Moderator: E.J. Peiker

All times are UTC-05:00

  
« Previous topic | Next topic »  
Reply to topic  
 First unread post  | 11 posts | 
by prairiewing on Tue Mar 20, 2018 4:50 pm
prairiewing
Lifetime Member
Posts: 404
Joined: 9 Sep 2003
Location: North Dakota
Member #:00208
I was in Florida yesterday and read this article on photographer David Yarrow in the Palm Beach Post:

https://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news ... 8Ztd4w4CN/

The accompanying photographs were impressive.  Here's a quote from the article:  

"Yarrow, 52, saw a niche for himself in wildlife photography "because it's been poorly done," he said.
Blame that on the telephoto lens, he said.  He prefers a wide-angle lens.
Great pictures come where you're close to the subject," he said.

I'm curious about what members of this forum might make of this.
Pat Gerlach
 

by EGrav on Tue Mar 20, 2018 5:24 pm
User avatar
EGrav
Forum Contributor
Posts: 469
Joined: 24 Aug 2003
Location: USA
Seems like most of his images are not real wildlife. Composites, remote controlled or captive.....
Yuk....
 

by Anthony Medici on Tue Mar 20, 2018 5:41 pm
User avatar
Anthony Medici
Lifetime Member
Posts: 6879
Joined: 17 Aug 2003
Location: Champions Gate, FL
Member #:00012
Perspective is everything.

Generally speaking, when trying to take a picture of someone that will satisfy people that know that person, the best distance to take the picture at is at the distance people normally stand from each other. Once at that distance, your cropping decision dictates the focal length that you use. If you break the distance rule by being too close (think selfie or in a small room), you'll end up with a face or body that seems wider than it actually is. If you break the distance rule by being further away, you'll end up with a face and body that is narrower than it actually is. The first one of those is never flattering to the person nor the person's friends. While the second one tends to be liked for exactly because it is flattering. Hence for people pictures, you generally want to be further away for the most favorable images.

For wildlife in general, I think my most dramatic (non-action) images are taken with shorter focal lens and bigger apertures. For the largest ones, like elephants, pictures taken between 70mm and 200mm tend to show the animal as most people tend to see them when they are there. And combining that with an F2.8 or faster aperture isolates it which simulates our ability to concentrate so much on a subject that you tend to ignore the rest of the world around the subject in real life. For very large animals, if you could stand at normal people shooting distance, (and still be safe) you'd need a lens with wider than a normal view to get the whole animal in frame. And the animal would now look gigantic which is not how people would normally see the animal in the wild since your rarely get that close. That view would be liked because it is something you rarely if ever get to see in real life. While being very far away, the telephoto compression makes the animals and background compress which usually makes for the least dramatic images.

For birds things tend to be the same. However, birds only get close if they want to get close and rarely stay close unless they feel safe. Yet even the closest birds still tend to be at you would stand apart from someone that you don't know well. Small birds at that distance might still require a 400mm or more. I've personally never been that close to a larger bird that was captive. In terms of BIF, given a choice, I'd want the birds flying close enough to get full frame shots with 200mm or less, preferably as sort at 70mm. If you could get overly close to the bird, (think remote camera in nest) the images would be like simply because it is something you'd never see in real life.

In both cases for animals and birds, the focal length needed to get a full frame image of the entire subject is the correct focal length if you want a full frame image of the subject. As the focal lengths needed become shorter than a normal view focal length (about 50mm on FX), the more distortion you get which will make the animal wider and larger than real life. That, of course, is something most people have never experienced in real life, being so close that they can only see the subject, so they tend to like those images for that reason. 

BTW, I have elephant images like that though I was in Botswana at the time in the Okavango so there are trees in the images also. The elephants I took those pictures up I would call tamed and partially trained. They were free to come and go and one had been off by himself for about a year before he returned. So not quite a captive situation but certainly human controlled. I was certainly using the widest lens I owned at the time to take those images. 
Tony
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Mar 20, 2018 6:35 pm
User avatar
E.J. Peiker
Senior Technical Editor
Posts: 86761
Joined: 16 Aug 2003
Location: Arizona
Member #:00002
I edited the original post to make the link clickable
 

by prairiewing on Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:04 pm
prairiewing
Lifetime Member
Posts: 404
Joined: 9 Sep 2003
Location: North Dakota
Member #:00208
E.J. Peiker wrote:I edited the original post to make the link clickable

Thank you
Pat Gerlach
 

by SantaFeJoe on Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:00 pm
User avatar
SantaFeJoe
Forum Contributor
Posts: 8622
Joined: 28 Jan 2012
Location: Somewhere Out In The Wilds
Reminds me of Peter Lik. Much hype but nothing impressive. To suggest he is a standout in the field of nature photography is pushing it. The descriptions of his techniques makes it sound like no one has ever done this before. Composites can’t even be considered true nature photography on any level, IMO. Remote triggering is not a unique technique used by nobody else. Even the description of the elephants as large bulls or “tuskers” is baloney. Here is more of his work from the show:

http://www.holdenluntz.com/exhibitions/david-yarrow

Also, to describe wildlife photography as  “it’s been poorly done”, as if he was so great, is pretty arrogant.

Joe
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.  -Pablo Picasso
 

by prairiewing on Wed Mar 21, 2018 11:38 am
prairiewing
Lifetime Member
Posts: 404
Joined: 9 Sep 2003
Location: North Dakota
Member #:00208
I agree that the "poorly done" statement is arrogant.  I also feel it's unnecessary and quite foolish.  I liked his work although some of it seems contrived and overly processed but that's just my opinion.  It sounds like he has plenty of fans and has done some very worthwhile conservation work.

It always bothers me when someone feels he has to disparage the work of others to promote his own.  Photography is a huge tent and there's plenty of room for all kinds of different approaches, philosophies and techniques.  That's what makes it so interesting.
Pat Gerlach
 

by Hoppy on Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:54 pm
User avatar
Hoppy
Forum Contributor
Posts: 274
Joined: 27 Feb 2009
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Looks very similar to Nick Brandt's work
A SLR always has the wrong lens attached

http://www.romarimages.com
[url]http://500px.com/ROMARimages[/url]
 

by SantaFeJoe on Wed Mar 21, 2018 11:01 pm
User avatar
SantaFeJoe
Forum Contributor
Posts: 8622
Joined: 28 Jan 2012
Location: Somewhere Out In The Wilds
Hoppy wrote:Looks very similar to Nick Brandt's work
Exactly! Even the stories are similar. Here’s a link I posted a while back in the ECE forum to his work:

http://framework.latimes.com/2013/10/21/reframed-in-conversation-with-nick-brandt/#/13

Be sure to check out all the photos in the article. They surely dispell the notion of uniqueness regarding Yarrows’ work.

Joe
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.  -Pablo Picasso
 

by WDCarrier on Thu Mar 22, 2018 11:30 am
User avatar
WDCarrier
Forum Contributor
Posts: 1652
Joined: 15 Mar 2012
Location: Eureka, California
Yarrow should sit down and read the saga of Timothy Treadwell.
[font=Helvetica, sans-serif]“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” MLK[/font]
 

by Primus on Thu Mar 22, 2018 4:31 pm
Primus
Lifetime Member
Posts: 905
Joined: 12 Oct 2012
Location: New York
Member #:02003
He may try to emulate Nick Brandt, but he's not even close. I had the opportunity to meet NB at a book-signing in NY a couple of years ago and am a huge fan of his, I'm not afraid to say.

In an interview DY says he had an epiphany when a man walked into his office and offered to pay $10,000 for two copies of one of his images of a shark with a seal pup in its mouth. He realized he was in the wrong business and started full-time on selling photos.

I do like the B&W content, it is quite compelling and some of his images are quite good, but any of the pros here I am sure have equally impressive work in their portfolios.

I do not mind composites either, it is just another art form and if it creates a story and is interesting, then why not? Purists like Franz Lanting would argue that ANY image taken of a wild animal in captivity or outside of his native habitat even if in a huge open environment is unacceptable, but that's just his view.

I get the feeling that the more 'back story' a photograph has, indicating the extreme hardship the photographer endured to take it, the more likely it is to be appreciated and awarded.

JMT.

Pradeep
 

Display posts from previous:  Sort by:  
11 posts | 
  

Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group