文档介绍：SEEING WITH A CAMERA
Wide-angle focal lengths are often employed to further exagger-
ate the sense of space and direct the viewer’s observation and
attention in a specifi c direction. However, wide-posi-
tions, such as those pioneered by cinematographer Gregg Toland
in Citizen Kane (1941), can also be democratic in nature for they
bring into focus all aspects of a scene, thus encouraging viewers
to discover what in a scene is visually intriguing to them.
SELECTIVE FOCUS
Since its inception, photography has acted as a surrogate witness that
captured and preserved people, places, things, and events. To meet
this expectation, the majority of photographers has strived to make “e in all sizes, colors, lifestyles, beliefs, and mixes thereof. By
sharp pictures so that the subject details can be studied at leisure. photographing each family member separately and then collaging the results
The issue of focus played a critical role in defi ning serious 19th- together, I am calling attention to the built environment and making it
impossible for the viewer to accept this portrait as anything but a constructed
century artistic practice. During the 1860s, Julia Margaret Cameron’s
image. Different perspectives, scales, and vanishing points clash as the laws of
images helped to establish the issue of selective focus as a criterion nature no longer hold. Here the background was blurred and various objects
of peerless practice. The making of “out-of-focus” images was consid- were removed and fl ipped in Photoshop to call attention to the subjects and
ered an expressive remedy that shifted the artifi cial, machine-focus make a more posite. The modular aspect of positions
allows for myriad opportunities to mix and match family members and create
of a camera toward a more natural vision. Cameron considered focus-
relationships and hierarchies that may or may not exist.”
ing to be a fl uid process during which she would stop when some- ©