Wide Viewpoint：the Value of“Addition”

2025年10月13日

版权

The beginners should have heard the sentence：photography is the art of“subtraction”.It needs us to abandon the sheltering from sight decisively，and highlight the key points to ensure visual effect.

But photojournalists are different from ordinary photographers.The former should have a broader perspective.

When I am doing street snap，I prefer to use the wide-angle lens，mainly because it can show not only the key point which I want to highlight，but also the surrounding environment.I hope the focus can be combined with the social background.It requires maximum retaining both wide scenes and some details to reveal the relevant information with the reality in the image，and not separate the internal relations of elements artificially.These will make the photographs more attractive.

When most shutterbugs and commercial photographers invariably get used to coming closer to the subject by lens，the photojournalists should learn to take one step back and shoot the people in a wider visual space.This is what I called“making addition”.

As a photojournalist，although the focus of the photograph is always“people”，it is also necessary to learn how to pay attention to the environment in which people live，the state of the person in the environment and the relationship between the person and the environment.Sometimes there is a kind of causal connection between the natural environment and the social environment，which is unclear.I don't wand to use too many words，but to use photos themselves express the relation hidden under pictures.So I kept lots of details in the photographs when shooting，including the details of the protagonist and the surrounding environment.

For this reason，I specially selected a set of photos with wide viewpoint.It allows the readers to have a deeper understanding of the special atmosphere of the city in a broad vision，just like a movie.The characters'expressions，movements and gestures are integrated with the surrounding environment，so the presentation will be in a very harmonious and natural state.

This may make some emphasis less prominent and sacrifice some visual impact，but I think，by this time，there is no need of some kinds of visual form to prove I am a person who can take photos well.What I need is to let the photos serve my ideas，let the point of view emerge from the details and the environment.My goal is not to catch someone's eyes，but to attract the readers to stay in front of the photo for a few more seconds and then reap more different contents.I hope that this series of photographs can be a historical material to convey social information or a tool for exploring the truth.

All of these do not mean that you don't need to pay any attention to the form.The good angles，the light and the composition are also important，but the most important thing is the image itself.A good photograph should be plain，but“rich”and readable，with details that seem to be inadvertent but hard to capture，which are the best footnotes for the change of era.

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