In the realm of fine art, the focal point is defined as a point of interest that makes a work of art unique. In photographic terms, a focal point can broadly be seen as a photographer’s point of view. Think, for a moment, about how drastically different a photo can become depending upon what you choose to focus on.
Why is focal point in photography important?
Focal points are important factors in photographs, as it gives the viewer a location within the frame to place their eyes. Focal points give people a subject of interest and keep them drawn to your photograph. A focal point can consist of literally anything.
How do photographers choose focal points?
An effective way to set the focus point on your subject is using a narrow depth of field. You achieve by focusing on the subject while having the rest of the elements in the image blurry. This is based on the fact that the sharper part of the image attracts the viewer’s attention.
The focal length of a lens is determined when the lens is focused at infinity. Lens focal length tells us the angle of view—how much of the scene will be captured—and the magnification—how large individual elements will be. The longer the focal length, the narrower the angle of view and the higher the magnification.
What are the four types of focal length?
Wide length – for landscape, architecture
Standard – for street, travel and portrait
Short telephoto – for street photography and portraits
Medium telephoto – for sports, wildlife and action
A photomontage is known to be a collage created by cutting and gluing other photographs to create a new image. It allows artists and photographers to express their work in a different, more visually pleasing form. If they have similar pictures not exactly the same that they would like to display together a photomontage allows them to do that, you can also be really creative with it by ripping and cutting and using superimposition. Superimposition: to impose, place, or set over, above, or on something else.
Examples of photomontages
History of photomontages
It was first used as a technique by the Dadaists, (Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century) in 1915 in their protests against the First World War. It was later adopted by the surrealists who exploited the possibilities photomontage offered by using free association to bring together widely disparate images, to reflect the workings of the unconscious mind.
When did photomontages become popular?
Throughout the 1970s and ’80s postmodernist era photomontage techniques became popular as a form of pastiche or political protest, as seen in the work of British artist and designer Linder, while today, photomontage techniques are continuously updated by contemporary artists in surprising and unexpected ways.
What is the difference between collages and photomontages?
A collage is a composition of materials and objects pasted over a surface; a montage is a single composition created by juxtaposing a series of pieces of paper, photos or other media to create an artistic image.
I started by printing my edited images out to experiment how i could change them by ripping them, cutting and sticking:
The right picture with the scissors ended up being my final image which i stuck onto a black background in physical form to display my edit.
I printed out two different coloured images of the scissors and cut them in strips and matched them up in line together to make the colours different. I also like how its not fully align at the top with the scissors but is with the tape.
In this image I hadn’t stuck the other parts onto it yet I was still experimenting, I ripped and carefully cut some of the pieces to vary how I was sticking them down. I did end up doing this one and also sticking it onto a black card to create a photomontage with my other image:
The top two were my final images I continued to then edit image size for both of them on photoshop so i could import them into the print folder. As I’m wanting them to be printed A3 I changed the width to 29.7, pixels: centimetres, and made sure I flattened the image if I’ve been editing the images.
She is known for exploring the tactile and formal qualities of the printed book and its potential for abstraction. Her photos are alive with questions – about what we do and don’t see and the stories we tell. Yet the spirit of her work provides a reflective response, a respite, from a noisy and chaotic world. By emphasizing the unique “aura” and materiality of printed matter, Bartley’s work offers a celebration of textural and tactile properties, a particularly potent act in this increasingly digital age.
Examples of her work:
These photos were taken by Mary during the lockdown due to covid 19. She set herself a challenge where she would pick 6/7 objects that had similarities which she would then photograph every day of the lockdown in different positions/ways. The objects she had chosen were very basic everyday objects which would are usually just used and ignored. Mary managed to make these objects look interesting and she was very creative with how she changed every photo every day whether it was the lighting, angles and positioning.
Personally, her most interesting picture out of the collection of images she had produced was this one:
My reasoning for this is because it’s the most creative one yet. She has used one of her objects (toilet paper) to create outlines which if you analyse the other pictures, they are very clearly the objects she had chosen. The use of light as well to emphasise the shadows and colour for example the orange soap.
High ISO settings are useful for capturing fast action in poorly or unevenly-lit situations. (Taken with ISO 800 sensitivity, 1/800 second at f/6.3.) The white balance setting is used to make the colours in a digital photograph look natural under a variety of lighting conditions.
What is the relationship between ISO and Aperture?
Two controls affect the amount of light that comes into the camera and strikes the image sensor – aperture and shutter speed. The ISO affects how much light is needed to produce a correct exposure. The lens aperture is a diaphragm that is in the lens itself or immediately behind it.
THREE most IMPORTANT camera settings:
Aperture is the size of the opening of the lens through which light enters to expose the shot.
Shutter speed is the amount of time that light is allowed to enter through the lens for exposure.
ISO is the amount of sensitivity toward the light entering into the lens.
What were the goals of new objectivity in photography?
The New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) emerged as a style in Germany in the 1920s as a challenge to Expressionism. As its name suggests, it offered a return to unsentimental reality and a focus on the objective world, as opposed to the more abstract, romantic, or idealistic tendencies of Expressionism.
What types of subjects did Neue Sachlichkeit prefer to photograph?
The artists highlighted the social and political turmoil of life emphasized through war-profiteers, beggars, and prostitutes. They explored the rise of the metropolis with its freedoms and sexual liberation, but noted the increasing alienation from nature and rural life.
Why did photographers in the 1920s begin to represent the world with ‘objective, sober eyes‘?
a response to the chaos of the First World War and a rejection of the culture leading up to it
a rejection of the emotional and spiritual concerns of Expressionism and an interest in the rational and political
a response to rapid industrialisation in Europe and America
a response to the particular qualities of the camera and a move away from painterly effects like soft focus.
Some of Albert Renger Patszch‘s photography:
I decided to experiment using scissors and tape and captured some images in the studio and edited them on adobe lightroom:
Here i had my selection of images to edit…
My Edits/ images:
I was mainly experimenting with the shadows, highlights, vibrance and saturation.
Once again, mainly using the vibrance and saturation.
In this image I edited so that the shadows were more strong and visible, compared to my other edits this ones darker and simpler.
The simplest way to describe formalism in photography would be that: The Design, Composition and Lighting are dominant over Subject Matter. The photographer becomes a visual designer whenever a frame is captured. In camera cropping concentrates on the desired subject while eliminating everything else.
Photographers have to impose order, bring structure to what they photograph. It is inevitable. A photograph without structure is like a sentence without grammar—it is incomprehensible, even inconceivable. — Stephen Shore
Examples of formal and visual elements are: line, shape, repetition, rhythm, balance. To capture a ‘perfect, beautiful’ photograph usually consists of (for example) making sure the camera is in focus and that the lighting and frame is ‘just right’. However, a vast variety of photographers think that sometimes not trying to think too hard about how you are photographing something and making ‘mistakes/breaking the rules’ creates a beautiful perfect photo too. For example not being in focus and having a blurred picture:
This image was taken by ‘Rolf Sach’ who creates several pictures which are blurred. This is a form of art even though it doesn’t abide to how a photograph should be taken.
Light: Which areas of the photograph are brightest? Are there any shadows? Does the photograph allow you to guess the time of day? Is the light natural or artificial? Harsh or soft? Reflected or direct? How does light fall across the objects in the photograph?
Line: Are there objects in the photograph that act as lines? Are they straight, curvy, thin, thick? Do the lines create direction in the photograph? Do they outline? Do the lines show movement or energy?
Repetition/Shape: Are there any objects, shapes or lines which repeat and create a rhythm or pattern? Do you see echoes or reflections within the image?
Space: Is there depth to the photograph or does it seem shallow? What creates this appearance? What is placed in the foreground, middle ground and background? Are there important negative (empty) spaces in addition to positive (solid) spaces?
Texture/ value tones: If you could touch the surface of the photograph how would it feel? How do the objects in the picture look like they would feel? Is there a range of tones from dark to light? Where is the darkest part of the image? Where is the lightest? Are the tones in the photograph balanced or does the image tend towards darkness or lightness overall. How does this affect the mood or atmosphere?
Colour: What kind of colours can you see e.g. saturated, muted, complementary, primary? Is there a dominant colour? How would this image be different if it was in black and white? Does the use of colour help us understand the subject or does it work independently?
Composition: How have the various elements in the picture been arranged? Does the image seem balanced or unbalanced? Is it possible to superimpose geometrical shapes on the image to better understand the composition e.g. a pyramid? Has the photographer used the Rule of Thirds?
We annotated Rut Blees Luxembourg Night Photography. To do this we used a table to pick out visual and formal elements:
This means not using flash; instead its having lights constantly lit compared to the flash being activated when taking the picture. When using continuous lighting you use a slow shutter speed for example 1 second. Usually the photograph will have shadows and the camera is set up on a tripod. When experimenting i used a product table for my objects with an infinity curve in the background. Continuous lighting is often referred as ‘low key’. This is an example:
Flash lighting
Flash lighting is the opposite of continuous lighting. It creates less shadows and needs a high shutter speed, when using flash lighting its more efficient to use a tripod to keep the camera in place and steady. This is known as high key.
The photo on the left shows constant lighting compared to the one on the right which uses flash lighting. There are less shadows and gives a clearer view compared to the one on the left.
Still life photography is a genre of photography used for the depiction of inanimate subject matter, typically a small group of objects. Similar to still life painting, it is the application of photography to the still life artistic style.
The history of still-life photography
Where did it start?
Still-life photography’s origins reside in the early 20th century. Art photographers emerged such as Baron Adolf de Meyer. The Baron was known for his highly artistic approach to photography, as he employed darkroom techniques and used soft-focus lenses to create photographs that looked like drawings, which was fashionable at the time.
Emil Otto Hoppé is an esteemed British photographer who is known primarily for his portrait photography and travel photography, but he also produced wonderful still-life photography in the 1920s, with a handcrafted style, comparable to Baron Adolf de Meyer’s.
Modernist still-life photography
Jumping ahead a few decades, still life became modern in both subject matter and technology. What all Modernist movements have in common is a rejection of the past and the idea that they can make art objectively better by using unconventional approaches, which is what we can see when comparing early-20th Century and mid-20th Century still life-photography.
Man Ray was an American visual artist who was involved in different art media and was a prominent figure in the Dada and Surrealist movements. Man Ray reinvented the wheel when it came to still-life photography. He pioneered innovative techniques in photography, and he also took new approaches to still-life.
Contemporary still-life photography
Fast-forward to the 21st Century and many photographers working today are continuing in the tradition of Man Ray and representing still-life in their photographic art, with many excellent examples of still-life photography to look at.
What is Vanitas?
A vanitas painting contains collections of objects symbolic of the inevitability of death and the transience and vanity of earthly achievements and pleasures.
What is Memento Mori?
The Latin phrase memento mori literally means, “Remember that you must die.” A basic memento mori painting would be a portrait with a skull but other symbols commonly found are hour glasses or clocks, extinguished or guttering candles, fruit, and flowers. Closely related to the memento mori picture is the vanitas still life.
