A fisheye lens is a weird thing. It gives a very different perspective to a photo. While it’s requires a bit of adjustment to use (i.e. like shooting in black and white), the feeling you get from the photo is something extraordinary (i.e. like black and white photos). Maybe it’s because of the 180 degree space it creates on a two-dimensional surface that reveals a lot about life and the environment we’re not use to seeing or noticing. The extreme curvature of the lens and the photo captured creates an almost surreal feeling. It’s been two months since I bought a Bower 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye lens. Here are some photos!
I wonder if there’s a way to photograph the curvature of life on a round planet? If you’re interested in understanding other aspects of the dichotomy of life, check out this video from Cambridge’s danah boyd and her talk on the “Culture of Fear + Attention Economy = ?!?!”. It’s basically about how social media and the way we now communicate and recieve information is affected by the balance between “fear” and “attention”. Here’s a description of her talk:
We live in a culture of fear. Fear feeds on attention and attention is captured by fear. Social media has complicated our relationship with attention and the rise of the attention economy highlights the challenges of dealing with this scarce resource. But what does this mean for the culture of fear? How are the technologies that we design to bring the world together being used to create new divisions? In this talk, danah will explore what happens at the intersection of the culture of fear and the attention economy.