Research: Fisheye Lens

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Project 03 Body and Experience

History

In 1906 renowned physicist Robert W. Wood was in his lab at Johns Hopkins University with

  • A bucket of water
  • A pinhole camera
  • Mirrored glass
  • A lot of light

He wanted to see if He could create an image of the world from the perspective of a fish.

Whose view from underwater compresses the entire horizon.

This experiment might seem unusual, but Woods was a professor of optical physics and he dedicated his career to inventing unconventional tool, to study light. From developing this disk whose microscopic components helped determine the age of stars, to inventing this toy which, according to the patent, ‘’create grotesque image of people’s faces’’ through a series of perfectly placed mirrors.

‘’the circular picture would contain everything embraced within an angle of 180 degrees in every direction, i.e. a complete hemisphere.’’

This is what a fish might see if all those men were looking down at it from the surface of pond.

Nikon Fisheye Camera

Soon, researchers and scientists built on Wood’s idea. From 1915 through the 1930s, it was the fields of metrorology and astronomy that drove the development of a camera lens that could capture that coveted fisheye perspective. And on the eve of WWII, German inventors filed a patent for a lens which they then shared with the Japanese company Nikon. The lens used the same principles as Woods’ water experiment.

His diagram: As the light rays come in at a steep angle, they come out at a less steep angle.
And so those light rays that are coming from huge angles are compressed onto the picture.

In 1957, Nikon produced their first special order fisheye camera, factoring in inflation, it was a $27,000 piece of gear.

1957 issue of Life Magazine: A senate hearing

Though they were still primarily used for scientific research, a few caught the attention of magazines and newspaper photographers.

Pop culture

In 1962, sixty years after Robert Woods’ original experiments, Nikon’s first consumer grade fish-eye lens hit the market. And it became a pop culture phenomenon.
Fisheye – Nikkor 1:8 F=8MM
It captured baseball stadiums, shark cages, political conventions, The Apollo trainings, protests…

It was and always has been a handy tool to capture tight quarters, as well as huge spaces.

But perhaps its greatest strength was making rock stars appear larger than life.

1964: When the Beatles kicked off the British Invasion the mid 60s. The fish eye lens was uniquely suited to document the insanity.

Here they are at a Miami press conference and during a TV performance.

Album Art

The lens warped perspective reflected the trippiness of the psychedelic era. Including the Woodstock music festival.

Jazz musician, Sam Rivers’, 1965 album Fuchsia Swing Song. It’s one of the earliest fisheye album covers. A few months later The Byrds released Mr Tambourine Man. Over the next few years the fisheye album art format cemented itself in music.

The most common format was this:
A giant circular fisheye lens portrait of the artist or band with typography above and below it. In more illustrated approaches the font wraps fully around the image.
And some exclude the artist altogether, opting to show an interesting scene or landscape.

The fisheye lens was a go-to piece of gear for music photographers and filmmakers by the end of the 1970s. So by the time MTV launched in 1981, it was inevitable that the super wide angle lens would play a huge role in music videos. It could get super close to a performer while still capturing the space around them.

Bibliography

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Final pieces sketches

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(Project 02 Sequences and Time)

Class sketch
1.       January: Buying Chinese New years flower, Butterfly orchid
2. February: Celebrating Chinese New year (Location: Lee Tung Street)
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Final piece ideas

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(Project 02 Sequences and Time)

A series of character portraiture in neo-Chinese fashion
To combine with Hong Kong signature cultural location as background, disappearing trades and crafts…
Final piece: A Calendar with 12 pieces of illustration
–          Local culture
–          Festivals
To create a combination of new and old…

Each picture idea brainstorm:

1.       January: Buying Chinese New years flower, Butterfly orchid
(Location: Mong Kok Flower market)
2.       February: Celebrating Chinese New year
(Location: Lee Tung Street)
3.       March: Kapok flower viewing
4.       April: Eating Zongzi (rice dumpling)
(Location: Luk Yu Tea House)
5.       May: Rainy season
(Location: Umbrella repair shore)
6.       June: Watching dragon boat competition
7.       July: Getting a new haircut for hot weather
(Location: Traditional hair salon)
8.       August: A couple having a date for Qixi Festival (Chinese Valentine’s Day)
(Location: Lai Yuen?)
9.       September: Celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival
(Location: Lantern Street)
10.   October: Getting shoes polish for school/ work
(Location: Central)
11.   November: Eating Hot Tong Shui (Guangdong dessert) as the weather getting cold
(Location: Hong Kong dessert shop)
12.   December: Family gathering for Dongzhi (Winter solstice) Poon Choi, Tangyuan

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Exhibition : Vital Signs

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(Project 02 Sequences and Time)

Vital Signs is an exhibition that celebrates Hong Kong’s unique and distinctive visual identity through its iconic neon heritage and pays tribute to the skill, craftsmanship, audacity, competitiveness, precision, and can-do mindset that define this vibrant art form.
Visitors to Vital Signs will be able to experience and appreciate up close the neon signs, master craftsmen, and vibrant streetscapes that were once synonymous with Hong Kong’s visual culture. The exhibition spans two entirely separate spaces within Tai Kwun, commencing in the Duplex Studio in Block 01 where visitors can marvel at the sheer size and audacity of over 20 neon signs, many of which have been conserved and recommissioned by Tetra Neon Exchange and are on public display for the first time.
The neon tour then continues at Laundry Steps, which are transformed into a riotous electrified streetscape crowned by another cluster of 5 authentic and original Hong Kong neon signs. The exhibition highlights the flair and imagination, as well as the ingenious problem-solving of Hong Kong’s legendary neon masters, and invites visitors to step back into the Wan Chai, Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay of the 80s and 90s, where distinctive canopies of dazzling, blinking, multi-coloured neon signs in Chinese characters (and occasionally English) competed for attention in the streets of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island – an image instantly recognizable around the world, capturing in a single polaroid shot the vitality, excitement, and opportunity that drew the world to Hong Kong.
I visited this exhibition when I back to Hong Kong for this summer. Me and my friend asked an old lady to help us to take a picture. She’s asking us if we know about this brand ‘’Millie’s’’ because it was very popular in Hong Kong back then. She’s telling us should ask our mum if she owns at least one of their bags.

MILLIE’S is a Hong Kong company established in the 1950s. MILLIE’S sells leather shoes. In 1960, it was the first company in Hong Kong to introduce Italian shoes. This brand is popular and deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

The advertisement says/sings: “Millie Millie is extremely wonderful, Millie Millie is extremely wonderful, Millie’s handbags are new every day, Millie’s leather shoes are unique, Millie children’s clothing collection is awesome.”

「妙麗妙麗妙到極，妙麗妙麗妙到極，妙麗手袋天天新款，妙麗皮鞋與眾不同，妙麗童裝零舍夠威。」

This was one of the neon signboard got recreated by CGI in the scenes of a film ‘’Anita’’ released in 2021 which is based on the life story of the 80s Hong Kong superstar Anita Mui. 

Bibliography

https://www.taikwun.hk/zh/programme/detail/vital-signs/1222
https://zh-yue.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A6%99%E9%BA%97%E7%9A%AE%E9%9E%8B
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Photographer research: Fan Ho

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(Project 02: Sequences and Time)

Content

Fan Ho (Chinese: 何藩; 8 October 1931 – 19 June 2016) was a Chinese photographer, film director, and actor. From 1956, he won over 280 awards from international exhibitions and competitions worldwide for his photography.

Fan Ho was born in Shanghai in 1931 and emigrated with his family to Hong Kong in 1949. At the outbreak of war in 1941, Ho’s parents were stranded in Macau for several years and Ho was left in the care of a family servant. Ho began photographing at a very young age with a Brownie which his father had left at home, and later with a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera his father gave him at the age of 14. Largely self-taught, his photos display a fascination with urban life, explored alleys, slums, markets and streets. He developed his images in the family bathtub and soon had built up a significant body of work, chronicling Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s as it was becoming a major metropolitan centre.

‘’… I’ve always believed that any work of art should stem from genuine feelings and understandings … I didn’t work with any sense of purpose. As an artist, I was only looking to express myself. I did it to share my feelings with the audience. I need to be touched emotionally to come up with meaningful works. When the work resonates with the audience, it’s a satisfaction that money can’t buy. My purpose is simple: I try not to waste my audience’s time.’’

— Ho Fan, 2014

Form
Format: Landscape
Location: Hong Kong Central Market
Time: Daytime (03:45p.m.)
Perspective: Lower angle (probably shot this picture from the staircase downstairs)
This picture was captured in the middle of the going up and down staircases. This angle captured a really strong contrast between the daylight from the right-hand side balcony upstairs and the shadow formed left hand-side from the downstairs. What makes this picture more iconic is the main object from the front ground, which is the colour difference of both person’s clothes, dark and light. Both person’s clothes match the colour difference of the background as well. Since this is a black and white photograph, both main object position is under the sunlight part which created line of highlight around their body.
Mood
This picture was photographed at the market, which was about the daily life of the Hong Kong citizen in the old days. The people of the image were wearing simple traditional clothes without any pattern. As we can tell, back at those days during the 60s, Hong Kong just started developing, everyone’s working hard and living in the moment. In the photograph, the man was working for the market, carrying 2 cages, and the women was holding a child with a bag of food ingredients. They’re looking at each other, seems like they knew each other, maybe they’re husband and wife or just neighbours. During capturing the daily life of Hong Kong people, Fan Ho captured the society role of both man and women in the old days. This is really nostalgia and reminds the audience how much Hong Kong changed compare the present and the 60s.
Personal Opinion
Back then we did not have any editing technology or tools like Photoshop to edit photographs, I really amazed by the way Fan Ho chose to use the strong contrast of shadow and light to make his photograph iconic to audiences. I respect the time he spent at the same spot to capture the perfect moment and the angles he chose to shoot which gave his photographs good layering. Fan Ho photographs speak to me because of the way he captured the life of the old Hong Kong is vivid even though it’s in black and white. It shows how much he cared and loved this city, Hong Kong.
Bibliography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_Ho
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