{"id":606,"date":"2007-10-14T16:43:20","date_gmt":"2007-10-14T07:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2007-10-14\/606"},"modified":"2007-10-14T22:37:41","modified_gmt":"2007-10-14T13:37:41","slug":"if-its-not-in-the-frame-it-doesnt-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2007-10-14\/606","title":{"rendered":"If It’s Not in Frame, It Doesn’t Exist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
<\/a>\nNikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f\/2.8 @ 150mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>250 sec, f\/7.1, ISO 200\nNikon SB-800 at 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>128th power, full zoom, behind a paper behind the glass —\nfull exif<\/a><\/span>\nWater #1a<\/span>\n<\/div>\n\n
<\/a>\nNikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f\/2.8 @ 150mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>250 sec, f\/7.1, ISO 200\nNikon SB-800 at 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>128th power, full zoom, behind a paper behind the glass —\nfull exif<\/a><\/span>\nWater #1b<\/span>\n<\/div>\n\n
<\/a>\nNikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f\/2.8 @ 130mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>250 sec, f\/5.6, ISO 200\nNikon SB-800 at 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>32nd power with built-in diffuser, behind a paper behind the glass —\nfull exif<\/a><\/span>\nWater #2a<\/span>\n<\/div>\n\n
<\/a>\nNikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f\/2.8 @ 130mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>250 sec, f\/5.6, ISO 200\nNikon SB-800 at 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>32nd power with built-in diffuser, behind a paper behind the glass —\nfull exif<\/a><\/span>\nWater #2b<\/span>\n<\/div>\n\n

I've long known the old adage “if it's out of the frame (or can be\ncropped out), it doesn't exist.<\/b>” Well, at least I've known the concept\n– the photographic equivalent of “out of sight, out of mind” –\nand so if they aren't an adage, they should be.<\/p>\n\n

As I mentioned in one of my Kyoto fall-color previews<\/a>\na couple<\/span> of weeks ago, that's one of the great challenges in photographing\nmuch of the beauty in Kyoto: to not photograph what is not beautiful that\noften intrudes into an otherwise photogenic scene (such as utility poles\nand wires). Out of necessity<\/span>, I feel I<\/span>'ve become quite the master at\nfinely-creative framing, or put another way, lying with the camera.<\/p>\n\n

Of course, when you can control the environment, such as when I did<\/span> the\nclothing product shots<\/a>\nthe other day, you can lie even more, selectively showing what you want to\nbe seen (the clothes) and hiding that which you don't want to be seen\n(everything else).<\/p>\n\n

The four glass photos above were from my attempt to mimic a shot<\/span> I saw<\/span>\non the web, which amazed me with its simplicity. I shot it<\/span> in my kitchen\nlast night, with this setup:<\/p>\n\n

<\/a>\nThe Setup<\/span>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n

(mouseover items in bold below to highlight in the photo above)<\/p>\n\n\n

The\nglass<\/span> is just sitting on my kitchen counter, along with whatever\nclutter happened to have been there. I suspended<\/span> a sheet\nof paper<\/span> behind the glass from one of those plastic sticks used to\nsupport up a tomato<\/span> plant or the like.\n\nBehind the paper is the\nflash<\/span> (Nikon MB-800) sitting on some boxes sitting on a drawer<\/span> that\nI've pulled out to use as a support.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

For the first pair of shots, the flash was on maximum zoom and the glass\nwas quite a but<\/span> further away from the paper than shown above. I also had<\/span>\nthe paper turned so that its long side was vertical.<\/p>\n\n

However, after taking those shots, I noticed<\/span> that the darkness beyond\nthe paper was too visible in the refractions in the glass (especially in\n1a<\/b>), so to address that for the next pair of shots, I turned<\/span> the\npaper sideways and put the glass closer, to where you see it in the setup\nphoto.<\/p>\n\n

I also put the flash into least-zoom mode, deployed its built in\ndiffuser, and bumped up the power by a factor<\/span> of four. This creates a much<\/span>\nmore even, smooth lighting. It turns<\/span> out that I like<\/span> the effect of the\nfirst way better, though.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a>\nView From Behind the Camera<\/span>\n<\/div>\n\n

(These “setup” pictures were taken with my point-n-shoot, which turns out\nto have had a big<\/span> nasty fingerprint on the lens, which is why they are both\nfairly fuzzy).<\/p>\n\n

To take the pictures, I turned<\/span> off most of the room lights, and with one\nhand on the remote shutter release, I used the<\/span> other to pour from the\nkettle into the glass, and snapped off a few<\/span> shots.<\/p>\n\n

In taking these, I was trying<\/span> to mimic this shot<\/a>,\nwhich I thought<\/span> was a nice<\/span> picture, but what really flabbergasted me was\nhow simple and, er, “down home” the setup<\/a>\nwas. It shouldn't have surprised me in the least, but for whatever reason, I was just<\/span> not prepared for it, so it had a notable<\/span> eye-opening impact on\nme.<\/p>\n\n

Even his idea of setting the white balance to incandescent light (which\ngives a flash<\/span>-taken photo a blue<\/span> color cast) has an effect whose strength\nis belied by its utter simplicity. Cool, in at least two senses of the\nword.<\/p>\n\n

I just wish I had a better-looking glass, like the original. For my shots<\/span>, I just grabbed<\/span> the glass that I use<\/span> each morning for my ice coffee<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

I'd come across the glass photo because I'd followed Alexander Kiel's\nsuggestion<\/a> to check out strobist.com<\/a>, a most<\/span>-excellent\nflash-photography blog, which then led me to Flickr's Setups Mandatory<\/a>\ngroup, which features photos and the setups in which they were created.<\/p>\n\n

My kitchen is also where I took the picture of the fall-foliage beer can<\/a> a\nmonth<\/span> ago, but in that case I didn't<\/span> use a flash,<\/span> but instead a reading<\/span>\nlight and a mirror<\/span>:<\/p>\n\n

<\/a>\nSetup for the Beer-Can Photo<\/span>\n<\/div>\n\n

I needed the mirror (tucked into the box of Band-Aids for support) to\nfill in light from the side. I think<\/span> I'd tried a white<\/span> sheet of paper, but\nit didn't reflect enough, so I moved<\/span> to the mirror. I was very<\/span> happy with\nthe result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I've long known the old adage \"if it's out of the frame (or can be cropped out), it doesn't exist.<\/b>\" Well, at least I've known the concept – the photographic equivalent of \"out of sight, out of mind\" – and so if they aren't an adage, they should be.<\/p>

As I mentioned in one of my Kyoto fall-color previews a couple of weeks ago, that's one of the great challenges in photographing much of the beauty in Kyoto: to not photograph what is not beautiful that often intrudes into an otherwise photogenic scene (such as utility poles and wires). Out [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}