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Do you conform or mix it up? I need some inspiration


w44neg

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You omitted the key word in Peter's post: "spatial". The lens you use has no effect on the spatial relationship between you and your subject. There are lots of other sorts of relationship, which I suspect you are referring to.

The omission was a typo. Spatial relationship is what I was referring to, but yes there are many relationships that are changed. Like the one with my wife when I mention a new noctilux

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Wow this one escalated quickly. The whole point of the thread was do you conform to these supposed rules or not? It's a simple question and was just a bit of fun; it didn't need to get serious :-)

 

 

I don't think the discussion has escalated beyond serious! It has been remarkably polite. You should see some other threads......

 

But to answer your question, I either avoid rules entirely, or look at what lies behind them, allowing me to break the specific rule but not the underlying understanding of what makes an image interesting/satisfying. The "rule of thirds" is one: you can follow it slavishly, or you can look in more detail at a scene to see how lines created in a rule of thirds image are modified by other elements. E.g. a person set too close to the left side of an image for a strict rule of thirds shot might be balanced by their line of sight being directed strongly to the right. I suspect most people (including myself) don't often think in such a truly analytical way, but after a while you start to notice and assign importance to such directional lines, massing, proportions etc. Following rules and worrying about whether I should break them is not something that I find helpful. YMMV.

 

Edit: sorry, this comment was in response to w44neg but I failed to quote his post properly.

Edited by LocalHero1953
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Aha! Finally someone explains why after changing my lens I suddenly stood at another spot in the landscape. Once, i suddenly stood in the middle of a river after changing from a 21mm to a 135mm lens. However, this seems to be a much cheaper way to travel.

 

 

Thanks for actually doing that.

Dearie me. It doesn't work by teleportation, it works by waggling your legs about.
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Rules...what stinking rules :lol: .  I rarely take more than 1 lens...the challenge is understanding how to make that lens do what you want to achieve. On the rare occasion I have taken more than 1 with me, I usually find that the 2nd lens is rarely used after all, unless in advance I know that there is something special where the 2nd lens will make it easier to achieve my goal. Occasionally while out shooting, I do think, "oh, I should have brought my blah blah lens along", but in the end, I devise a way to get the shot with what I actually have with me.

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Two photos taken of my wife, with an expression suitable to the occasion, taken with a 75 and 21 from the same spot. The 21 has been cropped to roughly match.

I hope you can see that they are, to all intents and purposes, identical.

The first one:

attachicon.gifP1050876.jpg

Beautiful little structure! I hope that's your darkroom.

s-a

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[...] I like "out of the box" thinking sometimes and wondered, do you always conform to an Ultra Wide for landscapes and a 75+mm for portraits etc, or do you mix it up? A UWA for portraits perhaps? A 75mm for everything you shoot? Do you just take one lens or several when you're out with your camera? [...]

 

Aside from theories, UWA lenses are great if you like big noses ;). For more natural results i prefer 35 to 90mm lenses by far. As for lenses to take i always have a 50 because i "see" in 50mm. 35 & 90 or 35 & 75 are the focal lengths i prefer to complement my 50 but it is a matter of tastes obviously.

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Wow this one escalated quickly. The whole point of the thread was do you conform to these supposed rules or not? It's a simple question and was just a bit of fun; it didn't need to get serious :-)

I think the explanation went deeper and thats the spirit of this forum.

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The whole point of the thread was do you conform to these supposed rules or not?

 

No. 'Rules' are an anathema to creativity. The 'rules' referred to are just an acceptance that certain ways of doing things are a simpler way of ensuring 'success' but in reality if they are adhered to then you miss out on experimenting and finding that 'rules' are really recommendations and can be safely ignored much of the time.

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I doubt that you'll find anyone who believes they adhere to rules in photography.

 

And we don't, in any conscious way, but nevertheless there's an awful lot of very conventional thinking in photography as our photos consistently show. That's because you don't have to think about rules to be conventional, you just have to fail to think of anything particularly unconventional, which almost by definition is the lot of most photographers, being human as we are.

 

So don't think about rules or breaking them, just think about what photos you like, and more importantly in my opinion, why you want to take photos in the first place, so that the photos you end up with come as close as you can get to what you really want.

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The rules are there for a reason--they generally work. For a beginning photographer, it can be sufficient to learn the rules and how to apply them. That will point you the right way most of the time.

 

Then, hopefully, we start to evolve as photographers. We test the rules. We try to understand them better. Why does is a wide angle generally more appropriate for landscapes? Why can't I use my ultra wide for portraits? Like teenagers, we start to rebel and experiment. If we are lucky, we learn something about photography and our own vision. Generally, we also take a bunch of really lousy photographs as well and maybe a couple really good ones that break the rules.

 

In the end, though, the rules are there because they work in most situations. I suspect most of use choose to follow them most of the time because our pictures are usually better when we do.

 

As to the question of how many lenses/focal lengths to bring on an outing... For me, it depends on the outing. I have a trip to Yosemite coming up in a few weeks and I can't imagine limiting myself to one lens. There are too many shots I would miss. However, there is no question that putting artificial limits on the tools available can force one to adapt, and that adaptation can produce unexpected and creative results. For smaller outings than a Yosemite trip I generally choose a single focal length and try to find the images that are appropriate for the tools Inhave.

 

- Jared

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Rules are made to be broken, including composition. Follow your vision. What looks good to your eye, is where you should go. Different focal lengths provide different perspectives. Use what you have and you will decide for yourself what direction you should go. Nobody else has your view of the world, trust yourself.

Now that's a good recipe for cacophony.

 

Only masters can break rules and come up with better images. But that's because they rely on SOLID rules.

They can repeat it, because they know what they're doing.

 

Amateurs breaking rules are just creating horrible work although they might be thinking they are masters in their own little world.

Edited by NB23
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To break the rules you have to rely solidly on the rules. That is the secret.

Breaking the rules is a subtle art.

 

You break the rules when you master them.

That's the traditional way to look at it... there are others as well.

 

There is a given framework in photography already. If you trust that if you like a photo, others will too. If you don't like a photo, you look to see why. You don't need a rule book for that.

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Heavy metal is the best example. To some, it is noise. Cacophony.

But in reality, Heavy Metal has its own set of rules, misunderstood by many.

 

Yes, to exist Heavy Metal had to "break" many rules but by following a strict set of rules: melody, sound, rythm, refrains. And the closer you study Heavy Metal music, you very soon realize that it is extremely close to folkloric music.

 

 

Rukes are never broken, they are merely interpreted and they always follow basic immutable principles.

 

One principle is melododicity.

Melodic chaos works, even in the most subtle ways (death metal, hardcore music comes to mind). Non-melodic chaos will never work.

 

Grasping melodicity is the rule number One. Everything relies on this and it can never be broken.

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With Leica and 35mm lens I don't even bother to bring second lens. Never needed third one at all. 35mm will cover all for me on the trip. Landscapes, street and portraits.

 

My advise, if you are looking for using three lenses on the trip, it is better to replace it with one zoom. If I feel lazy to frame it with 35 lens, I have little P&S with great Leica zoom on it. :)

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Heavy metal is the best example. To some, it is noise. Cacophony.

But in reality, Heavy Metal has its own set of rules, misunderstood by many.

 

Yes, to exist Heavy Metal had to "break" many rules but by following a strict set of rules: melody, sound, rythm, refrains. And the closer you study Heavy Metal music, you very soon realize that it is extremely close to folkloric music.

 

 

Rukes are never broken, they are merely interpreted and they always follow basic immutable principles.

 

One principle is melododicity.

Melodic chaos works, even in the most subtle ways (death metal, hardcore music comes to mind). Non-melodic chaos will never work.

 

Grasping melodicity is the rule number One. Everything relies on this and it can never be broken.

If you take any art, you can create rules after the fact. So rules are put in place so you can copy someone else. God bless John Cage!

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To break the rules you have to rely solidly on the rules. That is the secret.

Breaking the rules is a subtle art.

 

You break the rules when you master them.

 

But there are no rules. That was my point. Take composition. If you look at any so-called 'rules' you will find that they don't apply in many cases so they aren't rules. Trying to be formulaic in anything 'artistic' is a waste of time. This has been covered numerous times here (as ever) and the 'rules' spoken about are never really defined other than in the broadest terms - actually the only one that I can think of being stated is the 'rule of thirds' which works well for subject matter which naturally falls into it - is that a rule or a definition of the way an image is shot?

Edited by pgk
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