8 min.
LENSBABY’S DELIBERATE DISTORTION
When I think of my earliest photographic influences, I recall browsing through the many photography tomes my father owned, including books on Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus and Irving Penn. But despite the vast differences you’ll find in these photographers’ work, one of the few elements they share is that many of their photographs had a dazzling display of sharp detail and crisply rendered forms and patterns, whether I was examining Adams’ Yosemite landscape, Penn’s celebrity portraits or Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moments.
In a way, their sharply focused details, which comprised so much of their work, taught me to see and seek out fine or dramatic detail when shooting. Which is why, when I first started shooting my own fine-art still lifes in art school, I strove to produce…
