Photographing aerial perspective

I came across these photographs of mine this morning as I was sorting and cataloguing some of my old travel images. The top photograph shows two people strolling along the Roman wall at Antalya on the Mediterranean coast of southern Turkey. The bottom photograph is of a fishing boat with the mountains in the distance behind. They seemed such good examples of ‘Aerial Perspective’ I though it might be worth explaining something about it.

There are two very different types of perspective, and an understanding of both can be of fundamental importance to the photographer when creating a sense of depth - the third dimension - in our two-dimensional photographs.

Firstly, of course, there is linear perspective – that’s when objects nearer the camera appear larger than those further away. Photographers can exaggerate the effects of linear perspective by using different focal length lenses, painters and artists simple move their ‘disappearing point’ to create similar effects or distortions. More about all that some other time.

Aerial perspective has nothing to do with flying and looking down on your subject, in fact it would be more accurately described as ‘atmospheric’ perspective. It is the phenomenon that creates a sense of depth in a photograph by capturing the way the atmosphere makes distant objects appear less distinct and more bluish than those nearer the camera.

Aerial perspective is particularly noticeable with backlight (what nice photographers often refer to as contre-jour or ‘against the light’) in a slightly hazy atmosphere, and you can see its effect very clearly in the photograph above. The figures on the wall are in strong, black silhouette. The mountains behind get gradually lighter the further away they are. This gives a very powerful sense of distance and depth.

Painters and artists have been using this effect for many centuries. In particular, Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by it and I believe he was the first to use the term. I can bring to mind at least one of his paintings – Virgin of the Rocks, in which he has used it to great effect to give the illusion of tremendous depth within his picture.

I found this interesting techy page about aerial perspective and I suggest you give it a click and learn more…

http://psych.hanover.edu/krantz/art/aerial.html

Photography in bars and cafes

Not counting India, which is in a league of its own, there are three places in the world that really press my button - places where you can almost feel the buzz and vitality coming up through the pavements beneath your feet. The first is New York, then Hong Kong. The third, and possibly my favourite, is Istanbul.

How could any photographer go to Istanbul and not find visual stimulation? The buildings,the skyline, the boats on the Bosphorus, the markets. But, for me, best of all the people. I have always found the people of Turkey to be kind and helpful.

The picture above shows a man smoking his hookah, better known in the West as a hubble-bubble - in a cafe on the old Galatta Bridge. It was taken before this fascinating bridge with its double-deck of shops and cafes was burned down. Probably by someone sat in a cafe smoking a hookah.

I just walked into this cafe because it looked interesting, and ordered a glass of that wonderful Turkish coffee that is so strong and thick you can stand a spoon up in it. Within a short time, people were asking where I was from, introducing themselves and trying to speak English.

Now you must judge these situations very carefully when you are in a strange new place, but all my senses told me there was nothing to fear in this cafe. I started to take photographs and some of the customers insisted that I took pictures of them. One man borrowed my camera to photograph me with the owners of the cafe. I was even prevailed upon to take a pull on a hookah which damned near killed me. I still have that out-of-focus shot as a happy memento.

The photograph from the cafe that pleased me most was of the man sat quiety puffing away on his hookah beneath the faded pictures on the wall.

The picture was taken with a Nikon F3 with a 24mm Nikkor lens. It was hand held ISO 400 Neopan film at 1/20sec at f3.5