• Portraits
    • Candid
    • Events
    • Stage
    • Children
    • Landscapes & Experiments
    • BCI
    • VLOGs
    • "16:21"
  • Blog
  • About & Contact
Menu

Boris Urumov

  • Photography Portfolios
    • Portraits
    • Candid
    • Events
    • Stage
    • Children
    • Landscapes & Experiments
  • Video
    • BCI
    • VLOGs
    • "16:21"
  • Blog
  • About & Contact
×

Photo of the Day: 12

Boris Urumov January 13, 2017

Today, I want to revisit the fisheye-lens question by sharing an image, where I think it works perfectly.

This picture was taken a few years ago, at the opening night of ArtEmona - a week of charity concerts, exhibitions, performances, workshops, and all sorts of other art events to raise money to rebuild a historical monestary near a village on the Bulgarian coast. Vasko "the Patch" (Кръпката) is a famous bulgarian blues guitarist, who every years instits on performing at the opening concert, and he always finds a way to create a party atmosphere regardless of the generation mix in the crowd. That year, though, the generator broke during Vasko's performence, so he was left in darkness and silence for a moment. But what else could he do, apart from unplug his guitar and start going around the audience, continuing his performence acoustically.

No power outage could crash his party. He just kept going!

This is where I think the fisheye plays a big role. Up until that point I was probably shooting with a telephoto lens, getting the usual pictures of him on stage, but as soon as the electricity cut happened and he jumped off stage, I switched to the fisheye and got real close and personal. That's also very important. You probably can't tell, unless you really look into it, but I'm standing literally just next to the person, sitting at the bottom of the frame. I'm in there with them, and the audience is all around Vasko now, as he's walking between the people, who have all sorts of different reactions, but are generally having a blast. And you can see that in the image, it draws you in, and you feel like you're a part of that moment, surrounded by these people having fun. The distortion is not distracting at all to me, because I value the proximity of this picture much more, and that's why I think it's a perfect example of a very wide (Samyang 8mm f/3.5 manual lens, just for reference), almost 180 degrees field of view, fisheye lens being used properly to convey an emotion.

As I touched upon in the second PotD, the fisheye lens is a speciality tool, and like any other such tool, it should be used only where appropriate, which is to say - sparingly. A lot of the time, people get stuck using a certain technique or a tool too much, because they think that it's interesting just because it's a fisheye shot in this case. But it's really not. It has to be done with purpose.
In the case of my brother's room, I needed the fisheye wide angle to get as much of the chaos of the scene as possible, and the distortion only contributed to that slightly out-of-whack-look.
Long story short - know what you're intending to achieve and anticipate your scene so that you have the right tool (in this case lens) ready to get the shot.

In PotD (Photo of the Day) Tags black and white, black and white photography, fisheye, Васко Кръпката, Vasko the patch, blues musician, ArtEmona, АртЕмона, charity event
← Photo of the Day: 13Photo of the Day: 11 →

Featured Posts

Featured
Nov 20, 2017
Grigor Dimitrov wins 2017 ATP World Tour in London!
Nov 20, 2017
Nov 20, 2017
Nov 6, 2017
REMEMBER, remember...
Nov 6, 2017
Nov 6, 2017
Feb 14, 2017
BARCELONA
Feb 14, 2017
Feb 14, 2017
Jan 30, 2017
Sex, Drugs & Rock'n'Roll
Jan 30, 2017
Jan 30, 2017
Jan 19, 2017
Camden Town photowalk & VLOG
Jan 19, 2017
Jan 19, 2017
Jan 2, 2017
Photo of the Day: 1
Jan 2, 2017
Jan 2, 2017
Nov 19, 2016
Stoyanka Mutafova in London & Coventry
Nov 19, 2016
Nov 19, 2016
Nov 9, 2016
UNDERCOVER in London
Nov 9, 2016
Nov 9, 2016
 
  • November 2017
  • May 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • December 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014