Focal Lengths and Different View Points

For this exercise I took two photos of my partner down on the rive. It was a sunny day and I did not realise the poor quality of my pictures until down loaded on to my computer and found that my settings must have been wrong on my camera. As this is a learning exercise I decided to use these anyway. The picture on the left looks over exposed and the one on the right is spoilt with camera shake.

Both frames were taken on Aperture priority on f22. The first frame was taken on my short 18 to 55mm lens at a setting of 18mm standing close enough to nearly fill the frame. The second on my longer 70 to 300mm lens on a 300mm length standing way at a distance until the person looked similar in size.

The differences in the two pictures was quite surprising to me at first until I thought about why the backgrounds looked so different. The shorter lens (18mm setting) gave a feeling of depth to the whole picture with the bridge in the distance and the river disappearing as far as can be seen. The second picture taken with the longer lens (300mm) brings the foreground and the background in to one with a magnifying effect to the background. This made it look as if he was almost under the bridge and cut out the river altogether.

Focal Lenghts

These nine images were taken at different focal lengths all with the same camera settings, f22 Aperture Priority, using two different lenses with ranges from 18mm to 300mm. When examining each picture, it was apparent that the telephoto lens produced a replica of the centre of the wide-angle photo (18mm). I became aware of the different light in each photo. The wide-angle photos are much darker the more magnified images which led me to examine why. This may have been in part that my camera was set for spot metering and would have benefited from being on a matrix setting. 

A Sequence of Composition

I choose to take a number of photographs for this exercise whist on holiday spending a day at Madeira. Being self conscious of people watching me with my camera in my hand, I felt more at ease being a tourist.

I wanted to capture people going about there everyday business. The shop keeper in her doorway, diners sitting having lunch, musicians entertaining in the square and a guy sitting enjoying a cool glass of beer.

I

 I was most happy with the one photo showing four men. They are standing next to a taxi and look like they could be cab drivers waiting for their next fare. The picture is framed with a tree to the left, a lamp towards the right and a sign post in the middle. The yellow on the post is balanced by the colour on the car, and the blue on the car with the trousers and shirt worn by two of the men. Three men are looking towards a man who has a smile on his face. Altogether I felt this is a well balanced shot of a picture that could tell a story.