This video was sponsored by Squarespace wide-angle portraits are something that
I rarely if ever shoot and ever since I started photography back in 2008 I
always found myself drawn to zooming in and focusing on just one thing and all
the way up till today I can tell you that I still very much enjoy doing that
my whole style using off-camera flash with high-speed sync pretty much
revolves around giving that one thing or person all the attention in the photo
and the whole point from mentioning this is that shooting photos that aren't with
a wide-angle lens is what I'm used to and what I'm comfortable doing the most
well recently when my friend and photographer Rob haw visited me here in
South Texas we did a few shoots together and during one shoot with another friend
and model Monique I thought it would be pretty interesting to see what I can do
with just these Sony 24g master lens for that entire shoot like I said before I
don't shoot wide-angle portraits ever so I definitely did learn some things there
in that shoot so I wanted to share with you guys the things that I learned from
that shoot in this video before I start I did want to say that I'm just gonna be
focusing on things that I was experiencing and learning throughout
this photo shoot with Monique but shooting with a wide-angle lens is
pretty challenging so if you have more experience doing that or shooting
wide-angle portraits as well feel free to leave some tips of your own in the
comment section below
this is by far the number one reason why I avoided shooting with a wide-angle
lens for such a long time it's one thing to want to take photos at a beautiful
location and display that location in your photos along with your subject but
an entirely different thing if you just want to take photos in an uglier
location like an ugly backyard for example which is what I did for years
while learning but to keep this video simple let's just say that you are going
to shoot somewhere nice this is pretty self-explanatory but by shooting wide
you're gonna be capturing a lot and there's gonna be a lot of potential for
little things that you might not catch at the shoot to sneak into your photos
you can end up getting that one guy singing in the background of all your
shots in the same spot for an hour and a half or you can get that bright red mini
man sitting right in front of those beautiful fountains that you wanted to
take photos of and you might even get those group of yellow pedestrian walking
signs grouped together in the same spot for some reason you'd be correct in
assuming that all of those different things happen to me during my photo
shoot with nique I just really wanted to emphasize
that you got to do your best to stay clear of anything too distracting in the
background that might still weigh tension from your subject and scene
altogether being --gel of the shot can actually really help minimize the things
going on in the background which leads me to my next step I don't think it's a
coincidence that the photos I took at a low angle ended up being some of my
favorites from the photo shoot with Monique as I mentioned in the last tip
you can find yourself easily riddled with distractions going on in the
background in any scene when shooting wide but one thing that can really help
is getting low to the ground and essentially hiding those distractions in
this behind-the-scenes photo you can see that red minivan and mentioned earlier
showing up in the background and in this final shot I got low enough so the
minivan didn't appear but it's something that can sneak up on you if you aren't
paying attention in this next photo you can see that's exactly what happened to
me as the minivan shows up slightly to the left of Monique it's definitely
something minor and easily remove on post but doing post work shouldn't be
the goal here and you should always aim for the best straight at a camera shot
so if you're having trouble shooting wide at your next shoot and there's a
lot of distractions around maybe get creative with some sitting poses get low
and take some great shots the distortion that you can experience with wide-angle
lenses can be a bit of a double-edged sword on one hand you can experience
some pretty unique perspectives that you just can't get with longer telephoto
lenses on the other hand that distortion can lead to the subject getting warped a
bit and looking odd if they aren't in the center of the frame when close to
that subject you can see in this close-up shot that Monique looks a
little bit on her head appears bigger than usual and her mid to lower sections
are smaller as well this was because I tried to shoot in a somewhat high
position and I had done so because in this shot take him before the disordered
photo I was further away and the distortion wasn't bad at all but I was
getting the lights hanging above her I also wanted to show you guys this felt
shot as well I shot above thinking it would be cool to grab an overhead angle
with the grass in the background but the distortion was just a bit too much for
me throughout the photo shoot I was
honestly struggling with the distortion the most out of anything else because I
don't really experience that ever since I typically shoot with 85 millimeter
focal lengths and above what I learned during the shoot and afterwards is that
if I can Monique's head towards the center of the
frame or at least close to the center the distortion was minimized so
definitely keep that in mind when shooting wine at your next shoot the
last thing I want to mention is that as I said earlier I used these Sony 24g
master lens for the shoot and that lens handles distortion pretty well but
cheaper lenses might not handle as good and even wider angle lenses like a 16
millimeter lens for example will have even more distortion as you guys know I
love using high-speed sync because it allows you to use a wide aperture during
the bright sunny conditions so you can blur out the background which is
something I do all the time with my 85 millimeter lenses and my Sigma 105 one
thing to consider is that when you shoot with a wide lens you're more than likely
only gonna experience a little bit of our blurry background since wider lenses
have a deeper depth of field than longer focal lengths another thing to consider
is because of the way that high-speed sync works your light experiences a
power drop once you pass those high shutter speeds and you aren't going to
be able to use the light to its fullest potential when you use high-speed sync
since you aren't gonna experience that much of a difference in depth of field
you're better off not using high-speed sync and just stopping down your
aperture instead on bright sunny days that extra bit of power that you'd be
missing out on by using high-speed sync could be really beneficial I have this
is something that I probably didn't need to spell out but I still wanted to leave
this tip in because it's something that I honestly need to tell myself as well
for the last few years I've really enjoyed my pusher photography and it
took me forever to get to that point however I would be lying if I said it
wasn't repetitive which is a good and a bad thing it's a good thing because it's
the definition of having a style and it took me forever to develop that style
but it's also bad because it's limiting what I can create I was only really
happy with some of the photos I took with the 2014 westerland's and in order
to make the next experience I have with that lens or another wide-angle lens to
go better the best thing I do is keep practicing because that's gonna increase
my skill level and increase the number of photos I'm gonna be happy with so if
you're having some challenges right now with shooting wide or you decided to
start shooting white after seeing this video I just wanna say that I'm right
there with you and let's both keep practicing having said all that I do
want to say that there's no harm in learning another style little by little
because although I did use this onee 24g master for about 90
the shoot that I did with Monique I did end it by using Rob's ice 51.4 and my
friend Roland's cannon 200 millimeter f/2 lens for some shots as well I really
hope you guys enjoyed these tips and I hope they help you out on your next
shoot when you shoot wide if you guys enjoyed the video feel free to give the
video a thumbs up and if you did it feel free to click the thumbs down button
twice I'm gonna be ending the video with some behind scenes clips from the photo
shoot so bye for now and I'll see you in the next video
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