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A place to politely discuss the tools, technique and culture of photography.

This is not a good place to simply share cool photos/videos or promote your own work and projects, but rather a place to discuss photography as an art and post things that would be of interest to other photographers.

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communick@viewfinder.pro

Using a wide angle lens in landscape photography (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by Not_a_shoe@alien.top to c/photography@viewfinder.pro

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I have owned a wide angle (11-16mm for apsc) lens for years now. And it is without a doubt my least used lens in my landscape kit. When I go to a location I can find excuses to shoot anything from 20 up to 500mm depending on the setting, but making good use of wide angle absolutely escapes me.

What tips, tricks, setups etc should I be looking for to get better use out of this lens? What article or videos helped you understand how to use a wide angle in landscapes? I want to make use of this lens and not just haul it everywhere to inevitably leave it in the bag so any help in "seeing" a wide angle shot would be greatly appreciated.

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[–] mattbnet@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

I like to shoot wide when there's a great sky and foreground interest like an old tree or some flowing water or something like that. If you shoot wide and compose like a longer lens everything will look too small and far away in your shot. You need to have foreground interest up close and it will dominate the image and then you'll also get all that context with the other stuff (mountains, sky, etc) that winds up in the frame.

You need to be careful with your composition because it's easy to wind up with distractions in the frame that you may not notice until later.

Here's a recent(ish) wide shot (20mm on medium format) I took that I think illustrates this reasonably well.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattbnet/53200596930/in/dateposted-public/