One of my most favorite (and luckiest) photos of 2015, involved using a long lens to isolate. I happened to be traveling home on a back road with my camera in my car and sitting on the front passenger seat (almost never happens). It was loaded with my 70-200 lens. I happened to see a flash of red in the trees and came to a complete (and sudden) stop--backed the car up, and sure enough, there was a Scarlet Tanager sitting in the greenery of the trees. I knew I had only a little time, so I rolled down my window, grabbed the camera, did my best to zoom in to capture the bird AND get the best focus I could under the circumstances. The resulting photo is below and is, I believe, a good example of this week's theme.
One of the lenses that came with my camera when I purchased it was the 70-200mm. I plopped that lens on my camera and it became my primary lens early on. I experimented with it quite a bit.
This week our author wants us to examine using a longer lens to achieve isolation and to ask several questions: What do I want to exclude from my frame? How do foreground and background elements appear? How does using a longer lens differ from using a wide angle lens?
I am using an older image here, but I think this will help in understanding this week's topic. The image below was taken in 2013 when I was hiking in the Back Mountain area. I was relatively far away from this scene on a somewhat foggy morning after a rain. I had gone to take photos of fields and trees and happened upon this scene. I was using my 70-200mm lens. I was on the darker side of the barn.
A wide angle lens might have also distorted the image depending on angle and/or point of view, and I like the straight-on nature of this image.
Finally, I did take my camera out to a local park the other day in preparation for this week's image. We've had some very spring-like weather here and I expected that I might see a dog or two on the trails at the park, so I did not take any of our dogs on this outing.
I did find this little scruffy on one of the docks by the pond enjoying the warmer weather with her owner. Again,I used the 70-200mm lens and left in just enough elements to tell the story.