Try something different

Explore Landscapes #23: They say that a change is as good as a rest. Try something different with your photography and you may well find that to be the case.

I’ve always loved the compositions that you can create with a wide angle lens. The forced perspective that you can achieve, and the exaggerated depth of field - or rather lack of it. My 16-35mm and 24-105mm lenses (almost) always get used at their widest focal length. I’m not one for making images with a telephoto lens - let alone a long telephoto lens.

So when a photography group that I belong to suggested we have a go at a 3x3 grid project I decided to ‘try something different.’ The project brief was to photograph a collection of 9 images and curate them into a 3x3 grid. We could choose the subject matter, the style, technique, etc. - but there had to be a theme across all of the images.

I set myself some constraints for this project. I was going to shoot with a 100-500mm lens, hand-held, compose in black and white, and create high key images. These are not the type of images that I normally create. But for that very reason, I choose to shoot them anyway. Just to add to the challenge, I limited myself to a specific area in Joshua Tree National Park (approx. 1 square mile), and shot all of the images within 2 hours.

I hope you enjoyed the images and the resulting grid. Go try something different with your photography. It may well give you the rest that you’re looking for and re-energize you for the next photo trip.