Size Does Matter (Sometimes)

Okay, dodgy start, but I wanted to have a wee chat about lenses. I am as guilty as anyone of using wide angle lenses for landscapes. Well, that’s what they are for really, aren’t they? Getting wide shots, capturing skies, seas, scenery and as much as you can. Well, yes. I love shooting really wide. Most of my favourite shots are wide angle shots taken on the Canon 16-35mm f2.8, which is my all time favourite lens, not just for landscapes, but for weddings, portraits, fashion shoots as well.

That said, other lenses should not be overlooked, as there are some scenes that just don’t work when you go wide. I touched on this earlier with the piece I wrote for the paper about finding a scene within a scene. I was driving West yesterday, and the light was quite magical. I had to be somewhere, so didn’t have time to A; Walk far to get an angle, or B: To wait for perfect light, so it was going to be a struggle to get anything to capture what the eyes could see.

Again, as I said in my article, you often look at a scene, and although it looks amazing to the eye, capturing it all in a single image is not always possible, and doesn’t always turn out as you imagined.

For this one I went into the kit bag and used the 70-200mm f2.8 telephoto lens and decided to isolate part of the scene. I love when you can scenes with the hills being backlit, and just layered like this, almost like a silhouette, but with so much three dimensional depth, despite being compressed by the long lens.

I shot a load of stuff this weekend, allover the North West Coast, and never took the 16-35mm lens out of my bag. Just to show that it isn’t the only option. Most of the landscapes I shot were with the 24-70mm f2.8 lens.

So, again, the message is, don’t be stuck with doing everything the same way. Experiment with different options, get close in to scenes, crop stuff out, and just be creative. There is only one rule in photography as far as I am concerned, and that is: There are no rules.