Memorial Day Madness

Go wide, way wide! Every so often, I slap on a lens that's collecting dust for the entire day and try out some new compositions. We'll talk more about specific lens recommendations on Wednesday, but for now I leave you with this photo at the gates of, well, you fill in the blank.

The photo was taken at 17mm which provides a 104 degree field of view on a full frame camera like the Canon 5d or more than double what my favorite 50mm standard lens provides. Going this wide makes for some fun shots but is also quite difficult to compose since pretty much everything in front of you gets sucked onto film. There are at least three ways to compose for this situation:

1. Compose vertically (see above). In doing so, you have less horizontal distractions to deal with, though still far more then most other lens. Aidan was running around next to me and if I shot this horizontally, you would have seen him for sure. In this case though, the arch also frames the picture nicely.
2. Duck tape your other kids and spouses to a bench behind you so they don't get in the way.
3. Get close, real close (see below) and avoid any other distractions.

With a 17mm focus length, he pretty much looks like he's in a jungle in Vietnam but he's actually about 18 inches from the lens. This shot was taken wide open at f/2.8 to provide a narrower depth-of-field and further add to the perception of "lush" surroundings. Well enough techno babble - the kids had a fun time and that's the most important thing. Daddy was about to pull his hair out from lack of sleep and the fact that the kids are going through one of their phases (i.e. poking each other, stealing food, you know stuff that I do when no one is looking).

As tomorrow is Memorial Day - my hats off to all those who serve and have served to protect this great country of ours.