Well I've made it to week 10 and I haven't run out of things to photograph yet. For this week I decided to go out and photograph some places I had been wanting to visit for a while. Driving down the road, you often come upon scenes that you wish you could photograph, but time restrictions make stopping to take a picture impractical. Well, yesterday I finally made the time to stop and capture the scenery. And I actually came across two photos that I really liked, and I had so much trouble choosing between the two that I decided to post them both.
You'll notice in both of them that I used a telephoto lens with a maxed out aperture setting. I'm finding that I really like the look that the compression mixed with the shallow depth of field produces. I've used this combination innumerable times for portraits, but I'm finding that I even like it for landscapes. In the picture above you can see how this setup blurs the grass in the foreground, just adding another layer of context to the image without acting as a distraction. In the image below the same thing occurs, only this time acting as an aid to the viewer's eye, causing a person to naturally follow the path up to the train trestle. The viewer's eye tends to search for clarity, and when we can naturally introduce a lack of clarity in part of the image, it tends to bring more emphasis to the sharp points in the image (which hopefully happen to be the subject/subjects of the image).
I had a lot of fun stopping and photographing the scenes I found along the road, there is so much that I miss because I'm in a hurry and don't take the time to look. Try to find the time this week to stop and appreciate the subjects rushing past you along the side of the road. There's a lot more there than you realize.
