About That Carters-Bidens Picture

The picture, which is making the rounds to an impressive extent, is an excellent example of what's called perspective distortion. The picture has gone viral all over the world because of an optical illusion that makes President Biden look like a giant next to a diminutive Mrs. Carter.

It originated as a tweet from the Carter Center. No photographer is named; possibly it was a functionary or employee of the Center using a camera that has a wide-angle lens. It's even possible it was a smartphone camera. Phone modules are getting very wide now, which is historically an interesting development—an amateur who had an "ultrawide" as wide as 24mm in the 1970s would probably have been the exception to the rule (28mm was the standard wide angle). Certainly anyone who had anything wider than 20mm in those days would have been rare. But the iPhone 12 Pro Max has an ultrawide lens of ƒ/2.4 with a 120° angle of view, which is "equivalent" in field angle to approximately a 10.5mm lens on full frame. Even in this century many dedicated amateurs have not owned lenses that wide. I never have.

A seasoned photographer might not have been caught out like this; experience would have suggested a different arrangement of the subjects. Although I imagine a professional in that situation might not have had much choice—you don't order Presidents and First Ladies around, and you might not be given much in the way of time.

So what's going on here?

Usually, when a photograph creates an optical illusion, it's a combination of several factors, all of which reinforce each other. In this case, people, particularly women, really do shrink as they age. My great-aunt Dickie, who lived to be nearly 102, lost approximately five inches of her prime-of-life height by the time she was a centenarian. (I can estimate this because I have a picture of her in her 90s standing side-by-side next to my mother, who told me they used to be the same height.) So there's a good possibility that Rosalynn Carter, who is 93, has "wizened" somewhat and really does have a smaller and more frail body than she did in midlife. Since our heads don't shrink (our eyes also stay the same size throughout life), that can make older people look a little like they have oversized heads.

Just as a long focal length lens is said to "compress" or "flatten" scenes (really, that's just perspective too), so a wide-angle lens can exaggerate the distance between nearer and farther subjects—it's all in the relative distance from camera position. But this happens in the imaging of single objects as well. I set up a quick demo so you can see what I mean. Ideally I would have had two balls, so I could set them in the same relationship and Joe and Rosalynn's heads, but I only had one old soccer ball my son left at the house years ago, and I ain't that dedicated. Watch what happens to the image of the ball when I put it in the corner of the frame at various focal lengths:

First of all, here it is at 80mm. The camera is maybe 15–20 feet away from the ball. The perspective is relatively "flattened" and the soccer ball looks round.

Now here we are at 24mm, traditionally considered the border between "wide-angle" and "ultrawide-angle." The most obvious change is that the ball is getting oblong, but look especially at the relative sizes of the two chairs.

Finally, here it is at 14mm, which is ultrawide by anyone's definition. Camera position is now very close—note that in the top picture we see the right-hand sides of the boxes and now we're seeing the left-hand sides—and the relative distances from camera position are exaggerated. The ball is very distorted and no longer looks round, and the sizes of the two exaggerates the distance between them even more. 

Perspective distortion is more evident the farther the imaged object is from the center of the frame. Even in the 14mm shot, if I had put the ball in the exact center of the frame, it would have looked exactly round.

In the Carters-Bidens photograph, the most obvious sign of perspective distortion is actually Jimmy Carter's feet. Because he's not sitting forward, and his feet are out in front of him somewhat and near the edge of the frame, the same thing is happening to them as is happening to our soccer ball. They look way too big for his head.

What could the photographer have done differently? A professional would surely have been alert to the pitfalls that did in fact end up creating the . Again, he or she might not have had much control. It's tough to stage-manage famous subjects, especially older people on whom it might be an imposition. I have trouble imagining myself telling 96-year-old Jimmy Carter to sit up straight!

I can't tell, but it looks like the thing above President Biden's left shoulder is the open door of a cabinet—perhaps a door that hides a television. If that could be shut and gotten out of the way, I would have simply asked the Bidens to position themselves so each had a bit of one arm and one shoulder behind the armchairs in which their counterparts are sitting.

Of course, then no one would have heard of the picture...so....

It's worth mentioning here that public familuiarity with, and tolerance for, wide-angle perspectives has increased greatly over the past century. Even what we now call "moderate" wide angle lenses were difficult and expensive to produce in the past, and viewers were much more sensitive to their characteristic distortions. Now, we look at something like the top-left framed picture on the Carters' wall and have no trouble "reading" it. But its strange trapezoidal shape might have been disturbing to a viewer in the 1930s or earlier. We tend to have little trouble with Jimmy Carter's feet being imaged the way they are, but even that might have looked flagrantly absurd to our great-grandparents.

So it's a combination of a number of things, all of them reinforcing the same illusion. Joe Biden being both bigger as well as taller, in his kneeling position, than Rosalynn Carter; her frailty of body because of her advanced age; the fact that President Biden is both closer to the camera position and also farther toward the edge of the frame, and leaning forward, presumably to clear that "door" or whatever it is in back of him; and the perspective distortion because of the wide-angle lens used presumably because of limited space.

But if nothing else, it's a nice example of this effect, and of the illusions it can create.

Mike

[UPDATE: The photo was taken by White House photographer Adam Schultz. Thanks to Sharon and others for this.]

Book of Interest this week:

The Education of a Photographer, Edited by Charles H. Traub, Steven Heller, and Adam B. Bell, Allworth Press, 2006, 256 pages. A small but rich gold mine of short essays and interviews by and about photographers. Also available from The Book Depository with free shipping worldwide.

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Ken Bennett (partial comment): "I photographed President Carter a few years ago. He’s a total pro. He would have happily followed any directions. Great guy."

Sharon: "According to the New York Times, Adam Schultz, the official White House photographer took the Biden/Carter photo."

Mike replies: Thank you Sharon. I should have done a little more due diligence on that one—my policy is to try to credit photographers by name wherever possible.

Richard T.: "I fear you may get inundated with this reference, but the New York Times has a brief comment from the photographer: 'Reached by phone Adam Schultz, the chief official White House photographer, confirmed that he took the photo but declined to explain. "It’s for people to figure out and think about," he said.'"

Soeren Engelbrecht: "This is also why you would generally not use a wide-angle lens for a 'passport photo' style of portrait. If you are five feet away from the person's nose with a tele lens, the ears are at about 5 ½ feet. So the ears and nose appear to be approximately the same size (which they are, if you measure them), since they are approximately at the same distance from the camera. Would you instead move in with an ultrawide lens—say, the nose being six inches from the camera, the ears would be at 12 inches, i.e., twice as far away as the nose. Hence, the nose now looks much bigger than the ears. Exact same thing as will, henceforth, be known as the 'Presidential scale phenomenon.'  :-)  "

Dan Westergren: "Don't know if this link will work, but here's what the PJ community thinks of this photo. It appears to have been taken by the Pro White House photographer; I would sum this up to the photographer having little to no control of the situation."

Craig Yuill: "I can relate to this big time. Years ago I was asked by a friend to take pictures of his family. One photo involved having my friend and his twin brother sit on the arms of a living room chair, flanking their grandmother, who was sitting in the chair. Their two other brothers stood behind the chair. My mistake, partly caused by cramped quarters, was to use a wide lens for this photo. The twin brothers, who were in the front, wound up looking like giants compared to the others. My friend laughed every time he saw that photo."

Comments

[Ken Bennett]

Two things.

1. President Biden appears to be kneeling next to Mrs. Carter, but I think he’s really a couple of feet in front of her.

2. I photographed President Carter a few years ago. He’s a total pro. He would have happily followed any directions. Great guy.

[Mike replies: You might be right about it but I'm not so sure about point 1. Joe B. appears to have his right hand on the front of the left arm of Mrs. Carter's chair, and his right knee on the fringe of the rug, which appears to be only a few inches from the corner of the chair. His head might be two feet in front of her head, though. --Mike]

[Bill Bresler]

For a fraction of a second, I thought you spelled Cartier-Bresson incorrectly.

[s.wolters]

According to this article White House photographer Adam Schultz took the picture. Pete Souza who had his job during Obama gave a comment on the large shoes of Carter. For me this proofs you shouldn't picture people this way, unless you don't like them.
https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/oud-president-carter-en-zijn-vrouw-zijn-niet-gekrompen-maar-wat-gebeurt-er-wel-op-deze-foto~bed51592/

[Markus]

Mike, any possibility that iphone-wizardry took place here? In your illustration images, the ball clearly gets distorted at 14mm focal length, and the same I would assume should have happened with Pres. Biden's head. It obviously did not, and that makes me suspicious that something must have had doctored the optical rendering of this scene. Too much AI for my taste...

[Eliott D James]

So why would a pro release a photo like this? I'd say he didn't look at it before he did.

[Richard Parkin]

I’m sure Biden’s right hand a knee are at the front of the chair of the chair and his body is angled so his left hand must be well in front. My guess would be the photographer was constrained by the size of the room and maybe other furniture and people and the request of the subjects to take a photo at that moment.

[Bob Johnston]

Strangely this sort of distortion can be seen in some paintings made before photography was invented. It is thought that artists were using lenses and concave mirrors as aids. A good example is a Van Dyck portrait of a Genovese lady with her son. She seems to be about 12 feet high. This from David Hockneys fascinating book "Secret Knowledge. Rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters"

[Daniel Speyer]

I guess this is sign of the times/last decade or more, that we are inundated with poorly done photos, and many people seem to accept it. I don't accept it. And, at this level, it is an inexcusable example.

[Speed]

And then there's the old standby ... "We'll fix it in post."

[hugh crawford]

The room itself may have something to do with it. It looks an awful lot like an Ames Room. The angle of the walls, the sizes of the pictures, probably pretty large chairs that the Bidens are in front of, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_room

[Ilkka]

To me it is just a bad picture. It is doubly bad because it is supposed to be editorial or news, so telling the ‘truth’. I don’t care if it was taken by a junior on his first handed down iPhone with the wide lens, or a Pulitzer Prize winner pro. It is still a bad picture.

[Roger Bradbury]

Soeren Engelbrecht, you are quite right about the perspective, but when using an ultra wide angle lens at 6 inches, there wouldn't be a problem with the nose looking twice as big as the ears.

That close to the face you wouldn't be able to see the ears at all! :)

[Geoffrey Conklin]

Consider the possibility that this was intentionally staged with the wit and good humor of the Bidens, Carters Mr. Souza offering a bit of mirth in an otherwise dismal news climate.

[Shrinky Umbo]

Jimmy Carter proves my personal theory of old age. Since somewhere in my 50's, I've been shrinking in size, while my feet have been growing! At my peak, I was 'near' 6 feet, now I'm barely over 5'10". In the same period, my shoe size went from 10, to 12! I'm literally melting into my shoes! Easily viewable with poor Jimmy here!

[Rand Scott Adams]

Well, it’s an interesting discussion regarding “how this happened.” But I’ll just go with my visceral reaction to the photograph. It is a cartoon. It demeans President and Mrs. Carter. It makes President and Mrs. Biden look like “keepers of the little people.” It’s awful. Whatever else it may have been intended to illustrate, if has failed miserably. It’s like looking at Diane Arbus’ photo of Eddie Carmel.

Rand

[Nick Reith]

But for the famous faces, IMHO this would be dismissed by most people as a photoshopped bad joke.

[Trav]

Sounds like Schultz is trying to cover his mess up by saying:

"It’s for people to figure out and think about."

Clearly, he knew that he made a gigantic boo boo.

[Anton Wilhelm Stolzing]

You nailed it: How I was longing for a 24 mm lens in 1980; a colleague of mine had one, he was a professional photographer. Later my father gave me a 24 mm Makinon as a birthday gift - it was the worst lens I ever had in my life. Not sharp at all, to say the least.
Nowadays, 24 mm is nothing!

[John Camp]

When I was working as an archaeological dig photographer, I would take a group photo of the dig crew at the end of every season. Fifty or sixty people in a three-layer group. Since I wanted to be in the photo, I'd set up the shot, tell everybody to shut up and smile, press the trigger, and hurry to the far end of the group and sit down in the front row. I needed a somewhat wide angle lens to get everyone in -- probably a 24. Sitting at the end of the far right row, I looked like a gorilla compared to people in the middle of the shot. Always made me laugh. I could have used a long lens, but then would have lost control of the shot because I'd have to run farther, and big groups, when they're not sure of when the shot is going to happen, tend to start talking to each other, and we'd get closed eyes and sideways faces, etc. So, I went with the gorilla.

[Bandbox]

Hell with the camera. I couldn't get past the $618 for a two dog tune up. That's outrageous.