17mm wide angle shot of hot local band Spacefunk.
One of the most fundamental compositional choices you’ll make on the equipment side of things is which type of lens to use. The focal length choice you make is a key factor in deciding how the photograph will appear. For this tip, we’re going to take a look at wide-angle lenses.
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A few weeks ago, I wrote about the 50mm lens, often known as a normal lens. Lenses with shorter focal lengths than this (perhaps even shorter than 35mm), fall into the category of wide-angle lenses. These lens alter the perspective and create dynamic tension in an image, often through the creation of diagonals. This perspective makes the viewer feel like they’re part of the scene, particularly in crowded city scenes or sweeping landscapes. The foreground appears close and wide angle of view gives the viewer the impression that there’s more to be seen beyond the image.
This wide angle of view causes a greater number of lines in the photo to converge on the vanishing point, accentuating the apparent diagonals. Tilting the camera slightly up can exaggerate this, making it look like the subject, for example a building, is falling in on itself. Not at all useful for architectural photography but sometimes very handy for setting a mood or telling a story.
Wide angle and looking up causes exaggerated converging lines.
Common subjects for wide angle photography are the aforementioned city scenes and landscapes. Photojournalists regularly get in close with a wide angle lens to bring the power or emotion of the news event to the viewer. Environmental portraiture is another genre commonly photographed with a wide-angle lens.
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