My inclinations, as a photographer, tend towards macro and telephoto. I'm usually either shooting something close up, or I'm shooting something far away, or I'm shooting people and am looking for a portrait distance. I'm relatively comfortable with the normal to slight-wide-angle range as well and do a lot of cityscapes and people photography in this range. The focal region of least comfort for me is wide angle -- anything wider than 35mm equivalent on a 35mm camera. To force myself to "see" in this range, I purposefully bought a VERY wide angle lens last year -- a 21mm Voigtlander Color-Skopar for my Leica CL.
Garden Stones
(click on image for a larger, sharper view)Wide angle photography emphasizes foreground and creates a broad sense of space. It's more difficult to find picture elements that fit together in that space and, as the photographer, you need to think out how things are going to work or the resulting images have no visual coherence. The Stones photo above shows how exaggerated the foreground becomes. Patterns, like these garden stones, become striking in this perspective.
Wide angle is obviously useful for capturing a large amount of visual data, as in the following image of the underside of the vehicle bridge in Port Credit, over the Credit River.
Under the Bridge
(click on image for a larger, sharper view)Lines that recede into the distance are natural subjects for wide angle photography, whether the lines recede back, or up, as in the following image of the night light at the local baseball park.
Tall
(click on image for a larger, sharper view)One of the challenges in shooting wide angle is keeping verticals as parallel as possible. If the camera is not held level to the horizon, vertical lines become distorted. This is where a traditional view camera with its tilts and swings have it all over our rigid, inflexible lenses. But pictorially straight verticals are not always a requirement. I deliberately sacrificed the verticals to get the feel I wanted of this pier shot.
Pier in Sepia
(click on image for a larger, sharper view)Each trip out with wide angle is a learning experience for me. I make lots of mistakes, take a lot of duds, and forget, at times, to watch my foreground as carefully as I should. At the same time, I'm learning to be experimental and creative in the use of the lens. I liked the effect of looking up into the branches of this old willow tree. There's a wildness about the wide-angle perspective that appeals to me.
Willow Tree
(click on image for a larger, sharper view)Some of my wide angle shots surprise me. I took this photo of my favourite lonely park bench, just to see what it would look like, not expecting much. To my surprise, this was the wide-angle image that grabbed me the most. I don't exactly know why, but it conveys a stronger sense of emptiness and loneliness than I've ever been able to capture before with this bench.
Park Bench
(click on image for a larger, sharper view)One of the reasons for keeping a film camera or two around after going digital is to be able to shoot true wide-angle shots. The multiplication (or crop) factor in all digital SLR's, except for a few high-end full-frame sensor models, gives at the tele end and takes away at the wide-angle end. My very wide 21mm Skopar on the Leica CL would be the equivalent of only 34mm on my Digital Rebel, only slightly wide. For true wide angle, film is still the optimal choice.
(3-Apr-2004, Revised 17-June-2004)
www.NorthernJourney.com -- gene@wilburn.ca