Miles apart...

I am fascinated with super-telephoto lenses, not only for their pulling power of distant subjects, but for their pictorial effect alone. The myth is that they change the perspective of an image: the longer the lens the greater the change, but a myth it remains. Although the quality would suffer by the sheer enlargement, the scene above, if photographed with a wide angle lens and blown-up so the large white building were the same size as here, the perspective would remain the same.

The one thing such long lenses do is lend a claustrophobic feeling to a scene, piling plane upon plane and giving the impression that objects are closer (or even on top of each other), than they actually are; a technique used in the film industry to impart a feeling, perhaps, that a character is is closer to danger than in reality, much to the approval of both the actor/stunt man and their respective insurance companies.

The image, shot from Southbourne cliffs this morning, illustrates this well. The small red ice cream sign near the bottom right of the frame and the red and white building midway up the frame on the left may seem relatively close in the grand scheme of things, but in reality are just over two miles apart. The furthest feature from the camera is the balloon, tethered over Bournemouth gardens in the centre of town.


300mm f/2.8 AF-S VR Nikkor with TC-14EII converter. 1/2500 second at f/4. ISO 200. Monopod


© 2012