Thursday, January 3, 2013

One Lens Challenge - Wide Angle

Here's a Creative Challenge that's a lot of fun and a great learning experience. Everyone has zoom lenses these days and that can make for some lazy photographers, instead of moving around to frame our subject we stand in one place and zoom our lenses in and out. We miss out on a lot of creative photos that way. By standing in one place and zooming in or out we are only changing the size of the subject in the frame, it doesn't change the relationship between the subject and the background, only when we move the camera position does the relationship between the subject and background change. We need to get out of the habit of just zooming the lens to frame our subject and to heip break that habit, I've come up with the latest challenge:

One Lens Challenge - Wide Angle

Zoo at 12mm
The Zoo At 12mm - All photos taken with a 12mm lensRead about my Zoo Aventure here:  Zoo At 12mm
Using only your widest angle lens or setting a zoom lens to its widest angle and not changing it go out and shoot a days worth of photos and you'll be amazed at how creative you can become. You will now have to move closer to your subject to fill the frame and as you move closer look at how the relationship of foreground to background changes, you will try shots from different angles, from up high and down low, you will be more aware of lines, shapes and patterns. It's a lot of fun too and easy on the back cause you're not lugging around a lot of equipment, just your camera and wide angle lens.

Like I said I gave myself this challenge a few years ago and just using a 12mm lens went out and took some photos at the zoo.

Get out there and try it yourself, you'll have a lot of fun and learn how a wide angle lens sees the world.

More Zoo at 12mm Photos

and you can read more about my photo adventures here: Digital Images Blog