Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Vincent Laforet

Vincent Laforet has become famous for his photos with unusually small depth-of-field. Here's a video about it. And here's an article of his regarding the future plight of the professional photographer (hint: it's buyer's market).

Update: the article has a reference to the wedding thing we have touched upon:
"To be frank, it's quite possible to make more money these days as a top wedding photographer than it is as a top advertising photographer... if you're lucky enough to be making more than $10K a wedding, I'd say it's going to be pretty darn close. While few make that much per wedding, it's a realistic goal, as the top wedding photographers in the country make between $20K to $50K per wedding and up."
Fifty grand for the photographer alone! That's when you know you have too much money.


It is funny that we are familiar enough with miniature/model photography and the inherent short depth-of-field that we instinctively feel that photos like this are of miniatures.
It can be done with a large format camera, but also with a tilt lens. Article.

Update:
"At the time people thought I was reckless for leaving such a coveted staff job. The NYT job was a union job - with incredible benefits, a staff car, and company gear and it was often described as a "guaranteed job for life." Unless you committed a felony, or broke an important ethical rule, "they can't fire you," I was repeatedly told.
A few weeks ago I was at The Times to judge the Sports Shooter Student Portfolio of the Year and when I came out there was a strange feel around the newsroom. That day was the day that The New York Times was having it's first layoffs in the newspaper's history, that's right until then, there had never been a single layoff at The New York Times. People were being called in the editors' offices and being told they were being let go - this after not enough people had opted to take a series of buyouts. This was fundamental change in what we were taught to believe in - what ever happened to that "job for life." Well that dream, that comfortable "cloud" and the idea of a staff job, is becoming a distant memory these days - no one is immune - not even The NY Times. "

Below is one of my favorite Vince Laforet pictures. It's awesome.

10 comments:

Hannah said...

I never realized how much the field meant to a photograph - very interesting. These are neat, though.

Alex said...

It really looked like photography of scale models at first.

One of the site you linked to recently was advertising a gizmo like the one Laforet was talking about. At first it looked like a soft focus filter, but it was more complex to use. I couldn't really see the application as the effect they used in the samples was too subtle, and really did just look like a traditional filter.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Hmm, what gizmo was that?

Alex said...

The Gizmo I was referring to was a Tilt Shifter Lens.

Hmm, I don't remember your blog post mentioning that when I first read it.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Nope, it didn't. And I didn't realize that was what you were talking about. But I had realized in the mean time that I should have included a reference to tilt/shift.

Large formate cameras can tilt and shift because they have a bellows. Small cameras need a special lens to do the same thing.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

The normal use of tilt is to make depth of field longer, not shorter.

Alex said...

Would I be right in thinking I saw a similar lens/bellow arrangement, with a mechanism to hold the front lens coplanar with the film plane to reduce converging verticals when shooting a tall object?

I did! Section 4 of this article discusses converging verticals. But this wasn't the article I saw years ago. Maybe it was in a B&H Photo catalogue.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yep, that's the "shift" part.
Tilt and shift are quite different things.

Alex said...

I found this blog entry from someone who was playing with a tilt shift. Some nice pics and some interesting comments, seems like the photographer was feeling his way and stumbled across some FX.

Anonymous said...

You look like you could be Laforet's twin brother. Unless there is something about these pictures that I am missing.