Visual anthropology above and beyond pretty pictures

 

screenshot with strong compositions, but little social context (labels added here)- source: flickr Explore on 3 April 2026

Pretty pictures is a phrase not intended to be dismissive, since there truly is pleasure and value in the process of composing them and for people to view them, too. But for the purpose of this essay, the visual engagement alone - whether stimulating aesthetic wonder or triggering memories or stirring imaginations, or illustrating a story - is less valuable to social science and functioning as a vehicle that opens up larger frames to understand a subject. In other words, not all pictures are created equal when it comes to portraying cultural features and social processes all around us. While the same lens may well be able to record all the images in the above screenshot, in fact they come from different photographers and the experiences they incorporate into the press of the shutter release button.

Probably the labeling to categorize what is prominent about the images, above, is not comprehensive, since other photographs may stand out for differing emotional responses they activate: a decisive moment documented, an historical happening or something rarely witnessed (news value), or matters not of public interest but yet holding great meaning for just one or a small group who sees it, for example. And with enough imagination and powers of rationalizing, each of the four screenshot images might just as well lend themselves for a writing prompt to illustrate sociological or anthropological observations, too. But at first glance it is the quality of the light (top left) that is most salient; it is the delicate texture and color masses (bottom left) that catch the eye; and it is the powerful geometry of the staircase spiral (top right) that fills the viewers' minds. Only a few people might name the specific mushroom (botanist), describe the water droplet's surface tension (physicist), or appreciate the making and calculations for the staircase (architect, engineer, installer, sales representative). By contrast, the coal mine picture is framed and lighted like a lovingly composed portrait with a lot of art and craft. But also it functions well as a writing prompt for the subject of fossil fuel extraction, the labor relations of capitalist (or state-run) owner versus worker, or the lived experience and arc of a life story for generations of miners. Form and content, form and function serve each other in this photo: the excellent capture conveys the subject in a pleasing and engaging way. The important subject adds weight and momentousness to the photograph.

Expanding on the social science meaning in the colliery picture, it is true that it could just be a lucky snapshot of a passing tourist or a memento recorded by former worker, neighbor, or owner. But more likely, it seems to be a carefully framed and exposed photo by a keen amateur or else a professional picture-taker. And while the same image could appear in a wide range of uses, from advertising to editorial to textbook to scrapbook to souvenir postcard, anything from universal or symbolic statement to personal travelogue, when it comes to the visual medium for anthropological thinking, this one stands out from the others in this screenshot. It conveys something of note for understanding human livelihoods and their relationship to the natural environment in general as well as meanings specific to this location and this moment in history, too. 

The photo of the coal mine property has social science worth not just due to the central subject filling the frame, but also due to the artful way in which it is portrayed. In other words, a clumsy visual record would be encountered with indifference or even rejection by hungry eyes of people that jump from one picture to another without pause. But a well photographed portrayal invites viewers to linger and explore the details at length, possibly noticing something they had not understood or known before, possibly reflecting on larger matters or subjects that are connected to this central idea. By being both a beautiful picture (in the abstract, general, aesthetic sense) and by recording something of the subject and its context, the result is a description of a subject that still may rely on words, but which speaks for itself, as well.

In summary, it seems obvious that "not all photos are created equal." But looking more closely at the many kinds of things that attract the eye of photographers - social scientist or not, certain compositions speak of anthropological or sociological matters better than others; not only do technical expertise and artful framing and timing figure into the viewing/thinking experience but also the intentionality and perceptiveness of the (social science predisposed) photographer will affect the final image that people of the time (and future viewers, too) see. By way of concluding statement, it is safe to say that a table full of photos may have a subset of visual interest or remarkable beauty. And another subset will comprise subjects and portrayals of social insights. Where these two subsets intersect there will be a couple of photos that both express something about the society and life experience of people in their context and which also attract the viewer's attention for their visual delight.

40 years after first setting foot in Japan

champon ramen near JR Hita in Oita-ken

Summer of 1984 was the start of a year-long contract in the local school district's middle and high schools of Fukui-ken. Now in the fall of 2024 my Japan interests continue to grow and expand. Leaving aside the many changes in the world, and the ways that Japanese lives have changed in those generations since 1984, too, my own expertise in language and society has increased little by little; most rapidly and widely during the dedicated years of graduate school, ethnographic fieldwork, and writing, but also at a more gradual pace since then by meeting others working, living, and researching in Japan or about the place and lives there.

Pausing between bites of piping hot noodles on a rainy November afternoon, the passage of decades and the present moment of savoring freshly prepared champon ramen come momentarily into sharp focus. It is not as if those many hours of language study and initial model dialogues were leading up to a hot meal in this part of Kyushu. But then, again, in some ways the accumulated experiences, study, and observations do figure in to each successive moment in the days going forward. So, yes, in that sense, the 40 years did lead up to the first bite of ramen this afternoon!

The first semester college student in Japanese 101 with the Mizutani textbook of the 1980s open to see what topics and vocabulary appear is very different to the gray haired guy content in his choice of the noodles in rich chicken broth and smothered in a mishmash of vegetables and animal products. Back then the idea of traveling to a town for the first time, making all arrangements for transportation and lodging and budgeting enough cash might have been daunting. But now it all seems much less formidable. What once might have seemed strange at worst or exotic as best now feels pretty normal or even ordinary. Although far from native speaker fluency in oral skills and even weaker in literacy, generally being able to understand the speakers of Japanese and making myself understandable in return is not a big source of anxiety like it once would have been for a first semester college student. Let us hope for many more weeks and opportunities to explore parts of the islands new to me. May the learning ever continue.

Drone lens to see above the treetops

 

About 80-100 feet above ground level in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan on July 31, 2024

After a lifetime of composing pictures and viewing pictures from eye-level and using a viewfinder or digital screen, the experience of flying a sub-250-gram camera drone (not subject to FAA licensing; most places restricted to 400 feet or lower, according to published maps for drones) takes some getting used to. It takes time to gain reliable competence to launch and recover the pocket-sized quadcopter. And it takes time to know how to set the lens angle and the frame before capturing a photo or recording video clips. Although this model (Holystone hs175d) allows software and smartphone screen to show the camera's point of view, by flying blind with just the handheld controller and estimating the heading of the lens, there is less technology to coordinate and to slow down the set up, launch, and return to land. In addition, by not seeing what the lens sees, there is an echo of the roll-film era of photography, when it took a few days (or "1-hour photo processing" while you wait) before the resulting image could be seen.

Learning curve on this hobby drone camera

Being very light-weight with small battery, usable for 15 or so minutes per battery, and with modest lens and small digital sensor to capture the images, best results come from several tips discovered by practicing. (1) Abundant light falling from side or behind the lens puts the scene in best view to record detail and mostly accurate colors. (2) Preflight visualizing the launch site and center of the photo to compose before releasing the shutter gives more deliberate photographic results, and it reduces in-air dithering as the battery runs down. (3) Before launching (checklist): unfold controller grips and antenna, power it on. Unfold drone struts and power the drone on. According to the manufacturer steps: pair the controller to the drone, activate the compass (involves a long-press button, then rotating on two different axes), then wait for lights to change from red to lime-green (signal that GPS signal is found). During this minute or two, decide the lens position (0 to 90 degrees relative to the horizon). Since the full travel from pointing straight ahead to straight down is about 45 presses of the controller button, a landscape is best about 5 or 6 clicks under the horizon (straight ahead) position. For subjects very much in the foreground, maybe 14 to 16 clicks will frame everything best. Then reset the gyro and finally unlock the motors so they can spin and so that the auto-launch button can put the drone at a 6-foot hover position. (4) Tripod in the sky is one way to imagine the drone camera: launch and then, like an elevator, go straight up (rather than traveling laterally to hard to reach spot, say) to take pictures at different altitudes (beginner mode caps the ceiling at 100 feet/30 meters, a distance from the pilot that still allows the drone's lens/heading to be seen). Rotating the drone 2-clicks of the joystick will move the center point of the photo frame about 20 or 25 degrees, thus allowing a sequence of shots that overlap. (5) Limitations are good to know, too: wind that is able to move the treetops is too much to fly in. Rain also is ill advised. Extreme heat or cold diminishes the battery power, too. Even with minimal wind, lots of light, and moderate air temperature, though, being too hasty to pivot the lens and then shoot the picture can give tipped horizons, since it takes a second or two to regain level composure. In other words, whether recording moving or still images, it is important to turn the drone and then wait a few moments before pressing the record button on the controller. (6) Landing (checklist): Normally, the GPS launch point is faithfully homed in on, but sometimes unexpected puffs of wind, or a particularly hazard-filled site calls for extra care to ground or to catch the drone - being ready to make micro-adjustments before finally pressing the Auto-land button and then after reaching the ground and props no longer spinning, turning off controller and turning off drone, folding the four struts of the propellers and then returning to the storage/carrying bag.

Seen all together: the drone photographer arrives at preferred launch site, free of overhanging branches and wires, and so on. The person unpacks controller and drone to prepare for (auto) launch. Once in the air, the pilot quickly presses the altitude stick to elevate straight upward. Once at the chosen height and pointing the lens at the center of the composition, the photographer waits for two seconds so the drone settles relative to the horizon, rather than tipping to one side or the other. Snap a photo, then 2-clicks of the joystick to rotate away from the first center point. Wait 2-counts to settle and then snap the next photo. After enough shots are recorded, then the drone comes down the way it rose: straight down the invisible elevator shaft. At eye-level, press the auto-landing button to make a soft landing and turn off controller and drone. Elapsed time to unpack, launch, ascend, snap a series of shots and/or video clips, descend and reach the land could be 8 to 10 minutes all together.

looking north near the Grand River, Ah-Nab-Awen Park & the Ford Presidential Museum

Reasons to record the land and people from above the treetops

Before the invention, proliferation, and interest in pictures and video from the air, it was only airplanes and helicopters (and hot-air balloons) that made this birdseye perspective possible, limited to those with a big budget or good connections with pilots and photographers. But in 2024 there are now many tiers in quality of drone camera available new or used, suited to a variety of purposes and abilities. Some are made to be fool-proof with pre-programmed menus of pictures to take. Others allow the pilot to make most control decisions, just automating the orientation to horizon (remaining level) and the launch/landing phases of flight. The camera itself often is similar to a "point and shoot," leaving the composition frame and altitude to the flyer, but the exposure and shutter and ISO (sensor responsiveness to light values) are auto-determined. In this article the camera is on a hobby drone of around $200 new and weighing less than the FAA license limit of 250 grams. For the purpose of learning to fly and to visualize things to photograph from the birds' point of view, this UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) is entirely satisfactory. For profession filmmakers, though, it falls short in many ways.

Unlike the visual frame at ground level, being now up in the air the context suddenly is many times wider and deeper. So the pictures taken at 30 or 60 or 100 feet put the horizon farther away than the ground-level or rooftop window height. For face-to-face subjects or macro details, there is no benefit from a drone camera. But for big cultural terrain, large patterns and relationships, and "establishing shot" introductions to a place, the viewpoint above ground level is superior. Even large indoor spaces can sometimes benefit from a lens that is 20 or 40 feet above the activity, below.

Besides the content recorded from the air, another benefit is the comparative one: the viewer may already have on-the-ground experience of a place or a subject matter, but by layering this new perspective onto that first-hand, up-close knowledge, the person now gains a point of comparison, thus making the earlier vision become a comparative one: knowing it in stereo instead of in mono.

Some aspects of a subject or a place may simply be invisible or too big to appreciate in the eye-level scale of encounter. Only by having the (aerial) distance can the scale of a thing be understood. For example, some things can best be grasped from the air, such as a massive factory complex, port facility, campus, or site of natural (or human-caused) disaster.

Finally, there is freshness and novelty that comes from seeing something from an unaccustomed standpoint. Even if it is something as well-known as one's home or workplace, that deep familiarity can make the thing uninteresting, ordinary, and rarely perceived objectively. But by seeing it from the air, now it becomes unfamiliar and some of the contours and connections to adjacent things come to life.

In conclusion, whether it is a hobbyist keen on flying or one keen on photography (or both) or it is someone with professional interest in drone photography (city engineer, military corps, land surveyor, social scientist, historian, novelist or journalist), the practicality of having an "eye in the sky" now makes uses for drone photography relevant in day-to-day operations and routines. It can answer old questions and lead to new questions. It can be the instrumental knowledge for decisions today, but also be of value when future generations look back to explore our moment by using UAV archives like these. So, more and more drone photography should be encouraged and supported for immediate benefit and for future uses, too. 

CAVEAT: like anything else human-created, this visual tool can be used not just for good, but can also be abused for bad purposes. So, infrastructure that a terrorist or far-away government may want to scrutinize with a view to harm should have special protections so that imagery is not online readily findable.

Anthropological lens - looking closer at the metaphor

Sometimes the expression, "anthropological lens" or "lens of anthropology," is offered when describing, interpreting, or analyzing a subject by using some of the hallmarks of an anthropological approach: first-person point of view, usually small or interpersonal scale, longitudinal span of time, lots of room for context of language, culture, material culture, environmental particulars, and some attention to the observer's own limitations in the matter.

anthropologists use lenses to document, study, and present; but also figuratively

Perhaps there is is something to see when extending the "lens" metaphor when it comes to engaging in the world as an anthropologist. The most common intention or meaning for mentioning "the anthropological lens" is to alert the reader that now the discussion will dwell on things that anthropologists see when they approach a situation or subject matter (context, point of view, effects of physical, social, linguistic, and symbolic/ideological elements in the person's experience). But extending the idea of a lens, there are wide-angle, normal (human visual experience), and telephoto focal length lenses, each with differing angle of view.

Lenses are built according to the camera's dimension, including its film (or digital sensor) size for recording the image. So for the 35mm film camera a 55mm lens might produce an image that resembles normal human visual experience, neither compressing the distance (magnifying the far away subject) nor shrinking the subject into a wider context. But fitting that same 55mm lens onto a digital camera with a sensor that is only 2/3 the surface area of an individual frame of 35mm roll film means that the lens is producing proportionately more magnification than it does on the film. Therefore the sensor "crops" the middle of that circle of light focused by the lens. In this case the 55mm is perceived by the smaller digital sensor as the equivalent of 85 or 90mm (slightly telephoto magnification).

Even for the same sort of camera there may be several varieties of lens to choose from, newer ones built with the aid of computer calculations and computer assisted polishing and glare-reducing treatments to produce a clearer and brighter result than the older glass. Taking the 55mm lens example for a 35mm film camera (or its equivalent in the world of digital cameras) there could be a newly configured one, the older and maybe heavier one, another specifically meant for macro (close-up) pictures, and one designed for low-light or artful (bokeh) blurring of background. Some have a built-in gyroscope to reduce motion-blur by the photographer's jiggling (image stabilization). A perculiar sort of sense first developed for movie cameras and later sometimes adapted for still photography is the anamorphic lens (recorded 1.33x the width of a scene in 1.0x the available space of the recording film or sensor to be played back or reconstituted for normal perception). Other ways to extend the characteristics of the lens itself include screw-on filters designed to reduce glare, minimize atmospheric haze, correct for specific types of light source (bluish light can be correct to something resembling daylight colors), or reduce the amount of light that reaches the film or sensor. Doing so forces a slower shutter speed, thus capturing some blur of movement; or else attains the correct light exposure instead by making the aperture wider than otherwise would be if not for the neutral density filter (thus narrowing the in-focus depth; its depth of field).

Another distinction among lenses is the different functionality of interchangeable lenses versus fixed lens (permanent mount), and the difference between a lens that has just one measurement (focal length, such as 55mm 'normal' or 20mm wide-angle, expressed relative to 35mm film cameras) and a zoom lens. The optical magnification is expressed by comparing the smaller number to the larger one; for instance, a zoom lens of 100mm to 200mm doubles (200mm is 2x the 100mm, base number). By comparison 25mm to 125mm is a magnification of 5x. In addition to the zoom lens magnification, there is the range of focal lengths that are included: if 55mm is 'normal' then a zoom lens of 25mm to 100mm ranges from wide to moderate telephoto, but a zoom lens of 85mm to 200mm starts at slightly telephoto to full telephoto. By looking at 'normal' the magnification can be understood: 200mm is about 4x the 55mm reference number.

Still another consideration is monocular (camera lens) versus binocular (dual lenses offset to produce stereoscopic imagery). The decades around 1900 saw a wide interest in stereo-photography (stereography). Home subscription to one of the purveyors would bring a monthly selection of scenes from faraway lands, strange events, and news of the day. The twin images would set in a viewing frame for the person's brain to take in the left image and right image and reconstitute the three dimensional subject with full depth perception enjoyed. Modern cinema-goers sometimes watch feature films produced for viewing in 3-D when seen wearing specially filtered "sunglasses" (one eye in blue filter, one eye in red filter).

In summary, when extending the lens metaphor used for looking at a situation like an anthropological social analyst or documentarian does, then there are several dimensions to lenses: size suited to a particular camera body, filtering accessories affecting the image that the lens focuses, magnification (wide, normal, telephoto, specialty), and the effects of aperture on how much of the scene is sharply seen or is blurred incidentally or with artistic intentionality. Closely related to the optics of the lens itself is the matter of composition: what is foregrounded, what is included and excluded in the frame (how wide or narrow the frame is), point of main focus (sharpest part of the image), and exposure decision (producing blurs by accident or on purpose, exposing so the shadow detail is shown even at the expense of bright areas overexposed; or the reverse - careful to record the bright parts of the subject, even at the expense of losing the things shadowed).

In conclusion, "the anthropological lens" is a figure of speech to signal that a long vision and wide but personalized viewpoint particular to anthropology is being invoked by the author. The several attributes of lenses can be explored alone and when coupled to cameras to compose pictures for study, record-keeping, or presentation to others by publication in print or online. Extending the "lens of anthropology" by way of these several attributes shines a light on the variability (not monolithic) of anthropologists' accounts: sure they are recording social observations, but some filter differently to others. Some use a wider angle of view than others. Certain lenses are fixed and applied to all subjects, while others freely change lenses from wide to telephoto, according to the scene. Special situations call for long-exposures that layer movement of several subjects; or time-lapse (compressing long periods into speeded up presentation) or the reverse by slow-motion (moving pictures at high speed to capture the subject in the briefest fraction of a second).

The result is that any two social scientists trained in the traditions of anthropology (Anglophone, Francophone, or any of the many other scholarly communities for anthropology; see World Council of Anthropology Associations) could have congruent or could have very different representation of a particular moment and subject. That does not make one more valuable than the other; indeed, having two visual channels contributes to a compound (stereophonic, stereoscopic) rendering of the subject, whereas a single view from a single fieldwork season and from a single publishing language will give a less vivid account. So, in the same way that lenses affect the compositions produced by them, the same is true of the anthropologist's training and professional path of experiences. Each practitioner's anthropological lens is capable of producing well composed and well focused imagery. No single lens will capture a given subject fully, but being aware of the several attributes that distinguish one lens from another illuminates the ways in which the image presented to the public comes to be shaped.