Wednesday, April 22, 2009

U is for Umbrellas

August 2007

Umbrellas to protect you from the sun at Coney Island, taken from the fishing pier near the parachute jump, with a 400mm lens. A hundred meters of beachfront crammed with what looks like half of New York City in one single colorful lump.

When you don't want to use the long lens for isolating your subject, using it to compress the image can lead to some interesting compositions. The picture above was taken on a weekday, with a fairly sparse crowd...


...as you can see in this shot taken with a wider focal length and from further out on the pier. But getting in alignment with the people on the beach, and being slightly elevated, adding the compression of a super telephoto lens, makes it look like there's thousands of people crowding the beach.

But cameras don't lie. Your eyes lie to you. Your brain lies. Cameras just show you what's there. And one of the things there is a guy buried in the sand.


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