Exercise – Focal lengths and Different Viewpoints

I was walking down the street and came across this building site, it was an old furniture store that was left derelict and then had a major fire. It is now being torn down to make way for another Tesco’s.

The initial pictures here were all taken with a 14-45mm lens (equivalent to a 28 – 90 lens).

                                                   Initial view from across the road - 14mm (equivalent to 28mm) lens.

                          Moving across the road and focusing on the demolition machine – 45mm (90 equivalent)

Final composition with a low viewpoint emphasising the destruction and a monochrome conversion to enhance the brooding sky -  14mm (28 equivalent) – wide-angle

Having looked at these closely I decided that it would be worth exploring further close-up shots of the machines so I returned the next day. The weather had changed completely and it was a brilliantly sunny day which gave a complete change in colour. I used both the original lens and a telephoto 45 – 200mm (equivalent to 90 – 400mm) lens. The long lens enabled me to stand much further away and be able to concentrate on detailed shots.

Scene setting with a view of the whole machine, from over the road, same height as digger.- 91mm (180 equiv.) lens.

Also from over the road but this time with a wider angle lens (45mm – 90 mm equivalent) and showing the pattern of the digger and shadow echoing the pattern of the roofs.

Looking up into the mouth of the machine from close underneath – 33mm (66equiv.) lens, this emphasis the height and power of the machine.

                                   Action details – 61mm (120 equivalent) – concentrating on the shadow as well as the grabber.

Close-up detail. The use of the  telephoto lens (128mm – 256mm equivalent) here has had the effect of flattening the image and making it close to an abstract pattern. 

This series of photographs show that it is possible to take a widely varying range of pictures by:

a) changing one’s point of view: distance to close-up,

b) looking from a similar level to looking up from underneath,

c) by using different lenses and focal lengths.

d) Taking pictures on different days in different lights.

This exercise was to look at different ways of making a picture by using a variety of focal lengths and viewpoints. It is clear that all methods can be effective and the final choice has to be dependent on what one is trying to say with the image.