Tech Talk Tuesday Part 1

 Go WIDE for the WOW factor

If you've followed my blog for long, you know that I often talk about looking for ways to make my photographs stand out in one way or another from the average snapshot.  Sometimes it's the color, sometimes it's the composition, sometimes it's the angle, sometimes is fancy post editing.  All designed to make a photo interesting enough so the viewer sticks around to enjoy it longer.  (I know, I keep repeating myself!)  Another way to do this is to use your various lenses in unique or creative ways.  The photo in the last post, and this one were both taken with a 16-35 mm wide angle lens.   Wide angle lenses have great DOF (depth of field), so they are sharper from very close to the camera to infinity, and they take in more of the view than a normal lens.  They also make objects in the foreground larger, and those in the background appear farther away.  Some common uses for a wide angle lens are when you want to show a grand landscape vista, or maybe get all the people in a crowded room in the same shot, or my excuse to buy a wide angle lens, to take photos of the inside of houses (I'm a Realtor).  One technique I love, is creating the illusion that the object nearest the camera is much larger than it actually is which changes one's normal perspective and so makes for a unique look.  This automatically tells the viewer what the main subject of the photo is, while making everything behind the subject appear smaller and farther away,  creating a supporting backdrop.  These flowers were actually small, but they look unusually large and take center stage in this composition.  First I put my camera on aperture priority and choose the smallest aperture my camera and lens will allow, (large number such as f/22).  I chose a day with no wind and used a tripod.  My camera was probably only a few inches away from the foreground flower, but I focused on a flower about a third of the distance into the scene (hyperfocal distance).  This gave me the best chance of having everything in focus from flower closest to me, to the mountains in the background.  (Obviously, if I'd wanted the background to be out of focus I'd have used a large aperture.)  Hope this gives some of you another tool for your 'creative' photography tool box.