تقنيات خاصة .. كيف تلتقط أجمل الصور .. كتاب التصوير الضوئي

Special techniques .. How to take the most beautiful pictures .. The book of photography

Special techniques

By trying to apply techniques, photographers have made a remarkable and innovative contribution to science, art and the way of seeing things. The eye could never fully analyze the movement of the horse's legs before the photographic machine was able to fix this movement.

Slow motion photography has helped us analyze the laws of physics by freezing them - as they say -.

Thus, we became able to photograph the flapping of a fly's wing and examine the transformations that occur on a drop of water during its fall and see the waves of a gun shot. Microscopic photography, that is, combining the microscope with the machine, gives us all the possibilities of observing the microcosm.

With some special techniques, photographers have created an imaginative and personal rapprochement with a constant search for a new way to represent images and effects known before. To achieve this, they borrowed ideas from painters, scientists, filmmakers and television men and vice versa. For example, cinema has only recently adopted the method of emitting light parallel to the vertical surface - see the photograph on page 157, which photographers have been using for years.

The term "special techniques" seems to apply to very special knowledge and information related to the specialist and very special equipment, but in fact amazing results can be obtained by simple means such as adopting a longer than usual pause or "using bad film at the right time", for example by taking artificial light film and using it in daylight, or even photographing a portrait on a film with a high contrast originally intended for the graphic arts. The use of different techniques such as superimposing negatives or positives, infrared photography with a colored filter and a lens adjusted for focal distance, montage and deliberate distortions when taking pictures or zooming in, etc., have been called contemptuously "tricks" by some simple minds who still think that the duty of photography is to cling to the purely documentary or visual field only. Indeed, there are no tricks in photography: there are only techniques that allow you to express ideas through the mouthpiece of the machine or the expressive instrument.

It is true that some special equipment is expensive, but it is still possible to rent it at reasonable prices. On the other hand, photography clubs buy some equipment that members can borrow. In the following pages we will present some techniques that are easy to apply with limited equipment.

- Projected image

Photographs or drawings can be projected onto an object or a person to give striking effects. The drawing can adapt to the shape of the object or person, but in general it eliminates volume by giving an image with many elements of an intangible, tangible or even unrealistic character. Since all this is not necessary, it is best to work in a dark room. Start by showing the positive photographs (slides) to choose the ones with the most contrast in color, the best composition and the most massive. Natural forms such as leaves and flowers or even geometric shapes taken from architecture give convincing results. There are also beautiful effects when we project photographs onto a nude model or onto a face. The model can be positioned in front of the projection screen so that the subject is shown on the model and on the screen at the same time. You can also move the model away so that the subject is only on it. You can also, by means of two positive lanterns (slides), expose two different subjects, one lantern for the model and one for the background. For colours, use an artificial lighting film that matches the colour temperature of the positive lantern. It is often necessary to use a correcting filter to obtain correct colour reproduction. The photographs on these two pages are examples of what can be achieved by projecting several subjects onto the naked model. You will notice that the choice of the subject is as important as the position of the model.