ERTAINLY, I CAN’T SERIOUSLY be suggesting that great close-ups await any photographer who pulls out his or her wide-angle lens, can I? You bet I can—and I’d go even further by stating that the wider the angle, the better the close-up! I recommend the 12–16mm range; for this, a 12–24 zoom lens is most common. With fill-the-frame SLRs and DSLRs, I recommend the 15–24mm range, for which a 17–35mm zoom lens is the best.
One of the biggest hurdles all photographers will have to overcome is their aversion to the wide-angle lens and, more precisely, the misunderstood vision of the wide-angle lens. Most shooters have this reaction to their wide-angle lenses: “What’s up with my wide-angle lens? All it seems to do is make everything small and distant!” All the more reason why my suggestion that the wide-angle lens is good for close-ups is met with such surprise. But hear me out; after you do, you may not make it your number one choice for close-up work, but I do believe you will look at the world with a whole new appreciation of how wonderful the wide-angle lens is. You just need to embrace and begin to see—really see—the tremendous potential of this lens for close-up photography use.
One of the biggest advantages wide-angle lenses have over telephoto and macro lenses is the ability to capture a much, much wider angle of view yet still render an up-close-and-personal interpretation of the subject. Depending on the lens and manufacturer, a wide-angle lens may focus down to 9, 7, or even 4 inches. It is storytelling imagery at its most intimate! A storytelling image is simply one with a great opening line (main subject) along with the rest of the story (the background). What a wide-angle does is offer up this immediate and sometimes much larger foreground, with a bit more depth of field than you would ever get with a telephoto lens, and this is worthy of your consideration when you want your close-up subject to have a sense of place—for example, a mushroom against a background of surrounding forest as opposed to just the mushroom.
Developing a vision for the wide-angle lens isn’t as hard as you might think. It involves truly understanding why wide-angle lenses “make everything small and distant”—the often-heard complaint. The reason these lenses do this is the very reason you should use them for close-up photography. Wide-angle lenses do push everything in a scene to the background, so to speak, because they expect you to place something of great importance in that now empty and immediate foreground—and I can’t stress immediate foreground enough, since therein lies the key.
Imagine for a moment that you’re getting your living room ready for a party, a party that will find everyone dancing on your living-room floor. What do you do with all of the furniture? You push it all to the back wall, which in turn opens up the floor so that now there is lots of room for everyone to dance. It is initially an empty floor, and I’ll be the first to admit it looks wrong; the empty floor does call attention to the fact that no one is dancing. But here comes one couple, followed by another and another, and before you know it, the floor is filled with dancing feet and looks like a fun place to be! Start thinking of your wide-angle lens in the same way. The “vision” of the wide-angle will push everything back solely because you are planning on having a dance party in what is initially an empty foreground—but not for long, of course!
As you may recall from earlier photos, Silver Falls State Park is one of my favorite haunts when I find myself out west. That’s particularly true in the fall when the big-leaf maple trees that line Silver Creek put on their colorful show. Their multihued display is a welcomed contrast to the many Douglas fir trees that grow there. On one such visit, I found myself once again getting down low and up close and personal with numerous maple leaves that had fallen upon the slippery rocks below. With my camera and 12–24mm lens on tripod, I set my focal length to 14mm and my aperture at f/22. I also aligned my focus of 3 feet directly above the distance marker. (Found on every lens, the distance marker is the white mark just in front of the feet/meter indicator.) I was then able to create a composition of immediate foreground textures and color. (See here for my depth-of-field focusing tip.)
I should also mention that I did use a polarizing filter here, which knocked down a considerable amount of gray glare that was being reflected off the wet leaves and was the result of the cloudy and rainy sky overhead. With the polarizing filter in place, I adjusted my shutter speed until 1/2 sec. indicated a correct exposure and shot several frames.
24mm lens at 14mm, f/22 for 1/2 sec.
DEPTH-OF-FIELD TIP
Depth of field is covered more completely starting here, but for now, here’s a tip. When shooting storytelling compositions in which you want as much front-to-back sharpness as possible and are wondering where you should focus, follow this foolproof “formula” that’s guaranteed to work each and every time: If you’re using a lens with a 75-degree angle of view (18mm on the digital 18–55mm zoom), first set the aperture to f/22 and then focus on something that’s approximately 5 feet from the lens. Then, if you’re shooting in manual exposure mode, adjust your shutter speed until a correct exposure is indicated by the camera’s meter, and take the shot. If you’re shooting in Aperture Priority mode, simply shoot after setting the aperture, since the camera will set the shutter speed for you. Your resulting depth of field will be approximately 3 feet to infinity.
If you’re using a 12–24mm digital wide-angle zoom, and you’re at focal lengths between 12–16mm, set the lens to f/22, focus on something 3 feet away, and follow the remaining step as mentioned above. Your resulting depth of field will be approximately 2 feet to infinity. You must turn off autofocus when you do this.
It’s very important to note that once you’ve set the distance to either 3 feet or 5 feet (depending on your focal length), most of the image you see through your viewfinder will appear out of focus. You will be tempted to refocus, but don’t! The reason the image in the viewfinder looks out of focus is because you’re viewing this scene at a wide-open aperture, and at the wide-open aperture you will see only what you’ve focused on. Since you’ve focused the lens at either 3 feet or 5 feet, everything else in the viewfinder should appear out of focus. But—and this is the important point to remember—once you press the shutter release, the lens will stop down to the aperture of f/22, and at that point, and not before, the promised depth of field will be recorded.
Devon, England, is the home to Buckfast Abbey. It is also a major stop on the tourist routes, as evidenced by the many cars in the parking lot. Assuming you, too, are one of these tourists, how can you come away with a truly compelling shot of the abbey, a shot that would suggest that the abbey was visited by you and you alone? Keeping in mind the idea of “pushing all the furniture to the back wall in the living room,” you can then ask the important question: Whose “feet” will be dancing in the foreground? To my mind, the geraniums were the perfect subject—the feet, if you will. I got down low, and voilà, the low point of view and the immense foreground of geraniums all but turned a humdrum view of Buckfast Abbey into a postcard shot of a pristine spot with no tourists.
To get this low view, I lay on the ground and handheld my camera. I preset my focus, aligning 3 feet directly above the distance marker, and with my aperture set to f/22, I was assured of recording a depth of field from 2 feet to infinity, as this image clearly shows. Once my aperture was set, I merely adjusted my shutter speed until 1/60 sec. indicated a correct exposure and pressed the shutter release.
20mm lens, f/22 for 1/60 sec.
My first time to New York City still remains a very vivid memory, and it was during this trip that I photographed the New York City skyline from the once “dangerous” Brooklyn side of the East River. The year was 1983, and a great deal has changed since then, both in the skyline and the crime rate. The Twin Towers are, of course, no longer part of the skyline, and the once-burned-out and “condemned” Brooklyn warehouses are now refurbished loft apartments fetching an easy million dollars—and there is no shortage of buyers. There are friendly waterfront promenades, complete with outdoor concerts, playgrounds for the many families that have moved to the neighborhood, and paths for joggers and bicyclists.
I returned to this area recently, and as I looked out across the East River toward Manhattan, I was struck with an idea intended to hint at global warming. What if the East River just evaporated? As you can clearly see in the first photograph, there’s a large bed of river rock leading up the river itself. It wasn’t long before I found myself digging a small hole in the rocks where I could place my camera and 12–24mm lens. This assured me of two things: (1) a low viewpoint that would hide the river and (2) a close-up composition of the varied rock textures and tones. With my lens at a 14mm focal length and my aperture set to f/22, I aligned 3 feet directly above the distance marker and was almost ready to shoot. I say almost because in this particular instance I was going to shoot an image that would later be processed as an HDR image (meaning multiple exposures would be combined in postprocessing to achieve the full range of tones that the human eye sees in a scene, without over- or underexposure).
HDR stands for high dynamic range. When shooting a given composition with the intent of making an HDR image, you will, in all likelihood, shoot at least five exposures, if not seven; in some extreme cases, you may even shoot nine. What this simply means is that you will bracket each exposure normally by a full stop, both in the plus/+ (or overexposure) and the minus/- (or underexposure) categories. For example, in this shot, my meter indicated a correct exposure of 1/125 sec. I knew this would not be a correct exposure, however, because I was shooting into some very bright clouds that the sun was behind. My foreground rocks were not going to be correctly exposed because there was far less light on them than what was in the sky. The same was true for the backlit buildings and the Brooklyn Bridge, which would all require a different exposure time to record as a correct exposure.
So with HDR in mind, I did the following bracket: I shot my first exposure at the indicated meter reading of f/22 for 1/125 sec. I then took three additional exposures on the minus (underexposure) side: f/22 for 1/250 sec., f/22 for 1/500 sec., and f/22 for 1/1000 sec. Next, I took three more exposures on the plus (overexposure) side: f/22 for 1/60 sec., f/22 for 1/30 sec., and f/22 for 1/15 second. Once I returned home, I loaded all seven exposures into a software program called Photomatix (www.hdrsoft.com), and within 10 minutes and after following a few very simple prompts, they were merged into the “single” final exposure of the Manhattan skyline you see in the second image.
Some of you are no doubt wondering why I didn’t bracket my exposures simply by changing my aperture. The reason is that since I wanted the greatest depth of field possible (2 feet to infinity), I didn’t dare bracket with my aperture. If you find yourself in situations where bracketing is a must, consider bracketing with your aperture only if depth of field is of no concern at all, otherwise always bracket with your shutter speed.
12–24mm lens at 14mm, f/22
SO, HOW DOES HDR SOFTWARE WORK?
What high dynamic range (HDR) software does behind the scenes, while you sip coffee and stare at the computer, is generate a single exposure by taking only that area that’s correctly exposed from each of the multiple shots you load into the program and then combining these pieces of correct exposure into a single image. There’s much more to learn about HDR, of course, and this is not the book for that, but if you are interested in learning more about it, consider buying Michael Freeman’s book Mastering HDR Photography.
Seal Rock, Oregon, is home to numerous sea lions, and it is also a great place to capture coastal landscapes that seem like you shot them at 1 million years B.C., with their prehistoric-looking rocky outcroppings. Following a really low tide one morning several years ago at Seal Rock, I discovered one purple starfish sitting somewhat listlessly in the shallows of a large tidal pool. I must admit, I picked it out from the tidal pool and, for several minutes, placed it in various nearby locations in and around the sandy beach, as you see here. (But please read the information in the following box, and always approach and treat wildlife logically and with great respect.)
With my camera and 12–24mm lens on tripod, I chose a low viewpoint and also a vertical composition to place greater emphasis on the starfish. With my lens at 16mm and my aperture at f/22, I aligned my focus 3 feet directly above the distance marker. I was almost ready to shoot, but since I was shooting a sidelit scene, I needed to call upon my polarizing filter. Due to the strong early-morning sidelight coming in from the left, I knew the right sides of my starfish would record too dark, since they were in shadow, but the solution was an easy one: I popped open my 36-inch collapsible silver/gold reflector that I keep in my camera bag and held it just out of camera range to the right of the starfish. This added gold fill light that easily “filled in” the darker sides of the starfish. (See here for more on reflectors.) Finally, I was ready to shoot, so I adjusted my shutter speed until 1/30 sec. indicated a correct exposure.
12–24mm lens at 16mm, f/22 for 1/30 sec.
WILDLIFE: DO NOT DISTURB
There is a tremendous responsibility that I feel at times in writing a photography book, not the least of which is that I have to have my facts right so that no one is misled into believing something that just isn’t true. If you’ve read any of my other books, or have just discovered me now, you know that I’m a big believer in “moving” my subject, or adding or taking away an element or two, if it means getting a better shot—as long as it does not change the truth of the photograph. For example, if I came upon a perfectly colored autumn leaf sitting on a log, I would have no problem moving that leaf farther up the log if I felt that its placement there would result in a much more compelling composition. In the case of the starfish composition opposite, I had no reluctance at all in moving the starfish a few inches to the left, placing it where you see it here. But had this starfish been clinging to any of the distant rocks, where they are normally found, I would have done my best to make do with a composition from that area—never entertaining the thought that I could just rip if off the rocks and place it wherever I chose. Getting a shot “at all costs” is not an option when photographing live subjects.
If you want to get that wide-angle close-up of a mother robin feeding her babies in the nest, make the effort to build a small blind and make the investment to fire the camera with a radio remote trigger release from 30 feet away. Certainly, you would not take kindly to someone walking onto your property and grabbing your kids and photographing them down at the local park. My rule is really quite simple: If it has a heartbeat—or, at the least, is a living subject—don’t evict it from its home or move it to the other side of town. Challenge yourself instead to find points of view and lens choices that can still convey compelling compositions. If none exist, move on, and save the “if only” story for your next roundtable discussion on the morality of image-making.
