I was asked to write about volume in photography, and I fulfill this request. In fact, this article should appear one of the first on my blog, but I hope you will say thank you that it exists at all, for the simple reason that I have not found a single sensible article on the topic of volume transfer on the Russian-language Internet in photography.

In various photographic forums, “many copies have been broken” on the topic of volume in photography. Some say that one lens conveys volume, others say that another lens conveys volume. Previously, I partially did not touch on this topic, so as not to shock novice photographers.

So, let's start with the fact that the task of conveying volume in photography is not solved by a lens.

Human vision device

To do this, we need to understand how a person in general (and the viewer is supposed to be a person) sees three-dimensional objects, the nature of human vision.

There are different eye devices in nature, but for now we will consider only mammals.
Let's conditionally divide them into predators and herbivores.

These two types of mammals have one very big difference in terms of vision - predators see a much more voluminous picture than herbivores. This happens for the simple reason that the eyes of predators are located in front, and those of herbivores are located on the sides of the head.

What is the difference in the picture in terms of volume transfer with different positions of the eyes?

human field of vision

hare's field of view

horse's field of view

The diagrams show that pictures from different eyes overlap more in a person. And in terms of vision, a person is closer to predators, who also have effective binocular vision, and allows one to accurately determine the distance to a jump. Those. the pictures from the left and right eyes are quite different (the more different the more the eyes are separated. You can easily check this by placing your finger near your nose and alternately closing your left and right eyes - the finger picture will shift left and right) and when crossing these areas, the picture in them becomes three-dimensional.

But the same hare, although he sees almost 360 degrees, but sees two separate flat pictures. He does not see volume and is forced to use other means to determine the distance to the object and its shape.

What kind of picture does the lens give?

It is important to understand here that no matter what lens it is, it always produces a flat picture. For the simple reason that a lens is a set of lenses in one plane and, in principle, it cannot provide true 3D. It could provide 3D if there were two lenses and the image was recorded on 2 matrices or encoded in a clever way on one. This is how 3D movies are shot - using two lenses separated by a short distance.

My thoughts
But the lens still has one feature - small . The point again is the structure of the human eye. We do not look equally vigilantly with all our eyes. The resolution of the eye at the edges is much lower than in the center. Therefore, images with a small depth of field look to us like three-dimensional objects brought close to our eyes.

How to look at photos correctly

You will be surprised now, but few people look at photographs correctly.

It's about our binocular vision. Photography is a flat thing. Our brain receives information from both eyes and creates a three-dimensional picture. Accordingly, if we look with both eyes, he compares the pictures and concludes that the photo is flat!

What needs to be done to make the photo look more voluminous?

You need to trick your brain. To do this, we need to turn off the binocularity of our vision by closing one eye. A well-taken photo will immediately seem much more three-dimensional. This, of course, is not my idea, but all art historians and physicists know it. Plus, it is recommended to look through a tube or, more simply, through a tube from your own fist, cutting off external objects that affect our perception of the picture.

The next point is the angle from which the photo was taken. Our brain exposes fakes of volume, estimating how the picture should actually look from a given angle. This means you need to look from the same angle from which the camera was looking at the time of shooting.

Volume illusions

Ultimately, if we are not talking about 3D photography, we are dealing with the illusion of volume in a photograph, and not with the volume itself. This illusion must be created somehow.

Volume of an object in product photography

Artists use the following formula for this: highlight, light, halftone, own shadow, reflex, falling shadow.

Update: 11/16/2013

I was photographing these dragon eggs for an art gallery and decided that they would be just right for illustration.

I will then draw my ball and cube and replace them. I just don't have time.

Update: 11/16/2013

I didn’t draw it, but I did find one of the compositions that I shot for a jewelry workshop, with a rectangular parallelepiped at the base.

Light- this is the area of ​​the surface of an object that receives the greatest flow of direct rays of light.
Semitone- an area of ​​the surface of an object illuminated by sliding rays of light. A halftone is divided into a halftone of light and a halftone of shadow.
Shadow(own shadow) - a section of the surface of an object where direct and sliding rays of light do not fall. This is the darkest area on the surface of an object.
Blik– occurs on shiny or varnished surfaces, most often in areas of light.
Reflex- a section of the shadow surface of an object that receives a stream of reflected rays of light from surrounding objects or from the surface on which the object is located.

All this is fully applicable to photography, if we are talking about product photography.

What is the difference between left and right, besides the background?
Which photo seems more voluminous and why?

Think about it.

Answer: It's simple. The left photo has fewer volume features from the list above than the right one.

This means that in order to give a photo volume, you need to try to reproduce as many features of volume as possible.

Allow your subject to have a shadow or go without a shadow?
Will the object have highlights or make the surface matte?
Will there be deep shadows or highlight them?
Will there be halftones or will there be strong contrast?

The photographer answers all these questions, guided by the specifications and the desire to give the object volume, because it is the photographer who controls the light sources in subject photography.

If you know these principles, then almost any object can be simplified to balls and cubes and then worked on their volume using reflectors.

Important points

Among other things, there is one more point that adds volume. Dividing a picture into plans - front and back, as well as when one object obscures another. Plus geometric perspective.

As you can see, in this case we act not on the eyes, but on the brain, creating the illusion of volume.

Volume of an object in landscape photography

Landscape photography differs from subject photography in that we do not control light sources. We can only choose the appropriate angle, time and place of shooting to create the lighting we need.

Some parameters of volume transfer in landscape photography we still have limited control.

Linear perspective

If you go outside and look into the distance, you can observe the following phenomena:

The width of the street will seem smaller and smaller as it moves away from the observer, despite the fact that in fact the width of the street is the same along its entire length;
- electric and lamp posts, being equal in size, will appear smaller and smaller as they move away;
- similarly, buildings will appear smaller the further they are from the observer;
- the rails of the tram track, being parallel, are perceived as lines intersecting in the distance.

Similar phenomena of prospective reduction can be observed everywhere. We see every object we see not as we know it, but always in a perspective distortion.

perspective distortion

An example of linear perspective in the photo(all objects, as was said, are distorted, but here the linear perspective catches the eye).

Aerial perspective

When choosing a location and shooting angle, it is worth considering what will be in the foreground of the photo and what will be in the background.
Plans may differ in brightness or sharpness. So, our brain is accustomed to the fact that the foreground is sharper, and the background seems to be in a haze. It is called .

Artists actively use this.
In general, artists were the first to discover all the ways to create the illusion of volume.

Examples of aerial perspective in the photo

aerial perspective example

Tonal perspective

Among other things, I want to draw your attention to the warm and cold tones in the paintings. You, of course, have seen modern tinted photos, where the shadows go into cold tones and the highlights into warm tones. Now you know that this was invented a long time ago :)

Closer objects in a painting are usually depicted in warm or natural tones, and distant objects in bluish tones. This is how we see them in life because... We see distant objects through a thick layer of air, which itself usually has a blue color (barely visible at low densities).

Examples of tonal perspective in the photo

Physiological characteristics of human vision

Among other things, there is a little trick that artists use, since they know the peculiarities of a person’s vision, how he looks at a picture. One of the features is the connection in our brain between the need to move the gaze and the size of the object. If the eye is forced to move over an object, it means the object is distant from the foreground or it is large.

For example, you can draw diagonal lines that a person will unconsciously follow with his gaze and will create an additional sense of perspective. Among other things, if distant objects follow the rules of geometric perspective, the sensation will be more complete.

What tools did we have to create the illusion of volume in a landscape photo:

1. Objects in the foreground and background (dividing the image into plans)
2. Aerial perspective (distant objects lose clarity)
3. Toning with warm and cool tones (tonal perspective)
4. Linear perspective (The farther away an object is, the smaller it is)
5. Diagonals (make the eye move along the line and create the feeling of a large object)

However, a lot.

You can also add it to highlight foreground objects.

I haven’t discovered America here, and artists will certainly be able to significantly supplement or correct me.

There is a lot more that can be written in this article, but I am releasing it in the form in which it is now, because it will be extremely difficult to write it to the end. Many objects, many situations...

The main thing is that there are no articles on photography with these simple rules on the RuNet at all. I will be a pioneer.

Your comments, questions and corrections are welcome.

UPDATE: 07/15/2013

Stanislav kindly provided this photo because it seemed to him to have a “3D effect”. I agreed with him.

Now look carefully at the photo to see what signs of volume you see (after all, this is actually not 3D, but a 3D illusion).

1. The first thing that catches your eye is the abundance of objects on different planes. In the foreground are flowers. Behind them, on the edge of the pond, is a tree (2 pieces). Beyond the trees, it’s easy to guess, is the base of the Eiffel Tower. And in the background there are houses.

Plan (from Latin planum - plane) - spatial zones of varying distances, usually corresponding to the most significant or noticeable parts of the image and having the meaning of the main reference points when conveying depth on a plane (especially in landscapes). There are first (foreground), second (middle), background (distant) plans, which, according to the classical landscape scheme, correspond to brown, green and blue tones.

2. The base of the tower forces our eyes to slide diagonally upward along the supports.
3. There is also some geometric perspective in the picture (the base of the tower is clearly distorted in proportions).
4. We have red flowers in the foreground, and a blue and white sky in the background.
5. An important fact is that in the picture the trees in some places obscure the base of the tower (which means they are located closer to the viewer than the base of the tower). Flowers obscure the pond, and the far support of the tower stands behind the houses in the background. Those. the base of the tower connects the middle and background.

Bibliography:

"Entertaining Physics" by Perelman, book 1 and book 2
drawing tutorials in large quantities

P.S. They come on sale from luxury parquet. The price of a parquet board is 4 thousand rubles + delivery to you.
If you do it yourself, it will cost more than 6 thousand rubles.
I bought in bulk and a lot, so I sell the extra.

All those who supported the project can get the shield for 2 thousand + shipping. Plus I’ll just give a few shields to good hands(). How this will be implemented (lottery or something similar) - I’ll think about it. These will be the first bonuses from your investments. I hope you will be pleased.

A printed photograph or viewing it on a computer screen is a flat, two-dimensional picture, but the world is three-dimensional, and the problem of conveying the volume of a three-dimensional world on a one-dimensional plane has been worrying photographers for more than 100 years, and artists have been solving this problem for hundreds of years. But artists can add whatever they want to their creations, but we photographers only use what we can see. However, both we and artists have the same set of “tools”: linear perspective, tonal and scale perspective, as well as the presence of blur in the image, that is, depth of field.

Translated from in English taking a picture looks like “to take a picture”, which literally means “to take a picture”, not to do, but to take! It's very subtle. Because we, photographers, take what we see and leave its imprint on our film or matrix. And how we do this, how we construct the frame, where we create the blur zone, it is these decisions that determine what result we will ultimately get. Let's look at each type of perspective and see how it affects the photo.

Air is never transparent, because it consists of molecules of different types, and molecules are also objects with their own density and weight. Tonal perspective depends on humidity and dust in the air and manifests itself differently in different weather conditions.

The most striking manifestations of tonal perspective can be observed in fog, in windy and dusty weather in the desert or steppe, at dawn over water. And all these phenomena lead to the following: the further away the object, the less clear and clear its outlines, the less saturated it is, it seems lighter and less contrast.

In the photo below we see tonal perspective at its most powerful, in the morning fog. The background of the photo has become lighter, the colors and objects in it are less saturated, the outlines are almost blurred, the contrast in the background is almost zero:

Large-scale perspective

Large-scale perspective is manifested in the reduction of objects of the same type: the further away the object, the smaller it is.

In the photograph of a dried-up river bank, we see two types of perspective: linear and large-scale. The changing scale of the dried parts of the coast gives the image volume, bringing it closer to three-dimensional. It’s not for nothing that landscapes are shot with wide-angle lenses (focal length 17-28 mm): by distorting the foreground, this type of lens makes it seem convex, these lenses paint the perspective and scale of objects much better than long-focal lenses, which seem to “collapse” the picture, making the foreground flat (due to its narrow angle of view).

It should also be noted that wide-angle lenses, due to their wide angle of view (approximately 70 degrees), provide sharpness throughout the entire image with a smaller aperture value, and this is useful in low light conditions, but more on sharpness later.

In still life, you can also apply this type of perspective by organizing the rhythm of receding objects of the same type. In the image below, we see two types of perspective: linear and scale, and the spool of thread in the foreground enhances the sense of volume, as does the shallow DOF (depth of field):

Linear perspective is expressed in lines that tend to converge at one point on the horizon or at infinity. A road stretching into the distance, a bridge, lines of railings, curbs, houses, electrical wires…. all of which can serve as the basis for linear perspective. Linear perspective appears very often in landscapes where there are enough foundations to form linear perspective.

But what about, for example, a macro plot or a still life?

In the above image we see the linear perspective created by the leaf of the plant, and the blur adds depth and volume to the image. The drop is the main object because it is highlighted in sharpness and is located at the point of viewer attention (at the intersection of the lines that divide the frame into three equal parts).

DOF

Blurring the background or part of the image is also a tool that affects the volume of the frame, and this is controlled by the aperture: the smaller its value, the more blurry will be that part of the image that is closer and/or further than the focus point (point of sharpness).

There is a lot of advice in various articles regarding the mathematical calculation of depth of field, I prefer a non-mathematical approach, because our most important tool is the eyes. Depth of field is the distance between the closest and farthest objects that will be sharp at a given aperture.

In photography, the commonly used designation is depth of field (depth of field), which depends on:

1. distance to the object (the greater it is, the greater the depth of field and vice versa);
2. on the value of the aperture number (the smaller it is, the smaller the depth of field and vice versa);
3. on the focal length of the lens: the smaller it is, the greater the depth of field (at the same distance to the object).
4. on the linear size of the matrix (not the number of megapixels): the smaller the matrix size, the greater the depth of field (this can be taken into account when shooting macro, if a larger depth of field is needed).

The above photo (with a drop on the leaves of the plant) was taken with the following data:

- aperture = 8.0 ( Nikon camera D300, nikkor lens 105/2.8);
— focal length = 105 mm;

DOF in this case = 5-10mm, the distance from the lens to the object was approximately 30-40cm.
When shooting a larger object with the same aperture and the same focal length at a distance of 20 meters, the depth of field can be 5 meters.
And at the same distance (20 meters), with aperture 15.0 and focal length = 20mm, the depth of field will be throughout the entire frame, starting from 3 m from the photographer to the horizon. To finally understand what's what, let's look inside the camera and understand what the aperture controls.

The aperture is the retractable “petals” inside the lens that regulate the diameter of the hole through which light passes into the camera. So, the narrower this hole is, the sharper the picture turns out. The aperture value is the amount by which its blades protrude.

With an aperture of 5.6, the blades are exposed just a little and the hole is large, and therefore the depth of field will be small, part of the image will be blurred.

At aperture 20.0, the blades are already exposed enough, the hole is small, and therefore the sharpness will be significant; when shooting a landscape with a wide-angle lens, it will be throughout the entire frame, if the frame is taken general plan. Even the rays of flashlights are collected “into stars” at this aperture value.

If you have SLR camera(it doesn’t matter whether digital or film) or an advanced point-and-shoot camera (a camera with a non-replaceable lens), then when you change the aperture settings, changes in sharpness can be seen immediately in the eyepiece or on the camera screen. It is precisely this information that you need to trust when checking the result on the camera screen after pressing the shutter button. Blur allows you not only to control the volume of the image, but also the viewer’s attention, which is also an important factor in compositional construction:

The blurred background made it possible to highlight the model, make the background uniform, and make the photo three-dimensional.

Let's see how the above shot was taken:

— aperture = 4.5;
— lens focal length = 150mm;
— the distance to the model was several meters, depth of field = 15-25 cm, the background was very blurred (it was a cobblestone street).

So, you and I understand how to control the volume of the frame, how to structure the frame in such a way that the picture does not look flat. But there are exceptions to any rule, and you, as a creative person, have the right to choose whether you need volume in the photo or not. Here is an example of a laconic frame where the volume would be destructive, it would “kill” the idea of ​​the photo:

Linear perspective here is expressed only by a “hint” in the form of light ripples on the water. And only the photographer decides what tools he should use to construct his frame and how they will affect the idea of ​​the photograph, and it is his decisions that are called mediocrity, talent, artistic taste or bad taste, genius or style.

About Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular packages for processing raster graphics. Despite the high price, the program is used by up to 80% of professional designers, photographers, and computer graphics artists. Thanks to its enormous functionality and ease of use, Adobe Photoshop occupies a dominant position in the graphics editor market.

Rich tools and ease of use make the program convenient for both simple photo correction and creating complex images.

Topic 3. Improving photos. Lesson 7. Simple ways to increase the volume of a photo in Photoshop.

The world around us is voluminous. And photographs are a flat piece of paper or a monitor screen. What looks great in reality cannot always boast of being “photogenic.” But, as they say, there are no bad pictures. Moreover, this Photoshop lesson is included in the topic “improving photographs.”

During the lesson, you will learn how to simply and easily add a “three-dimensional” effect - to enhance the visual effect of the volume of your photo or, as they also say, to enhance the depth of the photo.

To begin with, it is worth understanding What is volume and how do we perceive it?. By and large, the perception of volume comes down to how we see the depth of shadows. How one object affects the others located “further away”. And, naturally, what part of the photo is “in focus”.

Thus, issues of adding three-dimensionality to an image often come down to two main actions:

1. Working with shadows and object contours: enhancing the boundaries of light and shadow
2. Working with sharpening and blur in different areas of the photo

This lesson describes simple algorithms of the first group. Naturally, it does not cover the entire variety of tools, but it shows how simply and quickly (in 5-6 minutes) you can significantly improve the look of your photo. Let's get started.

Practical part.

But there are more interesting and powerful ways adding volume to an image using Adobe Photoshop. They are very similar. In both cases, a copy layer is superimposed on the photo, processed using standard Photoshop filters. The only difference is the final effect.

Enhance volume using the Emboss filter.

To obtain a “3D photo” you will need a new layer. To do this, simply select “ Layers" paragraph " Duplicate Layer" Or call the layers palette (“ Window» - « Layers", hotkey F7). And in the palette menu (or context menu) select the item of the same name. More details about layers and how to work with them were discussed in previous lessons. Basics in the lesson "Selection: Simple Geometry". Overlay and interaction in the lesson “Enhancing sharpness by overlaying layers.”

Next, you need to strengthen the transition zones of light and shadow in the photograph: the boundaries of objects. It is advisable to do this without changing the illumination structure of the surfaces. And here a “side effect” of layer blending modes in Photoshop is used. Remember, most modes have an exception (does not work) in the case of 50% gray fill. Accordingly, the task is to create a gray photo with dark and light lines on the contours.

The first way to achieve the effect is to apply a filter " Embossing"from the standard Adobe Photoshop set.

To call a filter:

1. Make sure the target layer is active
2. On the menu " Filter» select « Stylization» - « Embossing»

By turning on the preview option, you will immediately understand the specifics of the tool’s operation. It creates the effect of imprinting a three-dimensional object on, for example, wet paper.

A settings window will appear. Filter " Embossing" has only three parameters:

1. Corner. It is responsible for the angle at which shadows and highlight areas will be applied.
2. Height. Sets the width of the processed path in pixels. Visually – “stamping height”. At the same time, at small values, the result of processing in gamma is close to “grayscale”. At high values, a lot of extraneous colors appear as a result of processing.
3. Effect. This parameter is responsible for detail. At the minimum values, only the contours of the largest objects with strong transitions of light and shadow at the boundaries are processed. At maximum values, “contrast” is turned on in mid-tones - small zones with not particularly pronounced boundaries.

In order to change the appearance of the contours of the transition zone in the image, it is necessary that they be lighter or darker than 50% gray. The presence of a different color in other areas is undesirable. For this:

• Select filter " Embossing»
• Set the angle so that it follows the direction of the light in the photo. The second method is to set the tool vector at right angles to the illumination vector.
• Adjust the height and application effect.
• Click the button OK»
• Apply the resulting layer using one of the methods from the group " Sharpening»
• If necessary, adjust the transparency of the top layer

The result is an image in which the areas of light and shadow are extremely emphasized. This creates a soft “volume” effect. Notice the tree in the foreground.

Notes:

• The angle at which the filter is applied is very important. If, as a result of applying a filter, the areas of light and shadow on two layers do not match, instead of volume you will get a blurry, terrible photo.
• When setting the height, keep in mind that at higher values, additional colors will appear. Perhaps a little touch-up would do the trick. BUT not always. Be careful with the values ​​" Heights»
• Parameter " Effect» with increasing volume should almost always exceed 200%. Otherwise, you will get sharp boundaries when filling most surfaces “cloudy”. For example, highlighted tree outlines without foliage outlines. This is not always justified or beautiful.

Practical advice: this technique (in small parameter values) can be used to restore strongly blurry photos. For example, old portraits. The main thing is to guess the direction of the light and remove those parts where the “volumetric texture” will interfere.

Enhancing volume using the Relief filter.

Increasing the volume of a photo using embossing effective method. But, alas, it has a very large limitation in depth. If you need a strong volume effect, the tool described above will not help. It is better to use a similar, but stronger filter. We are talking about the filter Relief».

This filter creates a stylized coinage based on the image. In this case, the colors set as “main” and “background” in the tool palette are selected as the highlight color and material.

It is advisable to always pay attention to this parameter. It is advisable to limit yourself to black and white.

Call filter " Relief" can be done in two ways:

1. On the menu " Filter" paragraph " Sketch» - « Relief»
2. Call " Filter gallery» (« Filter» - « Filter gallery"). And select " Sketch» - « Relief».

In both cases, the filter settings palette is called up. It is part of a block called " Filter gallery" And besides creating " Relief", in the palette you can select other filters for image processing. But this is a topic for a separate lesson. Let's return to adding dimension to our photo.

The sharpness filter palette has several basic parameters.

The main difference from those discussed earlier is that it occupies the entire area of ​​the workspace. And the preview window becomes a key tool (the original image is not visible).

In the lower right corner there is a block for setting the display scale. He will be very useful. Especially if there is a need to view any fragment.

On the right side are the filter controls.

Slider " Ddetailing“responsible for how many small parts will be “minted”. It works similar to the Effect option in the Emboss filter.

« Mitigation“- the scale is responsible for how sharp the transitions of light and shadow will be. In our case, you should not set the slider to the boundary points or excessively “soften” the boundaries.

Direction dropdown menu. Alas, the “relief” filter does not allow you to radically change the direction of the relationship between light and shadow. A limited number of presets are available. The safest ones are from below and from above. Options for “side” embossing are effective only in conditions of a strong and noticeable beam of light from one side of the photograph.

Working on creating a base for an overlay using the filter " Relief» is simple. To get the result:

• Copy the layer
• Set the foreground and background colors in the toolbar to black and white.
• Select the copy layer
• Call the filter " Relief»
• Set the detail settings to the maximum and the anti-aliasing settings to the minimum (but not equal to zero)
• Select the direction to add volume
• Apply filter
• In blending modes, choose the most suitable one based on your needs and the specifics of the photo.
• Adjust the layer's opacity.

The figure below shows the difference between white/black and black/white options for choosing the main and background colors.

In the first case, the volume goes “down” (removes). At the same time, color saturation in light areas is somewhat lost.

In the second (black on white) it’s the other way around. Elements of the image seem to “float”, approaching the viewer. Pay attention to the sky - light colors are preserved better.

However, in both cases there is a big drawback: structure and volume appear where it is undesirable. For example, the “chasing effect” on the grass, an excessively dark bank (especially in the “black on white” mode).

You can use an eraser to remove unwanted effects. Use a brush with soft edges. In this case, the opacity and pressure modes should be reduced to levels not exceeding 30%. The settings for the Eraser tool are similar to those for the brush. You can read more about what to pay attention to in the lesson “Selecting with Channels”.

• Select the top layer
• Using a soft eraser (periodically adjusting the diameter of the brush), erase information in those places where excessive structure is harmful. For example, the sky and grass areas.
• The result can be seen in the figure below.

Enhancing volume using the color contrast filter

We have already covered the “color contrast” filter as part of the lesson “The fine work of sharpening.” Therefore, there is no point in describing the palette of settings - just read the previous topic.

If when working with sharpening the task was to emphasize the edges and not allow color information to appear, now we need colors. At least where volume will be emphasized. It is advisable to leave the remaining zones as gray as possible.

Otherwise, working with this filter is similar to what was learned earlier in this Photoshop tutorial.

To save time, let's go straight to the algorithm of actions:

• Create a copy of the layer
• Having selected the copy, call the filter " Colour contrast».
• Adjust the " Radius» in such a way that the transition zones between light and shadow become as bright as possible, and the “smooth fill” zones remain close to gray.
• Click OK.
• Choose a suitable layer blending mode
• Adjust the transparency of the top layer.

The result of applying this filter can be seen in the figure. However, you should not limit yourself to the “Sharpening” group. Try all blend modes. Many of them will give an unexpected, but very interesting effect.

Photoplasticon or Imperial Panorama

The Greek stereos means “bodily”, “volumetric”. Surround sound is the accepted standard these days, but stereo photography (or 3D photography) remains an oddity for many. But in vain, because it allows you to capture reality in approximately the same way as a person sees it.

Traditional photography has developed a serious arsenal of technical and artistic means of conveying volume: depth of field, focal length of optics, perspective, shadow patterns and composition. The human brain can obtain information about space from the content of a flat picture. But ordinary photography is unable to convey volume directly as a person perceives it.

The volume and depth of an image is a subjective thing, since we are limited by our senses. The axes of a person's eyes intersect at a certain angle at the point at which our vision is directed. The result is a pair of flat images in which there is a shift in the visible space (parallax). As a result of the merging of these images, a three-dimensional picture appears in the mind. Perceiving volume allows the distance between two points (for example, eyes), called the stereo base. The distance can be changed using technical means(for example, stereo binoculars or artillery rangefinder). As the stereo base increases, the depth of field decreases and visual acuity increases.

Stereo photography is a shooting method that involves the camera having two “eyes” instead of one. We are not necessarily talking about lenses. The result is important - frames on film with the necessary base shift. Stereo photography does not create a three-dimensional image in reality, but it allows for a clever substitution of real space with a photograph taken and prepared in a special way.

The ability of 3D photographs to convey the complex structure of the depicted object is especially valuable in “technical” genres, such as photography of architecture, natural and city landscapes, and macro. Using stereo photography for artistic purposes provides completely new creative tools.

History of stereo photography

In 280 BC. e. Euclid first discovered that the perception of depth in space is achieved precisely because each eye sees slightly different pictures of the same object. Following him, Leonardo da Vinci described these abilities in 1584, devoting several of his works to the peculiarities of visual perception. The theory of stereoscopic perception was presented in scientific form by the German optician and geometer Johannes Kepler in his work “Dioptrics” (1611). Two years later, Jesuit Francois d'Aguillion first used the term "stereoscopy".

Around 1600, the Italian artist Giovanni Battista della Porta painted the first stereo painting. At the beginning of the 17th century, his experience was repeated by Jacopo Chimenti da Empoli, who used the technique of paired images. A century and a half later, the Frenchman G. A. Bois-Clair created three-dimensional images using the raster method. The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy managed to try his hand at stereoscopic drawings. In the 20th century, the Spaniard Salvador Dali painted three-dimensional paintings using the needle screen method proposed by the inventor of volumetric cinema, the Russian emigrant Alekseev. Viewing images obtained using raster and needle methods did not require any special devices.

The discovery of stereo photography is associated with the name of Charles Wheatstone, a professor at King's College London. In 1833, Wheatstone created a mirror stereoscope - a device that allows you to see a three-dimensional picture using a pair of original pictures with an offset. The scientist initially used his drawings as objects. In accordance with the experiments, it was created scientific base. In 1838, Wheatstone gave a historical report on the issues of obtaining three-dimensional images before the Royal Society in London. The report was titled “On Some Remarkable and Hitherto Unobserved Phenomena of Binocular Vision.”

Why did Wheatstone use drawings rather than photographic images in his stereoscope? The answer is simple: photography was invented by the Frenchman Daguerre only six years after Wheatstone's discovery - in 1839. Wheatstone presented the first photographs taken using the stereoscopic method to the public only in 1851 at the World Exhibition in London.

The first camera with two lenses, designed to create stereo pairs, was created in 1849 by Scottish scientist David Brewster. Brewster is also the creator of a simple stereoscope without mirrors. In 1855, the Frenchman Bernard created the first mirror attachment for conventional single-lens cameras, which made it possible to shoot stereo pairs. A little later, the Englishman Barun improved this design.

One of the first to appreciate the potential of 3D photography was the English reporter Roger Fenton, who traveled around Russia in the 60s of the 19th century and is the author of a series of photographs dedicated to the Russo-Turkish War. In those same years, the famous French photographer Antoine Claude became interested in three-dimensional photography, who opened the London “Temple of Photography” in 1851. According to Claude, the stereoscope, in a cheap and compact form, provides a model of everything that exists in different parts of the globe. Interestingly, it was Claude who, in 1853, patented a method for obtaining stereo photographs.

In 1858, the Frenchman Joseph d'Almeida discovered an anaglyph method for creating three-dimensional images, which made it possible to view three-dimensional images using glasses with red and green lenses. This method has been used to create books, postcards, comics, geographical maps. In the 1920s, the first anaglyph films appeared, which were called plastigrams.

At the beginning of the 20th century, French physicist Jonas Lippmann discovered a method for creating images that did not require special viewing devices. Images must have a special surface based on a lens grating (raster). The surface consists of microlenses, under which there are fragments of images for the right and left eyes. By viewing the image from a certain angle, you can see a three-dimensional image. Photographer Maurice Bonnet first used the raster method in the 1930s to create three-dimensional portraits.

Today, the method of creating raster images involves preparing a paper substrate on a computer, which is then printed by conventional means and provided with a plastic screen with a lenticular raster. This method used when creating pocket calendars with three-dimensional pictures or changing images (vario effect).

Stereo photography appeared almost simultaneously with conventional photography. However, it took almost a hundred years for it to gain mass popularity. At the beginning of the 20th century, stereo photography was perceived as mass entertainment, not an art form. Attractions based on the stereoscopic effect were popular. Boxes with stereographic images, which depicted views of distant countries taken by travelers, village sketches and nude models, became widespread.

In the first half of the 20th century, interest in stereo photography was very high. The first cameras released by Franke & Heideke were designed specifically for stereo photography: the Heidoskop (1920), which shot on sheet film, and the Rolleidoskop (1922), which used roller film (6 x 13 cm stereo pair format). Soon the Stereoflektoscop from Voigtlander (format 6 x 13 cm) and Verascope from the Frenchman Julius Richard (format 45 x 107 cm, film type 127) appeared on sale.

In 1939, American William Gruber founded the View-Master company, which a year later produced a narrow-film stereo camera. View-Master has produced many innovative devices for taking and viewing 3D photos and movies.

The advent of highly detailed Kodachrome color slide film in the late 1930s, as well as the growing popularity of compact narrow film cameras, contributed to the emergence in the 1940s and 50s of a large number of stereo cameras with a frame format of 24 x 23 mm (Edixa, Iloca, Kodak Stereo, Stereo- Realist) and 24 x 29 mm (Belplasca, Verascope F40). German companies Zeiss (Contax) and Leica offer mirror adapters that allow you to take three-dimensional photographs on conventional rangefinder cameras. Note that the design with a third sighting lens or rangefinder has not undergone fundamental changes until today.

In the 1950s and 60s, there was a surge of mass interest in stereo photography. Special cameras and stereo attachments, stereoscopes for viewing images are produced. Souvenir sets are sold, consisting of paired slides depicting world attractions. Stereo cameras were used to photograph the surface of the Moon, Mars and the Sun in American space programs.

In the future, 3D photography will likely attract much more attention than it currently receives. Of course, this depends on technical base, which is constantly being improved. In the meantime, there are two simple ways to create 3D photos.

Photography techniques to convey the depth of space in a photograph

Controlling depth of field

Nevertheless, our lenses have one property similar to the device of vision. This is the depth of field - the depth of sharply depicted space. Do you think this is not true because we mostly see everything around us as sharp? Bring your finger to your nose and focus on it. The background will go blurry. Using a shallow depth of field, we highlight the main subject of shooting, focusing on it. At the same time, minor characters and the background are blurred, imitating our vision mechanism.
Of course, this method is not used in landscape photography, where all plans must be in the sharpness zone.

How to get a shallow depth of field and beautiful bokeh:

• The more open, the more blur.
• Use fast lenses. For example, I most often photograph at aperture values ​​in the range of 1.8–2.2;
• The longer the focal length, the greater the blur, the more beautiful the bokeh, the more plastic the picture;
• The closer to the model (larger the portrait), the greater the blur;
• Camera with full matrix gives more blur than crop;
• To have something to blur, you don’t need to place the model close to the background (next to the wall, fence, tree). It is always better to separate them into plans with different zones of sharpness. This advice also applies to studio photography.

Very often in the studio, with bright walls in the background and a lot of props, it is difficult to distinguish the model. But if you move it away from the background and shoot with an open aperture, the photographs look much more skillful, with an emphasis on the main thing. You also need to know how to work with the interior!

Dividing the entire scene into foreground and background

Surely everyone who has even a slight idea of ​​composition knows that you need to try to use several plans in a photograph. When shooting landscapes, everyone remembers this, but when shooting portraits, they often forget. But no one has canceled the effect of planning as a way of conveying depth.

Background - background. It must be chosen so that nothing sticks out as if from the model, and is beautifully blurred in the bokeh (of course, if it is not a landscape). Use the rules of linear, aerial and color perspective (more below). Medium shot- this is our model, the main subject of shooting. It would be nice to place something else in the same plane as the model that will be in the sharpness zone (a bush, twigs with leaves or flowers on a tree). This will give an additional feeling of depth and planning.

The foreground is what is often forgotten in portrait photography. It helps convey depth even better. From the foreground you can create a kind of frame, framing the plot - an effective way to build a composition. In addition, in this way the feeling of voyeurism is conveyed when you want to convey the ease and naturalness of the scene.
You can use bush branches, flowers, and low tree branches as the foreground. If there are none nearby, ask an assistant to hold the prepared branches in front of the camera. In the studio you can use suitable props, flowers, and peek out from behind slightly open doors.

The foreground can also be just grass, blurred in the bokeh: just lower your shooting point and shoot while sitting or lying down. If the shooting involves flying objects (flower petals, autumn leaves, feathers, paper pages, confetti, etc.), ask your assistant to scatter them in different planes from the model so that they are both in the sharpness zone and blurred in the foreground and background. Such details effectively “introduce” the viewer into the picture, when they seem to fly out of real life into the photograph.
It happens that it is not possible to place something in the foreground immediately when shooting (for example, it does not fit into the frame). Then you can photograph a suitable branch separately and then add it using Photoshop, or using the same program, create a foreground from blanks on a transparent background found on the Internet. Don't forget to blur them to different degrees in different planes.

Landscape photography often uses a wide-angle lens to capture the foreground. Objects located in front (stones, logs, bridge, etc.) seem to pull us into the picture. Geometric distortion of a wide angle in this case is only beneficial. The same technique can be used in portraits, enhancing the foreground and the “dragging” effect.

Linear perspective

This is a natural change in the scale of images of diverse objects located on a plane. The closer an object is to the camera, the larger it is.

The first sign of linear perspective is a decrease in the scale of receding objects, the second is the tendency of parallel objects to converge at one point on the horizon line.
What to do to convey this very linear perspective in the frame:

• choose a good background. A path extending into the distance (straight or winding), a road, rails, a row of houses, a long corridor, pillars or columns - all this helps in conveying perspective and creating the effect of the viewer’s presence in the frame;
• try to place the model and the convergence of perspective lines at power points, but not in the same one;
  Don't place your lines in such a way that they lead your eye out of the frame. The gaze should follow inside the frame and wander around it;
• Sometimes you can use a wide-angle lens while getting closer to the model. It enhances the transfer of perspective, since in life we ​​also look at the world from a wide angle. In this case, place the model in the middle, since geometric distortions increase towards the edges of the frame.

  Tonal perspective

  This is a physical phenomenon, the essence of which is that light passing through a transparent medium - air - is refracted, scattered and reflected. Depending on the state of the atmosphere, its pollution and humidity, light is scattered in the air layer to a greater or lesser extent. Then we see an air haze (highlighted distances). Now do you understand why such aerial landscapes are obtained in the early morning or in the fog, when the air is clean and humid?
  To convey aerial perspective, remember that the further away the object:

• the less saturated tones;
• less clear outlines of shooting objects (haze);
• softer contrast;
• lighter details.

If you were lucky and took pictures early in the morning at dawn, then perhaps the camera will convey all these nuances. Otherwise, this can simply be taken into account during processing:

• reduce background saturation;
• increase sharpness and clarity on the model (and the foreground in the landscape);
• raise the contrast of nearby objects, leaving the background low-contrast;
• add light spots to the background or draw fog or haze (with a white brush with low transparency in the “Screen” blending mode);
• darken the foreground, make a vignette.

Color

Color and volume are also closely related. Protruding (warm) colors are perceived closer, receding (cold) colors are perceived further from their present position. This phenomenon is called chromatic stereoscopy. Artists successfully use this effect to convey three-dimensional forms. Its effectiveness has been tested in the practice of painting and when working with interiors and wardrobes. Receding and protruding colors can visually distort three-dimensional space or make a plane appear voluminous and in relief.
Warm and cool colors located nearby help each other sound brighter and louder. Warm becomes even warmer, and cold becomes even colder.

Using the contrast of warm and cold, you can highlight the main thing in the photo. The spatial properties are also influenced by the difference in lightness and the contrast of the color spots of the object. With high contrast, a smaller color spot becomes catchy and stands out as a figure, and a larger one is perceived as a background. Eye-catching and contrasting colors stand out and stand out. With low to medium contrast, gray colors are removed.

How to use color rendering to enhance the effect of volume in photography:

take a thoughtful approach in terms of color to the choice of model (hair color), background, clothing, interior items and props;

You can use light sources of different temperatures when taking photographs. In a studio, this could be cold light from a window combined with constant warm artificial light; constant sources of different color temperatures are also suitable. In the interior, you can combine natural light from a window or reflected flash light in combination with the warm light of lamps, candles, garlands in the background or foreground;

Tint the photo in post-processing. There are many options: from separate toning (split-toning) of lights and shadows into warm or cold ones in a “semi-automatic” mode using Photoshop functions to painting the desired objects with a brush (in the “Soft Light” mode);

Pay attention not only to harmonious color schemes, but also to the amount of each color in the photo. Highlight the main objects and details that you want to focus on;

work with saturation correctly: saturated and pure colors are perceived closer, and less saturated ones - further away.

Ideally, you want the photo to use several of the above techniques. Then your photos will come to life and sparkle, just like in three-dimensional reality.