aaronhertzmann.com) (TXT) w3m dump (aaronhertzmann.com) | belfalas wrote: | Really interesting article! For anyone curious about perspective | in art, see the book "Perspective Made Easy" by Ernest Norling. | It is easy to follow and has simple helpful exercises. | | A more technical and challenging book is "How to Draw" by Scott | Robertson. That one is good if you want more technical theory | understanding (plus the illustrations are amazing). | TrevorJ wrote: | This is dancing around the real issue - there are many different | district processes that our eyes use which fuse into a sense of | 'being there'. Any attempt to compress this into a single | monographic static image will be a compromise. | dsign wrote: | Ahh, I love this article. I'm among those that dislike all my | photos with small objects that don't look as I see them. I guess | building photo optics that do not use linear perspective is out | of the question. I haven't got time to read all the papers they | are referencing (currently searching for a new computer vision | job, and there is so much in that area that I can't really read | everything), but I wonder how many techniques to computationally | change the perspective of the image depend on LIDAR depth | information, how many on guessing depth via some other means | (e.g. neural networks), and how many on neither? | deadbeeves wrote: | The article is close, but doesn't quite get there. The problem is | not the image itself or how it's taken, but rather how it's | displayed. When you look at the world through your eyeballs, your | brain recreates the scene so that it wraps around an imaginary | point in mental space, so to speak. Things that are to your right | "appear to your right" in your mind. When you're looking at a | photograph, regardless of how much field of view it was taken | with, it's displayed in a very small portion of your entire field | of vision, even if you're looking at it on a computer monitor; | it's even worse if you're looking at it on a phone. You're | basically always looking at it zoomed out. It would be possible | to recreate the scene exactly as it would have appeared if your | eye was where the camera was when the photo was taken, but you'd | need to blow it up on a huge screen, like a movie theater screen, | and stand fairly close to it. Then you'd be able to see that | actually most lenses other than fisheyes have fairly narrow field | of views. | hammock wrote: | An easy way to make your point is to do what "artistic types" | in e.g. cartoons do to make a viewfinder to estimate a shot: | use your thumbs and forefingers in front of your face to make a | rectangular "window." Now recognize how much smaller this | window is than your field of view. | deadbeeves wrote: | That's exactly how I came to understand the effect. I was | looking at a picture of a sunset I had taken and wondering | why the sun looked so much smaller than when I was there. I | remembered that the sun, like the moon, is roughly the size | of the thumbnail when the arm is completely stretched out, so | I zoomed in the image until the sun was the right angular | size, and the sizes of all the objects then appeared as in | real life, only observed through tunnel vision. | johnmaguire wrote: | Photography + VR headsets will be interesting. | eurekin wrote: | I'm wondering for years already, why there's no head mounted | display for mirrorless | codeflo wrote: | I was looking for someone commenting this. There's no mystery, | it's really just geometry. Imagine casting a ray from your | eyeball to a pixel on the monitor. Then imagine the same ray at | the same angle on the actual scene. If the pixel matches the | correct part of the scene, then the image appears natural. | | But that's really a tiny field of view. Perhaps the easiest way | to see this is that it's the same geometry as having a monitor- | sized window in a wall at the same distance, and looking | outside. That would be really tiny window, and you wouldn't | expect to see much of the outside without getting a lot closer. | | As a result, most pictures are taken at a wider field of view | than what would be natural for typical viewing distances, to | show more of the scene. Which explains the distortions that | make everything at a distance appear tiny. | | You fundamentally can't "solve" this without dramatically | increasing the FOV that you're viewing things with -- VR being | the obvious idea. | roywiggins wrote: | The mystery is "why can I view the world with my eyes and see | a wide angle, straight lines, and "natural" perspective, but | when I take pictures with a wide angle, everything looks | "weird." | | You can throw away the straight lines and shoot with a | fisheye lens (no straight lines, wide angle, fairly natural | depth), you can crop in (depth fine, but now I'm missing | stuff around the edges), and you can shoot with a wide | rectilinear lens (wide angle, straight lines, "exaggerated" | perspective). | | As far as I know, the answer is simply that your eyes _aren | 't rectilinear_ but your brain fudges it to make straight | lines seem straight when the image on our retina actually | curves. | | The effect is most prominent when standing in a small room. | It's impossible to take a single picture of it that conveys | what you want: a wide rectilinear lens will exaggerate how | big the room is (and look weird around the edges), a "normal" | rectilinear lens will be so cropped in that you can't see | most of the room, and a fisheye lens will make all straight | lines curve, especially around the edges. None of them really | represent the visual experience of being in the room. Just | look at how weird real-estate listings can get when they try | to show you a picture of a small bathroom. | grumbel wrote: | The problem isn't taking the photo, but that the size you | are viewing the photo at is simply too small and flat. | Human field of view is somewhere around 200x130deg, you are | not going to capture that on a tiny flat bit of paper which | might just be 40x30deg. Reaching the 200deg isn't even | possible with a flat photo. You can try to make it | aesthetically pleasing, but you can't make it accurate | without making it bigger and curved. | | When you enlarge the photo and display it at the field of | view it was captured at, as you can do in VR, the whole | problem disappears and the photo just looks like the real | world. Use two cameras and it'll even be in 3D. | c1ccccc1 wrote: | Probably a big part of it is that the high-resolution area | of the retina is quite small. So in that small area, the | perspective is close to perfect, and then we mentally | stitch together a larger image by moving our eyes around. | But the larger image that's stitched together is in the | shape of a sphere rather than a flat surface, with each | point on the sphere corresponding to a direction the eyes | could be pointing. | twelvechairs wrote: | Yes. Also image aspect ratio and the relationship between | horizontal and vertical is complex. Our eyes themselves | move reasonably comfortably 15 degrees in all directions | (maybe a little less up), but peripheral vision is | greater in width than height and we are used to turning | our heads to see objects in horizontal field of view more | than vertical. | egypturnash wrote: | An important thing missed here: according to the EXIF data in | them, these photos are all taken with an iPhone XS. That means | they are taken with a tiny wide angle lens. You'd get a very | different shot if you took out a dedicated camera with a | physically larger lens and a smaller angle. | | The overall thrust of this article _touches_ on this when it | starts discussing different focal lengths, but the fact that the | engineers at Apple made a particular set of choices with their | lenses that are a compromise between "what can be achieved with | a tiny flat lens measured in millimeters" and "what provides a | mostly-acceptable image in _any_ situation ", and are very not | the choices one might make for specifically photographing a | portrait or a landscape or whatever, is really never remarked on. | deadbeeves wrote: | The size of the lens is actually completely irrelevant. Anyone | who has done any 3D work can tell you the size of the lens has | absolutely no effect on perspective. The mathematical model of | a camera in a 3D renderer doesn't have a parameter for lens | diameter. There's no way to make an image appear as if it has | been taken by a really tiny camera or a really huge camera. At | the worst the huge camera will not physically fit in certain | spaces. | | All the size of the lens affects is how much light can come | into the camera, which in turn affects the quality of the photo | with less than ideal lighting conditions. | codeflo wrote: | Aperture size has an effect on depth of field (the degree to | which points that are out of focus are blurred). I think in | practical cameras, aperture size isn't constant as you vary | camera size, so that makes the scale relevant. But I'm not | 100% sure how photography terminology like "stops" maps to | the underlying geometry, so take this with a grain of salt. | thequux wrote: | The "f/" in aperture settings literally stands for "focal | length divided by ...". e.g, an f/2 aperture on a 50mm lens | has a diameter of 25mm. | | One aperture stop corresponds to a scaling factor of | sqrt(2), because the _area_ of the aperture scales with the | square of the diameter, and halving the area results in | half the light (and 1 /1.414... of the aperture diameter) | roywiggins wrote: | All else being equal, switching to a longer lens won't make the | _relative_ size of the elements of the image change at all. | | You can simulate the results just by cropping photos taken with | the wide iPhone lens. There will be no difference between the | perspective of a cropped iPhone picture and an uncropped | picture with a longer lens. | | Of course such cropping will be likely to throw stuff away from | the borders of the image that you'd rather keep, because you | composed before you cropped. To avoid losing stuff on the | edges, you'd have had to stand further away from your subject, | which happens naturally when you're shooting with a longer | lens. But you could have stood further away, shot with an | iPhone, and then cropped in, and the only difference between | that and a "true" zoom lens is that it's probably blurrier | because you are working with fewer pixels. | | (the above is only true for rectilinear lenses, it's the | linearity of the perspective that means that zooming == | cropping) | | The article is about how when a human looks at a scene, you'll | see quite a wide angle, but when you take a photo that covers a | similar angle to what you're perceiving, you end up with an | image that seems to exaggerate the sense of depth that you had | at the time. This is at least partly because human eyes aren't | rectilinear; you can shoot with a non-rectilinear lens but then | all the straight lines you expect... aren't. | | A skilled artist can produce a scene with 1) straight lines 2) | a similar field of view, and 3) "natural" depth, as in the | Turner painting in the article. To do this you have to depart | from linear perspective. You couldn't get Turner's painting | just by standing further away; he's doing something rather more | complicated. | shuntress wrote: | The article mentions "Correct" perspective several times and | seems like it is leading into an explanation of why 50mm is | generally accepted as the most natural match to the human eye's | perspective. But, it never really gets there. | BolexNOLA wrote: | Yeah, it's sort of a semi-conventional (and somewhat | controversial) statement in the film/photo world to say that | 50mm lens on a full frame sensor/35mm stock is "what people | see." Some argue it's closer to 35-40mm. Some argue it's all | moot. Maybe he ultimately just decided not to firmly stick by | it haha | thequux wrote: | You can figure out "natural" focal length by taking a printed | photograph, holding it at a comfortable viewing distance, and | measuring that distance. Now, scale all of those distances | down until the photo is the size of your imaging surface | (24x36mm for 135 film, better known these days as "full- | frame"). | | Normally, for a 4x5" photo, you'll naturally hold it about 6" | from your face, which is pretty close to 150mm. Ergo, the | "normal" lens for 4x5 cameras was 150mm. If you scale that | down to the "35mm" 24x36 frame, though, you'll discover that | that's closer to 40mm. This is not a mistake; IIRC, one of | the early 135 camera makers found it easier to make a 50mm | lens than a 40mm lens, and it's stuck ever since. | | It so happens that a normal lens has a FOV of about 1 radian, | so the normal focal length is approximately the diagonal of | the image surface. A proof of that is left as an exercise for | the reader. | wyager wrote: | Ignoring "non-geometric" effects like depth of field, the only | optical parameter that matters here is the visible angle (a | function of focal length and crop factor). | | Parameters like the size of the aperture are massively | important in general, but not for determining the relative size | of objects within the scene. | doomlaser wrote: | One of the coolest things about the Renaissance was the discovery | of how to render perspective in drawings and paintings. The | technique was spread greatly by the Italian book _de Pictura_ , | written by the humanist and artist Leon Battista Alberti in 1435. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_pictura | | It reminds me of viral art tutorials you see spread on Twitter | today, for things like video game artists and developers. The | illustrations still hold up, hundreds of years later: | https://twitter.com/Doomlaser/status/978211776167923712 | | Prior to this discovery and the book, Italian paintings had a | very muddled perspective, because people just didn't know how it | worked. You'd also often see Madonna and Child paintings with an | absurdly large baby, to signal divinity: | | https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/4... | | https://www.1st-art-gallery.com/frame-preview/7859545.jpg?sk... | TehShrike wrote: | Well, this blew my mind. | | Are there any iOS camera apps that will let me experiment with | taking "natural perspective" photos? | spython wrote: | Not quite the same, but I quite enjoyed PicPlane | https://blog.mattbierner.com/pic-plane-1-1/ by Matt Bierner who | has quite a few of similar experimental visual perception apps. | namanyayg wrote: | +1. Any android apps? I've noticed this so much in landscape | photography it hurts. | bsenftner wrote: | Reminds me of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26795290 | the FOVO Renderer that uses a variable zoom based on 2D distance | from the center of focus, which is more similar to human vision. | samatman wrote: | A sentence at the end of the article helped me understand why | looking at photos on a 12.9" iPad feels uniquely pleasurable to | me: I can, and naturally do, hold the device such that the image | fills my focal length. | | Phones are of course too small, but my laptop screen, while | larger, isn't as nice, even for photos in landscape perspective, | because it's subjectively smaller in terms of the field of view | it fills. I'm estimating I naturally use a laptop about twice as | far from my eyes as an iPad. | globular-toast wrote: | This makes me think of cinema. Most people who watch films at | home watch them on a far smaller screen than they were made for | and the picture encompasses a far smaller portion of the field | of view. Cinemascope films are supposed to fill almost all of | the horizontal field of view. IMAX films are supposed to fill | your entire field of view (extending right into the | peripheral). | | I'm sure many people have tried, like me, to sit closer to the | screen so it fills more of your field of view. But even though | the angle might be the same, the experience is not. This is | true even if you view with one eye. So it makes me think there | is something else at play other than just viewing angles. | kingcharles wrote: | This article was fascinating and I can easily see this being the | next feature that smartphone manufacturers will add to their | camera apps. Most of the time I'm taking a photo I'm trying for | something that will look really cool when I post it online, I'm | not after a scientifically "accurate" representation of the | scene. | | Smartphone hardware has hit a temporary wall that might last | another 5 or 10 years, software is the only battleground right | now. | pier25 wrote: | Off topic but the lighthouse in the video is at the Cap de | Formentor in Mallorca. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formentor_Lighthouse | Gravityloss wrote: | Most of this article is not very informative, it boils down to | the fact that to get better photos you should just use a longer | focal length aka zoom in a bit and also take a few steps back. | TremendousJudge wrote: | did you even read it? it says nothing of the sort | dang wrote: | Would you kindly stop breaking the site guidelines? You've | been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and we've had to ask | you repeatedly not to. | | In this case you broke this one: " _Please don 't comment on | whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the | article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article | mentions that."_" | | More generally, you've been breaking this one: " _Be kind. | Don 't be snarky._" | | If you wouldn't mind reviewing | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking | the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be | grateful. | kingcharles wrote: | There has been a lot of press around the HN moderation, | mostly shock at the small size of the team doing it, but | also around the bigger point, which is the care that HN | shows about keeping its community in some sort of order. | | I've built and run huge online communities in the past, and | they have died by 1000 paper cuts. Little bits of snark | building up like fat on the walls of an artery until the | clot ruptures. I've tried installing moderators I trusted, | but without exception each one would turn into a fascist | dictator stomping on accounts until everyone feared to | speak. I had to fire them all. | | The biggest problem here is that HN moderators are not | replicable or replaceable. There is a quote I can't find | about how the type of person who _wants_ to be a politician | is exactly the sort you don 't want. The reason HN mods are | so good is because they didn't want the job, they fell into | it. | | But it also has to be heartbreaking work, like those in the | Third World who moderate the main social networks watching | beheadings and child abuse all day. Eventually it will take | its toll and I don't know how the fuck HN will operate when | it has to find replacements. | dang wrote: | I thought of some things to say in response to this but | I'm late for a training I'm in. Hopefully I'll remember | to come back here later. | TremendousJudge wrote: | My apologies. I haven't been in the best of moods lately. I | will stick more firmly to the guidelines in the future. I | really appreciate the civility of the discussion here | compared to the rest of the net, and I want to keep it that | way. | gfody wrote: | appreciate calling out middle brow dismissals which is a | uniquely hn problem and probably too subjective to write | a policy against | dang wrote: | That is hardly a "uniquely hn problem"! that is a human | nature problem. And there is a guideline against it: | | " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of | other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us | something._" | (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) | | That's a direct reference to pg's original concept of | middlebrow dismissal. We just changed the word from | 'middlebrow' to 'shallow' because the word 'middlebrow' | often comes across as a putdown and also often comes | across as labeling a person rather than a post. | | Commenters who've actually read an article are always | welcome to respond with accurate, interesting information | from the article. That's a fine contribution. What's not | fine is the "did you even read the article" internet | trope. | Gabriel_Martin wrote: | GabrielMtn wrote: | No to be preachy, but if you're struggling a lot make | sure you're doing enough self care, I like long walks, | it's so easy to forget to make time when so much is | happening in the world. | shuntress wrote: | To help contextualize this response: The entire opening of | the article feels like an extremely heavy handed introduction | to "Photography 103 - Focal Length and How to Use It" without | ever really explaining focal length even while a basic | understanding of focal length & "compression" remains | relevant to the topic the article veers into. | Gravityloss wrote: | They do have a point. It's just "beating around the bush" | so much. Focal length, distortion, projection. I guess I'm | just too cranky for it. | shuntress wrote: | I should have been more clear. I'm basically agreeing | with you. It feels like the article is constantly about | to say something like _" Here's an example where I used a | 50mm and you can see how much more closely it matches the | painting and my recollection"_ or something like that | before then going on to talk about how perspective in | photography is essentially a tradeoff with field-of-view. | But it... just doesn't do that and so ends up with this | awkward feeling mismatch with reader expectation (for me, | at least). | | I don't necessarily begrudge the article for it but I do | share your frustration. | gfody wrote: | this is fascinating stuff, the software experiments made me | wonder if lightfield cameras will do better or at least enable | smarter perspective algorithms | Cieric wrote: | I ended up reading one of the referenced articles too since it | captured my interest | https://www.gamedeveloper.com/disciplines/fovo-a-new-3d-rend... | all of this looks interesting. I would love to add these | correction and similar to my game engine to experiment with it, | but fovotec seems to have to be paid/contacted for. I might try | and replicate what the author of the main article showed at the | end. Does anyone know of any more references to the 3d rendering | side of this topic? | | Edit: Added words for clarity. | kwertyops wrote: | It looks like Unreal Engine (which is not open source, but you | can get access to the source code) has a "Panini Projection" | which does something similar: | https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/RenderingAndGraphic... | ISL wrote: | Perspective is a huge challenge in photography, in some respects | a central challenge. | | Here's [1] an image, made with a rectilinear lens, which manages | to convey oodles of depth and structure. It is difficult to | overstate how challenging it can be to express that level of | depth in a flat image. | | When people talk about how a focal-length "compresses" or | "exaggerates" an image, what they're really talking about is | perspective. Each field of view carries with it its own | perspective. | | Variable focal-length ("zoom") lenses encourage us to select our | subject and composition first, then choose a perspective to | match. Frequently, it is more important to begin with our desired | subject and the perspective with which we wish the viewer to see | it (focal-length), then figure out how to build a composition to | match. A 24-70 mm lens isn't really a lens, it is at least six | lenses with significantly-different perspectives: 24, 28, 35, 40, | 50, and 70mm, each of which can take a lifetime to master. | | One can deliver the perception that Hertzmann is after with a | rectilinear lens, but it isn't easy. Composition, lighting, and | dodging/burning are all tools to that end. | | Think about your memory of the Tank Man in Tiananmen Square, now | look at the image [2]. I bet he's a much smaller part of the | frame than you recall, yet he utterly dominates your perception | of the image, even when you look at the actual rectilinear image. | | [1] https://www.phillips.com/detail/HENRI-CARTIER- | BRESSON/NY0405... | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man | Daub wrote: | > When people talk about how a focal-length "compresses" or | "exaggerates" an image, what they're really talking about is | perspective. Each field of view carries with it its own | perspective. | | Completely agree. What is happening when the focal length of a | camera is changed is that the distance of the vanishing points | relative to the scene is changing. | | I teach perspective in my drawing class. Few subjects are as | difficult to convey. Using 3d animations has helped a lot... | | https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/perspective... | paulmd wrote: | The "dolly zoom" is a very effective way to convey this imo. | | https://filmschoolrejects.com/wp- | content/uploads/2021/01/Jaw... | | https://filmschoolrejects.com/wp- | content/uploads/2021/01/Fel... | | https://screen-queens.com/2017/08/24/how-the-dolly-zoom- | chan... | | There's also some rather neat series that play with | perspective. Don't have any at hand but google: | | https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/exploring-how- | foc... | | https://static.wixstatic.com/media/7d67c8_1d09b657f6a04e6fb8. | .. | | The way I've always explained it to people as a photographer: | your position with regard to the subject determines the | perspective, which is the relationship between objects in the | composition. Your choice of focal length determines what | field of view/image area of that perspective that you want to | capture. | | And yes, to agree with a parent comment, this is something | that zoom lenses have rotted the brains of many photographers | on. People stand wherever is convenient and then zoom to fit | the subjects, rather than thinking first about how they want | the elements to be placed within the image. | | It's hugely beneficial to work with a 3-lens kit or something | similar (eg 28mm, 50mm, 105mm) to really force you to think | about what you want from a particular exposure. | formerly_proven wrote: | > When people talk about how a focal-length "compresses" or | "exaggerates" an image, what they're really talking about is | perspective. Each field of view carries with it its own | perspective. | | This is kind of a misconception because what creates | perspective distortion is not a given field of view, but the | distance to the subject. That's why short (50-100 mm) macro | lenses have a lot of perspective despite a clearly tele angle | of view; you get very close to the subject. Someone using a 55 | mm macro lens for photography of small products tends to be | pretty obvious because of the strong perspective, things look | distorted and "bulging". | | Of course subject size / angle of view => distance so it still | kinda works. | IIAOPSW wrote: | And, if you used an infinite zoom macro lens on a subject | infinitely far away, it would not have perspective at all but | instead appear as an isometric view. Where does one find an | infinitely large lens? Don't worry, you can't afford it | anyway. It costs infinite money. | | Jokes aside, the math on this really works out. Orthogonal | projection is the limit as d tends to infinity of perspective | projection. | Phrodo_00 wrote: | Yeah, I was going to point out that out when he talked about | the portrait. It's not really about the focal length but | about the distance you normally look at people (although your | brain does a lot of compensation for wonky perspectives). | Focal length doesn't change the perspective, but it just | crops the image. Your feet changes the perspective. | grumbel wrote: | Tank Man is not a good example here, as it is not just one | image. People might remember [1], but never seen [2] or not | even be aware that there is a full video of the event [3] as | well. And of course depending on where you viewed it, it might | have been cropped, photoshopped or taken from the video. | | [1] | https://img.timeinc.net/time/images/covers/asia/2001/2001011... | | [2] https://miro.medium.com/max/1024/1*yMZA- | hOHadTkNrGrSKriBw.jp... | | [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8zFLIftGk | spoonjim wrote: | No, the Tank Man picture isn't surprising at all. The defining | property of that image is that he is small, but willing to | stand up to those tanks. My memory was correct -- it is a | picture of a very small object standing in front of several | extremely large objects. | zokier wrote: | I remember reading bit more on the work from fovotec authors | (Pepperell et al), and while there are some interesting ideas in | there, the majority of papers etc had heavy | snakeoil/pseudoscience smell. It would be nice if someone grabbed | those ideas and took a more rigorous approach to solve the same | problems. | | That being said, the blog post is nice survey of the wider field | so that's nice at least. | | Previous discussion on "FOVO" rendering (which has high overlap | with the topic) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26795290 | agency wrote: | I've noticed this a lot at home. I live in western WA and am | lucky to have, on a clear day, a pretty breathtaking view of Mt. | Rainier. But pictures never do justice to the sense of scale you | get in person. It looks enormous on the horizon but in pictures | it's rather small and mundane. | jcims wrote: | Same with photos of the moon. | parenthesis wrote: | The standard trick is to have something in the foreground. | Several of the pictures on Mount Rainier's Wikipedia page do | this. | | For example, trees in the foreground: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Rainier_panorama_2.... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nisqually_Glacier_0902.JP... | | A settlement in the foreground: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Rainier_over_Tacoma... | | Whereas, something like this | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Rainier_sunset.jpg is | more abstract and doesn't give the same sense of scale. | Kayou wrote: | What lense do you have to take your picture ? You might want to | zoom a bit to make it look like you see it, at least a 100mm | equivalent I would say. | function_seven wrote: | I think this is what separates a good photographer from... | me. | | I've tried various zoom levels before--and aspect ratios, | focal lengths, etc--but I can never capture in an image what | I'm seeing with my eyes. Either the enormous mountain is a | tiny feature off in the distance, or it fills the frame and | all context is lost. I can't seem to find a framing that | communicates both the grandness of the subject, and the | larger context it's situated in. | | Obviously a 2D, cropped image of the landscape is going to | have to lose information compared to my 3D, panoramic view of | it. But I also know I've seen good photos of these types of | things. What are those photographers doing to capture that? | [deleted] | chucksta wrote: | Images are often stacked too to achieve proper focus | throughout the picture. A lot of photos you see aren't | physically possible to get in 1 shot. | | https://photographylife.com/landscapes/focus-stacking- | tutori... | ISL wrote: | It may help to know that it isn't easy to do. | | Two things that might help your images say what you'd like | them to say: | | 1) For depth, try making images that have a "foreground, | middle-ground, and background". The 24-28mm-equivalent | lenses on smartphones are a perfect training ground for | this kind of composition, as it is easier to select | foreground elements. | | 2) Dodging and burning: The human eye is drawn to bright | parts of an image. Gently darkening things that are less- | important and gently highlighting things (and paths) that | are more important can have a huge impact on the perception | of an image. The Snapseed app, again on a smartphone, | offers a very-intuitive interface (look for the "brush" | tool) for learning to dodge and burn. | Aaargh20318 wrote: | > I can never capture in an image what I'm seeing with my | eyes. Either the enormous mountain is a tiny feature off in | the distance, or it fills the frame and all context is lost | | Try adding a sense of depth by having a foreground, middle | and back. | | Look at good landscape photos of mountains or other large | features and you'll see they almost always do this. By | having near, mid and far elements of interest you add a | sense of scale to the photo. | aeturnum wrote: | If you like this there's actually a lot of work on this kind of | topic in media studies! I particularly liked Nonhuman | Photography[1] by Joanna Zylinska. | | [1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/nonhuman-photography | mabub24 wrote: | This is a topic where having knowledge of art history helps quite | a lot. One could make an entire university course around the ways | artists have grappled with perspective over time. Just coming to | grips with the fact that linear perspective is something we learn | to understand as "natural", as communicating a scene or image in | such and such a way, despite it being an artistic technique for | representing 3d shapes on a 2d surface from a fixed point(s) of | view, can be a big way to get people over the hump and to | appreciate non-representational art, or even just the works of | 20th and 19th century modernist painters like Picasso or Cezanne. | f154hfds wrote: | Linear perspective has some fun implications that I think about a | lot. | | Apply a linear operator to a line and you get another line. This | is obvious but the inverse is also true: if a line is a result of | a linear operator the input was also a line. This is fun to think | about when looking at jet contrails and bridges, the milkyway and | pretty much any curve you have looked at your whole life. If it | isn't straight as you see it then it's not straight in reality. | leni536 wrote: | > For example, here's Turner's High Street, Oxford and a | photograph from the same spot, taken 200 years later | | Those are not from the same spot. The painting is from further | back, and captures a narrower field of view. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-02 23:00 UTC)