By Kerry Drager
I love the wide-angle "look", and use my 12-24mm zoom lens for all sorts of subjects.
On a recent trip to Oregon, I visited the Antique Powerland Museum in Brooks. An extremely cool, extremely yellow Caterpillar caught my eye. The images below all were shot with the 12-24mm, but what a difference! For the overall image, I used the wide-angle in a straightforward way, which included not only the subject itself, but also surrounding and background elements that - to my eye - are slightly distracting. For the followup horizontal, I moved in extremely close - within about 12 inches of the foreground bolts - in order to take advantage of wide-angle's unique perspective. For the vertical, I chose a low-and-close-up camera angle and included a chunk of the outstanding sky.
By the way, no filter was used on any of the images. With a wide-angle, a polarizing filter often creates an uneven blue sky ... and, in any case, with the rich colors of Caterpillar and sky, it wasn't needed anyway! With the close-up compositions, I also chose a small aperture - f/22 - in order to maintain a deep Depth of Field. A tripod helped keep everything good and sharp, while also letting me fine-tune my composition.
Note: Check out my online photography classes: Creative Light and Composition and Creative Close-ups.
Caterpillar/Before (overall view) by Kerry Drager
Caterpillar/After 1 (extremely close-up view) by Kerry Drager
Caterpillar/After 2 (low-down & close-up) by Kerry Drager
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