One of the things I’ve learnt, and more recently put into practice, in my journey into photography is to get in there. Recently, I’ve been carrying my camera with a 135mm lens attached rather than the versatile 17-85mm zoom which came with it. This means I see the world differently. I can’t zoom in and out to compose a picture, but more importantly, everything becomes huge in the viewfinder.

Without being probably hundreds of feet away, I can’t fit a whole object into the viewfinder, so I have to pick a part of the object.

By way of example, the following shot was taken about 50 feet (15 metres) from the subjects:

Any closer and they really start to fill the frame:

We can see here that there is a slightly distracting background, but there’s so little of it, it doesn’t really detract from the main subject.

Another benefit of the long lens with people-photography is that when taking the picture you are outside their personal space, so a much more relaxed image results. Most people (myself included) can’t believe how much detail you can capture from so far away with a steady hand and fast shutter speed.

The theory works perfectly for inanimate objects, too:

One of the real benefits of this sort of photography is that you include an element of audience participation into the image. If you take a picture of a motorbike, your viewer says to themself “Oh. A picture of a motorbike.” If you take a picture of a detail from a motorbike, they don’t realise it, but the viewer will fill in the rest of the image from their imagination. It’s a similar difference to that between reading a book and watching a film of the book - it’s enjoyable to be allowed to fill in details of someone else’s work for yourself.

So… your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go out and about, and keep your camera set to full zoom all day. Take photos of interesting objects, but don’t stand miles away to take the whole object - find details, patterns, shapes… make us, the viewers, work for our enjoyment of your image.