Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Project365 - Training to Use My Wide Angle Lens

Introduction

We spent the day in Cornwall, visiting family. Since I had an idea about shooting a vertorama (which I did in a previous post), I had mounted a wide-angle lens on my camera body. I thought it might make for some interesting perspective. In this shoot, we scouted around town, looking at the sights through a wide-angle lens !

The Setup

My faithful Canon 60D was mated with my Canon 17-40mm F/4L series lens. I shot handheld, with the white balance set for bright sunshine. Not wanting to blur my backgrounds, I shot at f/11. Then it was all about braving the cold and determining if I could operate the controls with my gloves on !

The Photos

There's an old electric locomotive set aside near where we were staying. I love the feeling of depth I get from shooting this photo wide.


It is remarkably easy to create leading lines - lines which draw the viewer through the photo - and the wide-angle lens helps make that experience even longer !










 

Another example of leading lines. You can't help but have your eye drawn along the horizontal crossbar to the barrel at the end. So the effect is to draw the viewer's eye from right to left throughout the photo.





Lessons Learned

While this was a straight-forward shoot, it taught me how to use leading lines to add a focal point to the photos. It helps draw in the viewer to better experience it.

 

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