Exercise: Focal lengths, changing lenses

For this exercise, I took a series of photos of the same subject with different lenses. I stood at pretty much the same spot and simply changed lenses and recomposed. I used a 28mm wide angle, a 50mm standard, and a 105mm telephoto.

For my subject, I chose some interesting looking tanks in an industrial area of downtown. It was a bright, sunny day, and I was using a red filter.


The first shot is taken with the wide angle and captures the entire series of tanks, starting with the two big ones on the left, a medium one in the middle and a bunch of smaller ones to the right. Photo would probably work better if some of the left side was cropped off. I'm used to printing 35mm prints on 8X10 paper, which usually means I need to crop something off, so when I compose I generally build in some areas to crop. It's second nature at this point, but I'd like to start thinking about it more consciously.



This photo was taken with the standard lens. I decided to compose vertically in order to capture the entire tank. I really liked the staircase, and how it wrapped around the tank.



In this last shot, I used the 105mm, and discovered there was a seagull there. I also needed to step to the left a little bit because there was some activity at my location. It's interesting to me how the tank on the left is almost identical in tone to the sky. It makes it very disorienting in some ways. I knew they would be close, but didn't think they'd be this close. I like the seagull there at the top!