John Lewell Photography

One of the keys to success in layering is to have meaningful correspondence between the different layers: between subjects in the foreground, middle-ground and background.

It’s not enough simply to fill up the image with layered content. There needs to be something more, such as capturing each element in an aesthetically pleasing position within the frame. You may need some luck to get it exactly right because you can’t control the subject. You can adjust only your viewpoint or the settings on your camera.

Three Steps

1. The best way to capture a moment in time and preserve the various layers of interest is to use a wide-angle prime lens, such as 35mm or wider. You can still obtain a layers shot with 40mm or 50mm, but it becomes harder because you’ll lose focus in some of the planes.
2. The next step is to start fishing in the right pool. Go somewhere that has an interesting background and plenty of action between you and it.
3. Thirdly, you need to move in to get close to the action. While doing this, think about colour and form — the abstract elements that go into making the picture — as well as literal content, such as: what’s that guy doing? Will the kid jump? What are the words on that carrier bag?

If you’re lucky, you may achieve a composition in depth, especially if you get a clear view of distant action.

Easy? No, it’s like playing three-dimensional chess. But if you’re aware of any potential for these “layers of interest” then you are at least open to the possibility of achieving a good image.

I used these three steps in taking the featured shot (above), so let’s talk more about them:

One: Seriously, Which Lens?
It’s vital to keep foreground and background in reasonably sharp focus, a task that becomes harder with focal lengths longer than 35mm. However, if your lens has too wide an angle it will distort vertical lines at the edges: scarcely ideal if you’re shooting anywhere near buildings or street lamps.

Cameras with fixed 28mm lenses (Ricoh GR/GRII/GRIII; Leica Q/Q2) are clearly a great option, as are mirrorless cameras with lenses that give you 24mm or 28mm on full frame, or their close equivalent (such as 16mm or 18mm with the APS-C sensor format). I used 40mm on a full frame camera for the featured shot.

Two: Fishing In The Right Pool
The best kind of location for layers shots is one where there’s some open space in either the foreground or middle distance. With this feature you’re more likely to find “planes of interest” rather than a continuum of background objects. (Needless to say, you don’t have to feature anyone actually fishing, although I’ve done that, too, in the shot above!)

Three: How Close?
You need to be within a few feet of the closest object, otherwise you’ll not get the all-important foreground layer to offset — or perhaps even frame — the more distant elements. As a rule of thumb, six feet is about as close as you can go without blurring the foreground when your focus is on something just beyond it.

I hasten to add that with an ultra-wide angle lens, a narrow aperture (and hence a longer exposure) you can get closer than six feet, although this combination rarely works for handheld street photography in average light.

Experience gives you the confidence to find the best point on which to focus for each particular lens and setting. Always remember: stopping down the lens will greatly increase the depth of field. Never attempt to take a shot with layers in mind if you have a fast lens with its aperture fully open. You’ll simply get one layer in focus. It may still be a nice shot but it’s not what we’re discussing here.

Focus How?
Camera reviewers are keen on cameras that have a touchscreen enabling you to select a focus point simply by tapping it on the screen. These days they tend to bemoan any camera that lacks this facility.

However, in street photography you don’t often have time to fiddle with focus points. If you have a split second to spare you should pick up focus from the appropriate distance (10 metres in the example above) and then quickly recompose the image by framing the subject as you wish. Alternatively, if even a split second is too long a delay, pre-focus manually.

Is There an Easy Rule of Thumb?
If you insist! Roughly calculate where your layers of interest lie, then choose a focus point about a third of the way into them. You won’t be far out if you’ve stopped down your lens. For this reason, I think it’s convenient if you have your camera set to Aperture Priority. This means you can adjust the aperture before taking the shot — and the shutter speed will look after itself.

How Many Layers?
My personal view is that three layers are quite sufficient in street photography. Going beyond three layers introduces levels of complexity that are completely out of control, unless some of them have objects that are fixed. In landscape photography you often see wonderful shots of rolling hills in the mist, with five or six layers gradually receding into the distance. On the street you rarely find that kind of subject, unless it’s a slow-moving queue of people lining up in zigzag fashion for a popular event.

Avoid Overlapping Figures?
Some photographers recommend it, others disagree. As in so many aspects of photography there is no hard and fast rule. If you try to keep all the moving figures completely separate you may end up with a somewhat disjointed image in which every figure occupies an island of space. I prefer to see some overlap, while always keeping a clear view of heads and maybe a limb or two.

It’s really important to prevent the onlooker from thinking “What a pity we can’t see what that person looks like.” At the same time, you don’t want unintended effects, such as a street sign that appears to be sticking out of someone’s head. Much of the challenge in taking layered shots involves keeping the layers apart and keeping the various components firmly in their right place.

What Works Best?
My personal preference is for locations where the background is not too far away. If you can see boats floating on water or if you catch a glimpse of the infinite sky your attention tends to wander off into the distance. This is not the dynamic response the layers technique demands. You should keep the eye moving backwards and forwards between layers, not dwelling on distant things.

Fill the frame
Wherever possible I like to fill the frame from edge to edge and from corner to corner. That’s the secret of a great layers shot. You can’t do it if one corner has a chunk of sky in it because all the visual energy will simply leak through into the ether beyond. The very fact that the most distant layer is an integral part of the subject means that your image will have an intimacy which is normally missing from standard street photos.

A layered photo may even be slightly claustrophobic because you’ve compressed the spatial elements in front of you and hemmed them into the image rectangle. Personally I love this effect, but it works best when there’s a focal point of interest near the middle of the frame with other supporting elements at the edges.

Not Just the Squirrel
The above image fulfills most of the criteria for layers that I’ve outlined in this post. There are three planes: the flag, the boy plus the squirrel, then everyone else. Most notably they fill the frame from edge to edge.

But what exactly is going on here? For me, the picture is filled with menace. I snapped it during a troubled period of demonstrations in Bangkok in an area where legendary American photographer James Nachtway had already taken a bullet on the previous day.

Despite outward appearances, these events with their rabble-rousing speeches and numerous side-shows were decidedly unsafe. Just ask the squirrel! Dressed up, coaxed and tormented, he delights the children but he’s watched with an evil eye by the balding lady on the left. The bare legs on the right belong to a person of indeterminate sex, as indeed does the hand that holds the boy’s wrist (strong hand, man’s watch, high heels).

Several faces are partially hidden but in this instance it all seems to work aesthetically. The balance of the image would be upset if we could see the whole face of the little girl with the tee-shirt. Her pink message: “Cool! Cool!” and the squirrel’s anthropomorphically effeminate gesture complete the image.

In street photography, layers are successive planes of interest and action, occupying the foreground, middle ground and background, each one holding information that captures the viewer’s attention.

Together, these layers form a complete, “symphonic” image, taken in a single capture.

I use the term symphonic in much the same way as E.M. Forster used it in Aspects of the Novel. The symphonic novel represents the pinnacle of a writer’s achievement, being the most difficult form to create successfully but also the most rewarding for the reader.

For example, the symphonic novel will have multiple themes, each of which brings contrast or reinforcement to the main thrust of the work. Instead of “symphonic” you could speak of a novel as having “layers”: as in, for example, D.H. Lawrence’s complex work The Rainbow rather than in Thomas Love Peacock’s amusing but essentially one-dimensional satire Headlong Hall.

Alas, layers of complexity are even harder for the street photographer than they are for the novelist. For that reason, it’s not a good idea to say: “Today I’ll concentrate on taking photos with layers” because opportunities for them are few and far between.

Not Too Blurred
A shot that exemplifies the layers technique is one that has each layer in reasonably sharp focus. If any layer is severely blurred then it is automatically seen by the onlooker to be less important.

For example, I think I can claim the shot (below) to contain layers, but the foreground is really very blurred. I don’t think it matters too much in this instance because it creates a sense of mystery. It also provides a foil for the main subject — the two figures — and beyond them the people looking towards us, and beyond them the diners, and beyond them the layer of columns.

Stopping Down
To banish a blurry foreground you have to forget about using ultra-fast lenses wide open and instead make sure your lens is stopped down to capture sufficient depth-of-field from foreground to background. Mobile phones fulfill this criterion very well, but the downside is their lack of image quality when you want to make a big enlargement. The good thing (there’s always an upside!) is that you can stop worrying about bokeh, that lovely creamy out-of-focus effect you get only from the most expensive lenses.

One of the best-known layers shots was taken by Alex Webb in Mexico, entitled Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, 1985 (please Google it!) and shown in his La Calle exhibition. It depicts Mexican children playing in a courtyard with one boy at the front, in soft focus, spinning a blue ball on the tip of his finger. Behind him are successive layers of interest: more boys, passers-by, and some spectacular examples of blue and white ecclesiastical architecture, with striped columns and pilasters.

In an interview with The Guardian, Alex Webb said of his work in general: “The words ‘planning and forethought’ imply a level of rationality. Instead, I sense the possibility of a picture.” I know what he means because that’s exactly how I work myself.

Generations Through Time
In my featured image (above) I’ve deliberately used the layers technique to express the march of the generations through time. I took it at a local carnival, the sort of street event that offers plenty of good photo opportunities.

My point of focus is on the tall woman with the brown hair, hence both the girl nearest the camera and the elderly couple are in slightly soft focus. I think this is acceptable, even preferable, in this case. After all, it is the central figure who’s in the prime of life, surrounded by those much younger or older. She seems to take her responsibility very seriously, as if reflecting on the ephemerality of the event.

Yet I think the single most telling element in the picture is the fact that the two tallest of the marching girls, both of whom are in sharp focus, are those furthest away from the camera. They, as well as their chaperone, tower with the vigour of youth above the old couple.

This is the point about layers: they help you communicate an idea. They’re not just a visual trick to add “eye candy” to your photo.

In Painting
You can find all the compositional tricks of layers in western art from the Renaissance onwards.

For example, take Raphael’s great mural The School of Athens (1510), a virtuoso performance of five or six layers including three occupied by human figures. You can examine this painting for hours and still find visual delight in it. With its complex arrangement of groups of figures, each with its own dynamic, plus the overall effect of recessional space and all its intriguing literary qualities (which philosopher? which mathematician?) The School of Athens keeps the onlooker’s eye questing and moving across the image plane.

It is precisely this reaction we seek when presenting a layered photograph to the onlooker. When the onlooker is compelled to “read” the photograph rather than merely glance at it, that’s when you can deepen the bond with your audience and earn more appreciation for your work.

I’ll post Part II of Working With Layers at a later date. I promise: this next part will be more practical, with tips and advice on how to take a layers shot!

If you’ve visited this site during the past month or so, you’ll have noticed the lack of updates and the absence of featured pictures at the top of the posts.

Sorry! The site got hit by the dreaded “Japanese Keyword Virus,” one of the most difficult computer viruses to eradicate, even given the many helpful “10 step” processes that security bloggers have posted.

The Japanese Keyword Virus turns your keywords on Google into links to Japanese sites selling clothes and accessories. It’s a kind of SEO spam that hijacks legitimate sites (like this one!) and ruins your reputation on Google.

Moving On
My son transferred and rebuilt most of the site to a new server, and I added the missing pictures. It all seems to work now, but there’s the also the impact of the more serious Covid-19 virus which has prevented me from getting fresh photos on crowded city streets.

I can post a few more articles, but it’s likely that their appearance will be intermittent, rather than on a normal weekly basis. I want to continue to entertain everyone (like the guy below) but eventually I’ll run out of decent shots.

At that point I’ll just provide an index to the existing articles (currently buried deep in the blog) and then update only when I have something new.

Because of this, it’s best to sign up for the newsletter if you’ve not done so already.

May you all be virus-free!

What did the Romans do for us? Well, here in my home town of Colchester (Essex, UK) they built a rather nice wall, much of which is still standing after nearly 2,000 years.

Not being able to venture too far afield during the recent (and seemingly endless) pandemic, I started to wonder whether the wall could serve as a backdrop for some street photos.

I took all of them with the new Fuji X100V, intermittently over a few days.

One Shot
On one day I took just one image (above).

Walking into Lower Castle Park, I was struck by the sudden appearance of yellow blossom in some shrubs near the railings.

There’s a great view of the wall from this viewpoint — and I noted the lone figure of a man in the distance. All it needed was something more… then the cyclist arrived with not one, but two bikes!

Changing the Direction of View
Here’s the same stretch of wall (above), looking back towards the gate through which the cyclist passed in the previous shot.

It was a lovely summer’s day in The Lockdown, with small family groups enjoying the sun. Recently, everyone had been “on tenterhooks,” waiting anxiously for the virus to disappear.

Oddly enough, I can say that the tenterhooks themselves have quite literally passed. For it was on this piece of land in the seventeenth century that Flemish weavers stretched their cloth – on devices known as “tenterhooks.”

The presence of the Roman wall makes the seventeenth century seem like modern history. Meanwhile, weeds constantly colonise the ancient structure, giving it a beauty never intended by the original builders.

Walking the Wall
One day I set out, with my partner, to walk around the wall in its entirety. It’s not a major trek, the wall being around 2,800 metres long, in the shape of a rectangle.

Today it varies slightly in height, according to its state of preservation, but much of it is 6 metres high and nearly two and a half metres thick. Its construction is said to have required 40,000 tonnes of building material.

Walking around it is far less onerous than building it, but don’t thank the Romans. They made the local Britons do most of the work.

The western stretch, running up Balkerne Hill, has little archways set within it, bricked up in the modern era to help preserve it.

One of the best preserved parts is the long stretch at the top of Balkerne Hill, past the huge gate (the Balkerne Gateway) which served as the main entrance to the town in Roman times.

Pressing On
OK, so this mini-project is degenerating into “wall photography” rather than street photography, so we’ll press on quickly to the far side of town where the wall is buttressed in Priory Street with huge bastions.

Another man walks past a wall! Oh dear!

I guess if I waited in a given position for a couple of hours, something more interesting might happen, but, remember, there were very few people around during this stage of the 2020 Lockdown.

So to conclude: here, in rapid succession are shots I took to complete the journey. First, I asked my partner to walk on ahead.

Yes, I know it’s cheating, but the light was great and I could have waited here for hours before anyone else passed this way.

Next, I snapped a cyclist heading towards the wall.

I did, in fact, wait a couple of minutes for someone to provide a point of interest in this shot (below) near Duncan’s Gate. No, there wasn’t a Roman called Duncan! The gate was named after Dr P. M. Duncan who excavated it in 1853. The little boy in the picture probably doesn’t know that.

And finally here’s a closing shot of a girl hurrying through a small archway set within the wall on the northern stretch where we started.

At least the above shots have something in common, so I think the idea of walking the wall was valid in street photography terms. However, such a project needs more time. I’ll work on it some more.

After all, neither Rome nor Colchester was built in a day.

If you’re visiting Colchester and would like to know more about its Roman history, take a look at:

Friends of Colchester’s Roman Wall

Visit Colchester, Britain’s First City

The Colchester Archaeologist

Just before taking the above image I felt the familiar set of mental signals that tells me: “this is potentially a good shot.” The composition has all the elements I like: movement, purpose, engagement, colour matching (orange), colour distribution (blue), a curious object — no, two or three curious objects!

Yet even as I took it I had a sinking feeling that it didn’t quite work. There was a blank area at bottom left, too much car at top left and distracting detail on the other side of the pillar on the right.

I didn’t store the photo with the ones I like best until after I’d thought generally about the square format. I’d made several other images square by cropping them — and now I saw the potential for rescuing this one.

As a square image this photo works in a way it never could as a rectangle. I’d already tried it in portrait format, but that was even worse than landscape because it gave a distant view of the street beyond, distracting attention from the woman’s activity. Only a perfect square can counteract the diverging verticals, as long as one of them (I chose the grey pillar) is nearly upright.

Taking Another Look
If composition plays a major role in your street photography, as it does in mine, you’ll find that even slight adjustments can make a huge difference to the overall effect. Heavily cropping away two opposite sides is considerably more than a “slight adjustment,” so you need to know what you’re doing.

It helps if you go back to your work after a month or two and view it objectively. Once you’ve done so, try to recall what prompted you to take the shot and what you felt about it at the time. By cropping to a different format you can stay more true to your original intention than if you simply retain the entire image.

But be careful!

Cropping to square can lead you to places you’ve never been before. You’ll gradually start to see square compositions in reality. You’ll become a square street photographer. You’ll turn into Vivian Maier.

We readily accept Vivian Maier’s images because she shot with a square format Rolleiflex and saw a square image in her viewfinder. Today, the ubiquity of the 35mm format with its 3:2 ratio means that we’ve come to expect street images to be landscape or portrait, not something in between. Even the layout of web pages in WordPress (as here) makes the square image look slightly out of place, like an intruder in an otherwise well ordered world.

One Focal Length, One Aspect Ratio?
Nearly all good street photographers recommend the use of prime lenses rather than zooms. They do so because there’s no time in the heat of the action to mess around with changing focal lengths. Yet there’s also another reason: encouraging beginners to see subjects not only in terms of the subtended angle but also by the rectangle it creates.

Their advice is good. However, as you gain more experience you can start to become more adventurous and versatile. I’m not suggesting you mount a heavy zoom on your camera, but I do think you can start to vary the rectangle in your mind’s eye — changing occasionally from landscape/portrait options to seeing the composition as a square.

The Studio vs. The Street
Fitting people into a square format is easier in the studio. For example, in the days of Page Three glamour shots, photo editors on “The Sun” would urge photographers to use short models who could curl up into a compact shape to fit the tabloid page.

In taking candid shots on the street we can’t be as deliberately selective as the pin-up photographer. Yet sometimes a person assumes a position that positively invites a square frame. Here’s one example (above). I took it from a boat on a canal with the camera in a portrait orientation.

Above the subject’s head to the left was a long fluorescent light which I’ve cropped out because it unbalances the composition. The result is a neatly composed and very candid portrait of a person in an everyday (if somewhat unusual) environment, taken from an angle that’s rarely possible on a normal street.

What’s Wrong With Square?
Finally, I think I should mention one problem I’m sure you’ve encountered with square photos: their static tendency. With all sides perfectly equal in length there’s no natural dynamic to encourage the onlooker’s eye to move from left to right or up and down. The invitation is just to stare at the centre because you can see the whole photo at one glance.

It’s because of the static nature of the square format that I’ve introduced diagonal lines in both of the images I’m showing here. The first one has the orange pipe on the left while the other has the foreground pole on the right. These two elements do much to enliven the images, making both of them more aesthetically satisfying than they would have been otherwise.

I could never make the square format my standard aspect ratio. Street photography cries out for dynamic rather than static treatment. But on some occasions there’s really no alternative to using the balanced, symmetrical, traditional, honest, totally conformist, hundred-percent kosher, strait-laced square.

Going through my photos from Bangkok from last year, I came across the featured image (above).

It has the kind of juxtaposition I like: with the surfeit of visual messages on every object, including the woman’s body.

Most prominent of all the messages is one that says: “BNE Was Here.” It’s a message you’ll come across again and again if you take street photos in the cities of the Far East.

For example, here’s another one (below). I took it because of the distinct oddness of the couple: a girl with a big floppy ribbon in her hair and a boy furtively holding a cigarette while carrying in front of him a multi-coloured bag as though it contained something of especial value.

The man, about to get in a pick-up truck, glares at me — perhaps worried lest I record some kind of illegal transaction.

Can you see the sticker in the background: “BNE Was Here”? I think this adds something extra to the image — not mystery, exactly, because these stickers are so ubiquitous — but a reassuring sense of familiarity when it’s most needed.

The BNE Affair
In case you missed the media coverage of BNE I suppose I should provide a brief explanation. BNE (or B.N.E.) is the logo used by a person who started scrawling traditional graffiti nearly thirty years ago. After a few years he turned to stickers, churning them out in their thousands and covering our cities with them: especially New York and Tokyo, but also Prague, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.

Especially Bangkok. Here’s another example:

(I snapped this shot on the way to lunch: that’s my son in front with his arm on his mother’s shoulder.)

Of course, there’s so much graffiti and so many stickers in Bangkok you could be forgiven for not noticing them. However, the media did start to pay attention and articles about BNE appeared in The New York Times and Forbes magazine.

Journalists even succeeded in tracking BNE down and getting his comments, learning that he not only generated about 10,000 stickers a month but also had help from colleagues to put them in place. His presence on key websites, like Flickr and YouTube, was greater than that of many multinational corporations.

Man With a Brand
Having built a brand that sells nothing, “BNE” saw the light (so the story goes) and decided to donate it to a good cause. He explained to Forbes magazine that he was spray-painting a wall in Jakarta when a woman said it must be wonderful to be rich enough to use paint in this way. So he agreed to paint her fence as well, listened to her life story, and learned how people in her city had to go without food because they spent so much money on water. This was the beginning of the BNE Water Foundation.

“BNE is a global movement dedicated to helping people in need get access to clean, safe drinking water and basic sanitation. We raise funds + awareness with art and BNE products.”

Click on BNEwater.org today and you get taken to a Water Damage Restoration Removal & Air Conditioning Repair service. Oh dear, whatever happened to all those donations?

Scandal Breaks
In 2014, scandal rocked the BNE venture when ANIMAL (animalnewyork.com) announced: “In a brazen act of chutzpah even by the standards of the graffiti world, where gaming each other is commonplace, pseudonymous global sticker-bomber, BNE, has fraudulently claimed to have collaborated on t-shirts with Banksy, the undisputed king of street-art, for the benefit of World Water Day.”

Apparently, BNE had falsely claimed to be collaborating with Banksy, whose work, unlike BNE’s ubiquitous stickers does at least have the combined virtues of invention, variation and humour.

Failing to receive any t-shirts — and aware that the product would not be authenticated by Banksy — donors started to ask for their money back. PayPal reversed all the payments and shut down BNE’s account. In a follow-up post on ANIMAL, BNE was described as “the sticker-bombing con artist BNE.”

The Unseen Tee-Shirt
This is a story of our times. Hundreds of people were prepared to believe an anonymous street artist when he said: “You do not get to see the artwork on this tee until it arrives at your door.”

Oh, that’s OK. Don’t bother to show us the product. Don’t tell us your name. We’ll just give you the money. And don’t tell us how you spend it.

BNE relied heavily on the power of photography to spread the word and establish a presence on the Internet, taking his “brand” beyond the city street and into the minds of people everywhere. I guess I’m continuing to promulgate the same virus with this article.

If it was genuine, I salute BNE’s intention to help solve the water crisis in the developing world. If it was not genuine, then I’d cry “Shame!” The message itself: “BNE Was Here” was certainly not always truthful. In many instances, “BNE Was NOT Here” would have been closer to the truth.

The BNE stickers will probably appear in future pictures, next time I walk around the streets of Bangkok. I’m not too worried. It’s unobtrusive compared to the Sainsbury’s bag in the UK. Its in-your-face colour ruined a lot of my local street photos, until I finally accepted it in the shot below. Thank heavens THAT’s gone.