Photo Art

McKaso

TM

Photography By:   Steve Sullivan

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    Have you ever visited an area over and over again thinking you have been there so many times, what more could you see?  I have such a place within three miles of my home. It is called Carhenge.  I’ve visited it enough, that sometimes I think I just can’t find one more photo.  Keeping in mind my previous article “Seeing the Little Picture” I try to change my visual perception.  I do this by trying to keep my mind open and looking at the area with new eyes.  I forget that I have been here before, and think. “What do I see now?”   Visual perception is the way objects appear to the eye, and by opening my mind I can begin to see new scenes.  Forgetting how many times I have been here, what do I see now?  How has the environment changed?  What does the sky look like?  What type of lens have I brought with me?  What time of day is it?  All of these will offer a new and different perspective of an area I have visited before. I often find myself seeing an element that I passed over from my last visit that now stands out because my perspective has changed.  

  For instance two weeks ago. I purchased a new Canon 70-200mm “L” series lens and decided to try it out, at where else, but Carhenge? Talk about challenging and needing to keep my mind open!  It was quite an experience to take just one lens and restrict myself to a specific focal range, when I normally had used a 28-300mm lens.  That really changed my perspective.  I have passed by this display at Carhenge countless times, but that evening my perspective really changed when I captured this scene. So, what changed? For one my lens focal length, which really offered a different viewpoint, another is the time of day, or otherwise the lighting and the pure luck of having a hole appear in the cloud bank, right in front of the setting sun, creating a stunning effect behind the tree.  I’m really glad I stuck around for a couple of hours.  Out of all the photos captured that evening, this was the keeper.  I’ve seen this area many times, but with the mixture of just the right elements and lots of luck my perspective changed.  

   Now let’s fast forward a couple more days. Once again I received another new Canon lens. This one was 18-55mm. Where am I heading to try it out?  Yeah that’s right, Carhenge!  So how did my perspective change?  I started by trying out my new lens at the usual spot where the main trial leads, but I soon headed off up the hill to the area of my previous photo.  But it’s another day with different conditions, so my perspective needed to change, and it did.  I now had a wider lens and different lighting conditions, even though it’s roughly the same time of day.  My position has also changed.  I captured a different perspective of the same art piece, because my perspective had changed.  This time I captured the hollow eyes of the grill, great cloud formations, and great prairie color from the setting sun.  It’s the same place, but many things have changed to allow me to see a new perspective.  Had I tried to shoot from the same perspective I would have been blinded by the setting sun and would have had horrible lens flare.  

   Just to make one thing clear, it really makes no difference what type of equipment you have.  It is knowing your equipment and keeping your mind open to new perspectives.  You will notice that I did not infer at any time that the lens itself made the photo but it was the focal length of each lens that changed my perspective.  I have telephotos and wide angles lenses, so it was not really that I used a new lens to capture the scene, but it was the fact that I limited my focal length to a specific range.  I visited during a different time of day during different conditions and kept my mind open to new possibilities.  Photography has a lot to do with what is behind the viewfinder.  You know…that area between your ears J