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Scale
8 November 2023
Walking down the hill one morning last month, we stopped to snap this image. St. Cecilia's church stands in the foreground, its church tower breaking the line of the horizon, while a cargo ship waits to enter the bay through the Golden Gate and, on this clear morning, the Farallon Islands some 34 miles away are clearly visible.
Scale. Nikon D300, 18-200mm Mikkor at 200mm (300mm equivalent), f8, 1/1000 second and ISO 200. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
What strikes us about this image, though, is the reverse scale.
The smallest object is actually the tallest and the seemingly largest is actually the shortest.
The highest peak on the Farallons is 357 feet, exceeding the typical above-water height of a cargo ship at 116 feet, which itself exceeds what we assume to be the height of the bell tower (which seems about eight-stories high for 80 feet or so).
At the time of day we took this shot, there were probably more statues in the church than people and more birds on the islands than humans and more containers on the deck of the ship than sailors. But more sailors than saints.
We could push this as an allegory of Nature, Commerce and Religion but we're not so inclined to such heavy lifting. To us it is just an amusing alignment.
Of course we expect distant objects to appear smaller than they really are (as the wide angle rear view mirror on your car's passenger side warns).
But the relative relationships of these three subjects in the image to each other takes a little research to appreciate.
Which, in imaging, is a liability.