During the nice hot weather last week we headed off to Tintern Abbey (photos of the abbey can be found on my Flicker site). My plan was to walk around and find a view that allowed me to put the Abbey ruins as the detail in the distance.....but on arrival we found that because of the town growing around the abbey and the modern parking for visitors etc there was not a viewpoint that allowed me to place the Abbey in the distance and then fill the frame with it at different focal lengths..........
Undeterred we wondered around looking at all the other beautiful scenes available, the river, the mill, the people.....that I might be able to use to fulfill the brief of this exercise. Low and behold the river presented me with a bend and a boat that viewed from the middle of a bridge allowed me to take photos at different focal lengths and give me very different photos, all from the same position........
Photo 1 - Focal Length 55mm
The point of detail is very small at this Focal Length, but the river does its job of leading the viewers eye into the shot. I like the wide river in the foreground that then narrows through the view and how flow of the river causes movement in the foreground but eases through the bend. It adds some texture to the photo.
Photo 2 - Focal Length 67mm
The main point of interest does not appear too different in size or impact in this photo, but you can see the second boat to the left a little more clearly.
Photo 3 - Focal Length 102mm
The little sail boat is starting to have a greater impact at this focal length and I can start to see how changing the Focal Length can completely change the dynamics of the same photo. This photo start to be more about the boat than the river......
Photo 4 - Focal Length 134mm
The surrounding landscape and second boat have now either disappeared or become insignificant to the point that the whole picture becomes about the boat on the bend of a river. As the focal length increases the impact of the boat becomes greater and the impact of the river lessens. In the first shot it was all about how big the river was and how little the boat is in comparison, now that story has changed........
Photo 5 - Focal Length 200mm
With the Focal Length at 200mm, the sail boat sits at a point of interest and the river leads your eye to it and then beyond. The point of interest is far more of interest at this length, but it is the same boat as in the first photo.
If I had a lens with a longer focal length, I could have potentially gone in far enough to obliterate the surroundings and all you would have seen is a body of water with a boat on it. This would have been a totally different photo to the one I set out to take.
From this I can learn that when I plan my photo shoot I should have a clear idea of what I want the end photo to be of, an idea of what impact I want the viewer to see/feel. And I should bear in mind the effect of changing the focal length on the photo - positively to create what I want and negatively in changing what I set out to achieve.
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