3 Close-up on Emotions: Using Wide-angle Lenses
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The famous war photographer, Robert Capa, once said, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” Long lenses may look impressive, but they should be relegated to the brand of photography for which they’ve been designed: in essence, classical portraits, sports, and nature shots. Long lenses capture beauty, wide lenses capture emotion and, as a photojournalist, emotion is what you’re after. Your pictures will be more intense and striking if you get close to your subject with a wide lens. A wide lens on your camera (below 50 mm) will actually force you into the action, and because of this, your picture will gain depth and emotional charge. Don't hesitate to get as close as a meter to your subject. Unfortunately, this necessity of proximity when it comes to capturing emotion has cost many a photojournalist his/her life. A good illustration of this is Gerda Taro (the companion and professional partner of Robert Capa, quoted above), who was a war photographer in the early 1900s, and the first female photojournalist to cover the front lines. Taro died during her coverage of the Spanish Civil War. It’s been said that Taro’s shots were the only testament at the time to the reality at hand, as Nationalist propaganda skewed this reality, claiming the Nationalists had control over the region when, in fact, they’d been pushed out by the Republican forces. This goes to show just how important photojournalism can be: a photo can tell the truth in a world seething with lies. James Nachtwey, a renowned American photojournalist, was the subject of a famous photograph illustrating the danger of the job. In the photo, he’s crouched in the dirt, shooting pictures in the middle of a group of armed rebels who are shooting to kill. This famous photo demonstrates the great lengths some photographers will go to in order to capture that perfect shot. In fact, more recently, Nachtwey was caught in the crossfire while on the job; shot in the leg during the Thailand political protests of 2014. For most people, this willingness to die for a photograph – or for a story – is a heroism beyond comprehension. But those brave photo-journalists who have gotten close enough to the story to capture its truth serve the rest of us in doing so. They are humanity’s collective microscope on the cellular makeup of the world.
The picture above was taken in a Chilean slum. The boy is the closest element in the photo. I took several pictures of him, but I don't think he realized that he was the focal point of this one. He stood on my right and, with the wide lens, I caught him in the corner with that furrowed brow. Though he is the focal point, the camera is focused on the barbwire, leaving the boy ever so slightly out of focus.
Taken in Cappadocia, a central region of Turkey, I spent a good amount of time with the shepherd in this photo above. The wide-angle lens maintains a sharpness in all planes of the picture – from the hand to the face to the sheep and the mountains in the background. The slight distortion of perspective dramatizes the clouds’ dynamics and pulls the viewer into the photo.
Shot in Istanbul, Turkey, again the wide-angle lens sharpens the entirety of the image, especially the boy, without taking away from the background, where the mosque is an important focal point. The apparent physical closeness of the boy is an impression brought on by the distortion.
Without a wide-angle lens, the picture above would have been impossible. There was simply not enough room in this old man’s hut in northern Mali - although, with the lens, it looks like there’s plenty. This is because wide-angle lenses distort space. Small spaces are stretched, an effect often used in publicity photography, particularly when it comes to commercial ads for hotel rooms.