03 Apr Size Matters / FLength & Persp Shifts

Perspective blends and focal length shifts had been around for some time, used mostly in secret by single-shot community leaders,
by the time a kid with some mettle finally led us out of the closet, naming and claiming them.
I’d been a composite junky since the darkroom days and sheepishly skirting the hostilities by simply not sharing publicly.
The first time I shot with a better-known friend, he had been developing the art of exposure-blending and apologetically offered
an explanation as if he’d anticipated a negative response to his having gathered multiple frames. I glibly nodded in response,
afraid to let on that my own methods were already far more fiendish by puritanically traditional standards.
Later, I tested our friendship by sharing that I had been part of a composites workshop and, critiquing an image, he commented that I sure seemed
to have caught on fast. I still feared chancing irrecoverable respect were I to come clean and admit I had been doing them for years. So I simply shrugged, “Uhhh, thanks.”
It was a tough time for everyone. And it’s not entirely over. Still a bit reticent about opening myself up to the criticisms of the short-sighted crowd,
I am only now coming out of the closet with much of my work. I’ve enjoyed the silver-lining lifestyle of a virtually (broke but) unknown artist quite long enough. ha!

Yes, Perspective Blends and Focal Length Shifts are so cool! It is crazy though how hard they are to get used to.

(Explain what they are using Chalfont Valley petroglyphs under White Mt. Snows as examples)

**That said, and in-concert with Composites, Landscape Diorama, or any form of manipulation, including exposure blends, focus stacks or even asking friends or models
to pose in otherwise single-shot landscapes, there are some rules. At least in my mind. And please, these are just my self-imposed guidelines.
Still, it’s important to understand that we each have a responsibility to set some sacred boundaries, and then honor them.

First; full disclosure. Find a way to share, by way of obvious genre, or title transparency, or outright absurdity of subject matter just what you’ve done.
Second; I try and capture all elements from one location and in as short a time frame as possible.
For images that are a bit more fantastical I defer to rule #1, and say so unabashedly.
You’re not going to find a whale for your apocalyptic desert scene sky, if that’s your thing, out floating over Joshua Tree National Park.
And nobody expects you would, but we still, at times, skirt a sad little world where if you don’t say so, you risk being branded a counterfeit.

Remember this; you are declaring your methods for their sake, you have every right to be super proud of yourselves. These are advanced skill-sets.
You’ll invest time, energy and money to be competent, but you’ll rock. And it feels freakin’ amazing. No apologies.
Just honest-to-golly goodness!