Know Your Lenses – Focal Length Photography Exercise

This morning I received an email update that Clickin’ Moms registration for Shooting 301: Composition and Creativity Workshop was open for general registration. (Of course, now it is sold out.) I briefly considered registering as I would absolutely love to take one of their fabulous workshops, however the price is too steep. Instead of getting too bummed out, I dug into my copy of Bryan Peterson’s Learning to See Creatively. Happily, there’s a fantastic exercise in the very beginning of the book to help you see in focal length to have greater creative control over your photos.

Viewing Life in Focal Length

A 50mm lens is called a “normal lens” because it’s a close approximation of the focal length of the human eye. Every focal length sees the world in its own unique way. A short focal length (wide angle lenses) can take in the whole picture in an almost dizzying portrayal while long focal lengths (tele lenses) can get in really close for an intimate isolation of the subject.

Selecting a focal length should be as deliberate as selecting a subject or deciding the creative exposure. A great photographer can look at a scene and know his lenses well enough to visualize the photograph using his desired focal length.

This is not talent, it is knowledge born from practice and thousands of exposures. And with enough practice and patience, you can have that ability too!

The Exercise

This photography exercise will help you get to know your lenses, or to better understand your choice in focal length and the importance of perspective. For it, you will need:

1. A subject that can stay in one place. (i.e. not toddlers or babies)
2. An open area where you can get far away from your subject.
3. The ability to select a specific focal length on your lens. This may be the trickiest part, so I’ll go on to explain how to do this.

Set Your Focal Length

Select either 28mm or 35mm focal length. If you’re using a zoom lens, there may not be specific markings for all focal lengths. My Nikkor 18-105mm jumps from 24 to 35 in its markings. The viewfinder in my camera’s model also doesn’t indicate the focal length chosen, though its absence kind of seems strange to me!

In order to select 28mm, I guessed where it should be positioned, then looked at the EXIF information from the file info displays on playback. Most dSLRs and a lot of point and shoots will let you review all the EXIF data directly from the camera.

My point and shoot doesn’t indicate focal length while taking the picture and it’s unfortunately also not offered in any of the file info display screens when reviewing images.

If you can’t “dial in” your desired focal length, then either do the exercise fully zoomed in or out so you know what you’re shooting as you’re shooting it, or zoom in a little and keep it there during the entire exercise. You should be able to check the EXIF data during editing to see the focal length you used.

Shoot!

Stand far enough away from your subject that there’s a lot of space all around it when you look through the viewfinder.

Take a picture, then move 5 paces toward the subject and shoot again. Repeat until you’re on top of the subject and/or can no longer focus on it.

Now go back to your starting point, but take the first photo from a kneeling position and repeat until you’re as close as possible, kneeling for each shot.

Finally repeat each shot while laying on your belly.

My Results at 28mm

I went out into my backyard and selected our hibiscus as my subject. Please don’t mind the toys and balls everywhere or the lawn in desperate need of mowing.

Knowing What Your Lenses See Page 16 of Learning to See Creatively. Shot at 28mm. Click image to view full size or see all 12 images on Flickr
Standing		Kneeling	Prone (On Ground)
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This exercise doesn’t end here, however! Remember what I mentioned about practice, patience and thousands of shots? You’ve only just begun.

Here’s Bryan Peterson’s prescription for exceptional photography:

Make a point to do the same exercises at 50mm, 60mm, 70mm, 80mm, 90mm and 105mm. If you maintain this regimen of “eye exercises” once a week for three months, you’ll have a vision that is shared by fewer than 10% of all photographers, and it will be a vision that gets noticed!

What are you waiting for? Pick up your camera and start training your eye today!

Please make sure to send me a link in the comments or through trackback if you blog about this exercise. I want to see what you come up with!