The last time I walked along Harbour Esplanade in Docklands to take photos it was a cold, overcast day. But this time the sun was out and, by the end, I was walking around in a t-shirt.
The other thing different from last time is that all this week (and also next week) I am restricting myself to taking photos at only a 27mm focal length (which is 18mm on my mirrorless APSC camera).
Why?
I think you can be more creative, and also learn a great deal, when you impose restrictions or limitations on yourself
I’m considering buying a prime lens but I don’t know which one I want to get first so, over the next eight weeks, I’ll be forcing myself to shoot at only one focal length every fortnight (27mm, 35mm, 55mm, and 85mm, respectively)
The good thing is that I’m very comfortable shooting at 27mm. That’s because the main (prime) lens on pretty much all smartphone cameras is 27-28mm. So I have years of experience composing photos at this focal length.
Which I presume is why, even though I have the whole 27-85mm focal length range at my fingertips these days, 31% of my share-worthy photos from my main lens are at 27mm.
Graphic with four subheadings. On the top-left, under the ‘Camera’ heading is a photo of a black camera with the caption ‘Fujifilm X-S10’. In the bottom-left, under the ‘Zoom lens’ heading is the photo of a black zoom lens with the caption ‘Fujinon XF18-55mm F2.8-4 R LM OIS’. In the top-right, under the ‘Focal length usage, full’ heading is a bar chart showing the frequency of usage of several focal lengths. The tallest bar is 85mm (34%), followed by 27mm (31%) and 45mm (13%). The rest of the bars range from 2-9%. In the bottom-right corner, under the ‘Focal length usage, by closest prime lens’ heading is a bar chart showing the frequency of usage at four focal lengths. Highest to lowest these are 85mm (36%), 27mm (31%), 35mm (18%), and 55mm (15%). A footnote in the corner referring to the ‘focal length’ phrase in the headings reads “Full-frame equivalent”.
When I look through my Capture One library, though, many of the photos I’ve taken at 18mm, I’ve ended up cropping just a little.
That suggests two things:
The 31% of photos I’ve taken at 27mm should probably be lower, given I likely crop many of my photos to 35mm.
Years of smartphone photography have made me lazy when it comes to composing my photos [1]. Instead of zooming in a little with my lens or stepping closer to my subject (ie zooming in with my feet), I do a relatively loose composition because I know I’m going to crop the photo when I edit it.
When I walked along Harbour Esplanade this time, I was more deliberate with my compositions. As a result, I did either no cropping or only some thoughtful cropping of my photos this time (like ones I cropped to square).
Basically, by imposing these limitations, I’m already upping my composition game. So even if I don’t end up buying a prime lens at the end of this eight week exercise, I expect I’ll have improved as a photographer.
Anyway, enough with the talking. Here are the photos. They’re not all that good, to be honest. And at least three of them were crying out for a longer focal length composition. Oh well. This is how you learn.
Harbour Esplanade
MPavilion shade sail detail in Docklands Park
Photo looking up at a rounded, three-pointed, petal-shaped shade sail that is standing on thin, metal columns. This installation involves multiple, overlapping, fabric shade sails that are being illuminated with different intensities of sunlight.
MPavillion installation at Docklands Park
WTF is MPavillion? Find out.
Photo of a pavilion consisting of a few dozen overlapping shade sails standing on thin metal columns. Each shade sail is round, three-pointed, and petal-shaped. Combined, the effect is like that of a forest canopy. This pavilion has been installed in a park that has several tall trees in it and several tall buildings around it.
The massive Collins Square tower complex in Docklands
Photo looking up at a set of five large, but differently sized and shaped, office towers arranged in a block.
National Australia Bank’s 800 Bourke Street building
Photo of the side of a large office building with bright red, green, yellow, light blue, and dark blue coloured panelling on the outside.
Docklands Harbour and the Lady Cutler showboat
Photo of urban dock. In the foreground is a grid of several old, wooden, white-tipped pillars sticking out from the water. In the midground is a large ferry boat tied to one of the piers. In the background are several tall buildings.
Lady Cutler showboat through a lifebuoy
Photo of a large blue-and-white ferry boat, now a show boat, named Lady Cutler as seen through the hole of a bright red lifebuoy attached to a pole next to a harbour.
Fishing at Docklands Harbour
This photo would have worked so much better with, say, an 85mm lens that I could have used to isolate the subject better from the background (which would have also been blurry).
Photo of a man smoking a cigarette as he sits on a white bucket at the edge of a pier. In front of him are two fishing rods attached to poles with their fishing lines in the water.
Getting the side-eye from an opportunistic seagull
This photo would have worked better with a longer focal length lens too. I didn’t want to get closer to the woman (for obvious reasons) and I didn’t want the seagull to fly off either. So we’re stuck with lots of empty space around the subjects, instead of a tighter composition.
Photo of a woman sitting and eating her lunch on the steps of a harbour esplanade. A short distance away from her is a white seagull hoping to steal or to be given some of the food that the woman is eating.
Cow Up a Tree — John Kelly (2000)
Learn more about Cow Up a Tree, if you’re interested.
Photo looking up at a large bronze sculpture of a black-and-white square-ish cow with a tiny head that is stuck, upside-down, on top of a bare tree.
La Trobe Street
V/Line trains parked at Southern Cross rail yard
Photo taken through a square cut-out of a metal fence of several purple, yellow, and silver coloured diesel trains parked in a rail yard outside a large train station.
V/Line trains parked in the rail yard just outside Southern Cross Railway Station
Photo taken through a square cut-out of a metal fence of several purple, yellow, and silver coloured diesel trains parked in a rail yard outside a large train station with a wave-shaped roof.
Diesel engine parked at Southern Cross rail yard
Photo of a red-and-yellow diesel engine parked in a rail yard next to a few purple, silver, and yellow train carriages.
Hungry Panda delivery driver on La Trobe Street
This another photo that could have done with a zoom-in. I wanted to focus on the delivery driver and the yellow insulated box she had on her motorcycle.
Photo of a delivery driver stopped behind a car at a red light. The driver is on a motorcycle and is wearing a bright yellow high visibility vest and a white helmet. On the back of the motorbike is a large, insulated food container box with the Hungry Panda logo and the phrase “join us” written in large, all capital letters.
When it comes to street photography (which is what I mostly do) the 27mm focal length is more about context-setting and showing off the vibe of the place. Unless you get really close (or you’re already in a tighter space) you can’t get much subject isolation. And it’s challenging to focus on details – or at least arrange the composition such that the viewer’s eyes are drawn to the detail.
While I like shooting in 27mm, I think I’m going to really enjoy shooting in 35mm. But I have to wait a couple of weeks before I get there.
Next week I’ll be walking through the middle of the city on a Friday afternoon, and I think the 27mm focal length will work much better there. I’m looking forward to that.
[1] Yes, high-end modern smartphone cameras now have secondary lenses with a longer focal length. Most of these are still not as high quality as the main lens though. So it’s still often better to take a higher quality photo with the main lens and then crop, instead of taking a lesser quality photo with the secondary (zoom) lens.