# Straight photography

> Sharp, unmanipulated black-and-white photographs of the thing itself: a pepper, a shell, a fence, a cliff, a machine, a face, seen close or squarely and rendered in full detail. Large view cameras stopped down to small apertures keep every plane in focus, and the print is made straight, often as a contact print from the negative, with a long scale from deep black to clean white. Strong light models form, and the frame isolates one object until it looks monumental or abstract, with no soft lens, handwork or montage.

- Period: 1917–present
- Where it began: New York, in Alfred Stieglitz's circle
- Kind: Modernist
- Also called: Pure photography, Group f/64, f/64 photography
- Page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/straight-photography/

## How the look is made

- Stop the lens down and keep everything sharp, from the nearest edge to the far background; never diffuse the image.
- Move close and compose in the camera until one object, its form and its surface fill the frame.
- Use strong directional light, hard sun or light from above, to model form and bring out texture.
- Print straight from the whole negative, by contact where you can: a full scale of greys from deep black to clean white, controlled by exposure and development, never by brushwork, montage or retouching.
- Look for form in ordinary things and let them stand for themselves: no props, costumes or symbols.

## How it is lit

- Hard direct sun that models form and throws crisp, dark-edged shadows.
- Strong light from above on a still life set in a dark surround (Weston lit Pepper No. 30 inside a tin funnel).
- Open daylight on landscapes and buildings over long exposures at small apertures.

### The rendered set-up

One object in a dark surround, strong light from above as if through a tin funnel, so the form is modelled from the top down. Rendered in Blender Cycles on a synthetic clay figure or still life, with the lights exactly where the plan on the page puts them.

### A light plan from its choices (schematic)

- Key: the sun, from the camera’s left, at the side, high, hard.

## Camera settings

30–75 mm · f/22–f/64 · 0.5 s–6 min · ISO 25–64 (on 8x10), documented. 8 × 10 view cameras with 21–53 cm lenses, about 30–75 mm equivalent (Strand's 1916 negatives were 2¼ × 3¼ in.), stopped to f/22–f/64. Adams's Moonrise was about 1 s at f/32 on ASA 64 film; Weston's Pepper No. 30 took six minutes. Slower film speeds are inferred.

## Directing people

People are few. Frame a sitter close, head and chest filling the frame, shoulders square to the lens, body still and hands out of sight, face composed and unsmiling, eyes into the lens or off to one side; no props or gestures. Faces in the street are caught close and unaware. No groups.

## Styling

Nothing is dressed up: sitters wear their own clothes and no make-up, every pore and fold sharp. A still life is one ordinary thing (a pepper, a shell, a cabbage leaf) set alone on a plain dark ground or in a simple funnel, with no props; landscapes and buildings are taken as found.

## Before you shoot it

Strand's 1916 street portraits of poor New Yorkers, one of them blind, were taken with a decoy lens so the sitters did not know; when you photograph people up close, ask first. A generated image is not a vintage straight print: label it as AI-generated and never present it as a work by a named photographer.

## Photographs

- Edward Weston, Pepper No. 30, 1930, printed by Cole Weston. Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the United States (published in 1930 without a copyright notice). Shown on the page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pepper_No._30,_by_Edward_Weston.jpg
- Ansel Adams, The Tetons and the Snake River, 1942. National Archives, Records of the National Park Service (79-AAG-1). Shown on the page: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/519904
- Paul Strand, Photograph—New York, Camera Work no. 49/50, 1917. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (cph 3b46829); no known restrictions on publication. Shown on the page: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002707153/
- Paul Strand, Photograph, Camera Work no. 49/50, 1917. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (cph 3b10517); no known restrictions on publication. Shown on the page: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2005684911/

## Sources

- Straight photography, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_photography (sharp focus and detail; term used by Sadakichi Hartmann in Camera Work in 1904; West Coast photographers in the 1930s; Stieglitz, Strand, Weston, Adams, Brett Weston, Cunningham, Abbott; higher contrast and rich tonality in silver prints; ordinary darkroom controls allowed)
- Group f/64, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_f/64 (1932–1935; the seven core members; first exhibition at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum on 15 November 1932; manifesto of 'simple, direct, purely photographic methods'; large-format cameras, small apertures, long exposures; opposition to pictorialism)
- Camera Work, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_Work (no. 48 introduced Paul Strand; the final no. 49/50 of June 1917 devoted almost entirely to Strand; Strand shunned soft focus and symbolic content)
- Paul Strand, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Strand (1890–1976; Wall Street 1915; Abstraction, Porch Shadows and The White Fence 1916; the false lens used for street portraits)
- Edward Weston, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Weston (turn to sharp images after Armco 1922; 8×10 Seneca view camera; contact prints; Kodak Azo glossy paper; early platinum printing; 'the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself'; peppers, shells, Point Lobos, dunes)
- Pepper No. 30, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_No._30 (August 1930; Ansco 8×10 camera; the pepper set inside a tin funnel and lit strongly from above; silver gelatin contact prints)
- Photograph—New York (Blind), Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Photograph-New_York_LCCN2002707153.jpg (LoC record 2002707153: photogravure, Camera Work no. 49/50, June 1917, plate III; no known restrictions)
- Ansel Adams Photographs, National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/research/ansel-adams (National Park Service mural project, mostly 1941–1942; series 79-AA; in the public domain except series 79-G)
- Pepper No. 30, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_No._30 (made in August 1930 'using his Ansco 8×10 Commercial View camera with a Zeiss 21 cm lens'; contact prints the size of the 8 × 10 in. film; Kim Weston's account of f/240 and four to six hours contradicts the daybook's six minutes)
- '4 September 2019: Pepper No. 30', Edward Weston Bibliography: https://edwardwestonbibliography.blog/tag/peppers (quotes Daybooks II, p. 180, 3 August 1930: the pepper was 'so small that I used my 21 cm. Zeiss to fill the 8×10 size'; 'made an exposure of six minutes'; on 1 August 1930 another pepper took 'an exposure of 50 minutes')
- Kim Weston, 'Edward Weston Photography Analysis', kimweston.com: https://kimweston.com/news/edward-weston-photography-analysis (Guggenheim kit of 1937: 8×10 Century Universal view camera, triple convertible Turner Reich lens 12, 21 and 28 in. with a Zeiss Protar element, Weston light meter, K2, G and A filters; the f/64 members habitually set their lenses to that aperture)
- Ansel Anecdotes, Ansel Adams Gallery: https://articles.anseladams.com/ansel-adams-anecdotes/ (from Examples, on Moonrise, Hernandez, 1941: 8×10 camera, Cooke Triple-Convertible lens, Wratten No. 15 (G) filter, 'about 1 second at f/32 with ASA 64 film')
- Porch Railings, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, MoMA Object:Photo: https://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/objects/83918.html ('Between 1915 and 1917 Strand's practice was to expose 2 ¼ by 3 ¼ inch negatives, enlarging them to 11 by 14 inch glass plates' for contact printing)
- Group f/64, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_f/64 (named after a small aperture of large-format lenses; large-format cameras, small apertures and sometimes long exposures)

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From Lumogeny (https://lumogeny.com/), a service of Van Riel Online Services. The shoot sheet for your own camera, lenses and lights is on the page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/straight-photography/#sheet