As part of “The Visual Toolbox” this week the assignment was to use a long lens to isolate a subject. To shoot for this I used my crop frame camera (Nikon D3100) and my 18-135mm DX lens (which zoomed all the way in is the rough equivalent of 200mm on a full frame camera).
For this assignment isolation comes not only from using a lens that pulls a scene closer to fill the frame but also compresses an image’s depth.
We had some pleasantly warm days in Washington this past week so I decided to work on isolating with a long lens in our back yard.
I don’t normally shoot with a long lens so this was a pretty tricky assignment for me. I usually like to shoot wider, with lots of context to an image. Additionally, shooting with a wider lens means I can snap up some images of my kiddo that include some environmental elements while he is still within arm’s reach. This was very different. I found my self repeatedly backing up to get more into the scene and looking for more details that would be interesting as the subject of a photo, instead of just an added element to the background of an image.
Here are a few images that came from my long lens assignment.
