A friend invited me to go on a business trip with him. To sweeten the deal he told me that a friend of his informed him that the location we were going to offered world-class photography with great mountains and water. So off we went. As often happens when non-photographers recommend a location, I was disappointed photography speaking. The mountains were there and they were impressive but they don't often make for great photography when shot from within a neighborhood full of homes in the foreground. The water was there and was very nice, but water doesn't typically make for great photographic material with a neighborhood as the backdrop.

          As you might expect from any respectable photographer, I arrived early to catch the good light. So what do you do when faced with a scene as described above? When the grand scene does not work out for you just shrink your world. Think small. Go for images of small sections of the scene. Eliminate that which does not work. So I forgot about the mountains and also eliminated wide shots of the water because, due to my personal taste, I am not a fan of a neighborhood in my landscape images.

Shrinking our world means that we go for a more intimate subject. Narrow the field of view. Rather than shooting the whole large expansive view, look for images within the expanse. This is what macro photographers do. They find an interesting subject which is really small. As landscape photographers, we can do the same thing just on a larger scale (but still much smaller than the grand view), like this little water feature. This water feature is not large but by isolating it I was able to get a reasonably nice image.

          As discussed last week, we experiment with different shutter speeds to get what we think is the right shutter speed to show the water movement. I did not want a milky smooth water motion. So I opted for a shutter speed that left enough definition in the water while clearly still showing off the motion.

          When the large expanse just does not work for an image, look for different images within the larger scene and focus on them. In fact, if you struggle to see expansive images, shrink your world. Go for this kind of small feature and before long your vision will expand. This helps photographers to get out of vision block (similar to when writers have writer's block).