From the course: Photo Gear Weekly

The challenge of wide-angle composition

From the course: Photo Gear Weekly

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The challenge of wide-angle composition

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- I find that I very often like to shoot with a wide-angle lens, to take in a very wide view of the scene before me, and yet I find that with a wide-angle lens, composition can be a particular challenge. It seems that with a long lens, you're generally zeroing in on a relatively small area of the scene or on a single subject. And so the framing is a little bit easier it seems. With a wide-angle lens, you're taking in a lot and it can be difficult to make sure that you're getting a good composition. So when I'm out using a wide-angle lens, for example this 10 to 24-millimeter lens for a crop sensor, which gives me an effective focal length of 16 millimeters at the widest view, I want to make sure that I'm being careful about my compositions. One of the biggest mistakes I find that a lot of photographers make is to include too much in the frame, and that of course, is very easy to do with a wide-angle lens. When you're in front of a beautiful place, you might want to take it all in photographically, but sometimes that results in a photo like this, where there's a lot of interesting things happening way off in the background, but the foreground is a bit blah. There's just nothing really happening in the foreground. Or this waterfall for example, certainly a very interesting scene, but the waterfall seems so tiny in that scene, and there's just a lot of information here that isn't adding to the photo. And so, I think one of the most important rules to keep in mind when it comes to wide-angle photography is that in general, the foreground is the most important part of the frame. If you have a bad or boring foreground, the wide angle shot probably isn't going to work. Now that can mean a variety of different things, so for example with this photo, the foreground isn't exactly all that exciting, but it's interesting, it frames up the overall scene, and so while it isn't the most dramatic foreground, I think it's still an interesting foreground that frames up an even more interesting overall scene. But sometimes, you don't even need a foreground at all necessarily, or you couldn't identify a foreground. Here's a photo captured looking straight up for example, some buildings here, it's interesting, it's geometric, I'm not even sure I could say there is a foreground subject, and yet it works very well I think as a wide-angle shot, or another typical straight-up view of trees. I suppose you could say that the trunks of the trees represent a foreground subject and provide some leading lines, but this is another example where there really isn't a key foreground subject, it's more about texture and taking in a wider view. Now sometimes of course, the foreground isn't even really all that close to you. So here for example, a view on Easter Island with a very wide-angle lens, a 16-millimeter effective focal length, and we have the statues, the Moai statues here that are still way off in the distance, but interesting, I suppose that counts as foreground even though it's a distant foreground, in that it is an interesting subject down at the bottom of the frame with lots and lots of sky up above. With this photo of a canola field in the Palouse region of Eastern Washington state, we can see that the key subject is the foreground extending all the way off into the distance. This blanket of yellow flowers with an interesting sky up above, so an example of really just showing a wide view because the entirety of that wide view is interesting, in this case colorful and full of texture. Reflections can certainly provide a nice foreground for a wide-angle view, or even just some context. So here a wheat field in front of this abandoned farmhouse that provides us some context for that house, interesting color and texture. So it's not that we always need a very strong, dominant subject in the foreground for a wide angle photo, it's that we want to pay careful attention to that foreground whenever we're using a wide-angle lens. So for example, photographing this old granary out in the Palouse as well, there happened to be some nice little daisies in the foreground, so I found a vantage point where I could put those daisies into the foreground. So again, the key is that with a wide angle lens, that foreground can be especially important, and so you'll want to pay careful attention to that foreground as you're creating your wide angle compositions.

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