 The big problem with wide-angle lenses is that so few photographers use them to their full potential. Out of all of the focal lengths available to you, wide-angle lenses are probably the most overpowered because they can give you so many ideas and options for creative expression. It's time to tap in to that potential and start using your wide-angle lens like a pro. How's it? Of course, wide-angle lenses or any lens are simply a tool to help you express yourself. By understanding the things that you can do with a wide-angle lens that go beyond simply getting as much of the view in front of you onto the frame as possible is going to pay you huge dividends in making wonderful photographs that you are proud of. One of my favorite ways of using a wide-angle lens is to break the barrier between viewer and subject to allow them to step into your photograph. The impressionist painters use this idea to masterful effect and no more so than Gustave Kaobot and his evocative Paris street scene. Look how you are drawn into the scene by this distorted perspective that he has set up. When you start doing this in your own photography, having subjects closer to the camera at different levels then you are bringing depth into your image. A great mistake a lot of people make with a wide-angle lens is to just have everything on the same sort of plane and not making the best use of the unique properties of the lens itself. So next time that you are out and about try and fill the edges of the frame with your wide-angle lens with something that shouldn't technically be there. Don't be afraid to have extreme crops to to bring in elements that are going to invite the viewer to to fall into your photograph. Another way of using this wide view of the world is to create intentional distortion rather than worrying about converging verticals and all that sort of nonsense. Use this kind of dreamy weird off-kilter field that comes from a wide-angle lens to its maximum effect. A photographer like Bill Brandt, you know he did these these very unusual landscape body scapes. I don't know what you would call them sort of images by chucking out the rule book. In fact, there is a there's a quote by Bill Brandt where he says that photography is not a sport. It has no rules and everything must be dead and tried. That's one of the beauties of wide-angle lenses that there are a lot of kind of made-up nonsense rules that are thrown about when you use them. Like you can't use them for portraits and we'll touch on that in a minute how you can use them for portraits. How you must do various things with them to use them correctly. This is not about using lenses correctly. This is about experimenting and discovering all the wonderful hidden potential of a wide-angle lens. One of the wonderful ways of getting inspiration about how to use lenses and especially wide-angle lenses comes not just from photographers but film. And there are two French directors, Marc Corot and Jean-Pierre Journet. They directed a series of films, Amelie, City Lost Children, Delicatessen. These are films that played with wide-angle that give you so many ideas about how to tap into this thing of dreamscapes of breaking that sort of fourth wall, if you want to call it that, of using perspective to throw off the viewer. Make notes of these things. When you watch films, when you watch TV shows, how do people employ especially wide-angle lenses to create a certain feel? I hope by now that you're seeing that wide-angle lenses are not just the realm of the landscape photographer but should be a vital tool in your photographic arsenal. The first time you put a wide-angle lens onto your camera no doubt you were surprised about how much it exaggerated leading lines. That use of leading lines is a fairly standard practice in every photographer's toolkit but you can start taking this one step further by thinking about things like centre point composition. If you don't know what centre point composition is then look at the work of Wes Anderson. How everything within his frames is centred around that central point. It wouldn't work quite the same when using a standard lens like a 50mm or a telephoto or something because you are not giving the subject space to breathe on its edges. That's the beauty of it and it also ends context which we'll talk a little bit about in a minute. So think about having things in the centre of the frame of using the power of the wide-angle lens to create these leading lines to draw the viewer's eye into the centre. It's so much more effective and different to then just having this this fairly standard use of you know something off to the side and leading lines leading sort of diagonally across the frame. I've forgotten how many times as a student I was told that we shouldn't use wide-angle lenses to take portraits of people because it's not the done thing because of this distortion and all that kind of thing but one of the benefits of using a wide-angle lens especially when it comes to portraiture is that you can get into this kind of this zone where you and the subject are interacting that they are actually reacting to you physically being there and it gives a very different feel to the images. If you look at the work of Martin Schuller for example you know he is really close to these people and yes his images have a little bit of distortion to them but so long as you hold your camera at the same plane so if you are parallel to the plane of the face then you're going to minimise these distortions. So give it a try see what happens when you get close you don't necessarily have to get as close as Martin Schuller. Look at this this portrait I took when I was a student that it is a wide-angle lens that I am close but it's not distorted but there is a feeling of intimacy there. One of the benefits of doing this especially in documentary photography is that you are giving the subject an environment to exist in some sort of context. When you couple this with the first point you know about inviting the viewer into the frame then see how it makes the images far richer far more of a of an actual experience to look at the photographs. Often you know we're told that there should be a single subject and everything should be focused around you know making that subject the star of the image but how empty would these photographs be if it was only just the the subject and nothing else going on around them that was telling us informing us about when where what was going on and when the when the photographer took this photograph. Because you can get close with a wide-angle lens that means that you know when you're photographing a landscape you don't have to be just sitting doing like an Ansel Adams kind of style thing of having these sweeping vistas that you know that kind of lack as far as I think a little bit of depth to them. I like landscapes that once again invite you to come into them and you can do that by going back to that first point of you know having things in the front having subjects that are so close to the camera that we wouldn't normally see them that you know if you kind of imagine my the eyes are so great I have to kind of go up and squint at things you know to have them close up but the very nature of what you have within this wide-angle lens allows you to play with distortion play with perspective bring subjects close that they seem unusually dominant and that invites us to go into the image to have depth it's a wonderful expression so far beyond just the more traditional uses of the wide-angle lens. Out of all the lenses that you have at your disposal in photography wide angles tend to come with the the the weightiest set of prescriptive rules about them. I'm not a huge fan of Bruce Gildin's photography but his images wouldn't be as unique if he had listened to those rules. In architecture people are told you know watch out for converging verticals because that's not the way you do you need a chiptift or a four or five or that sort of stuff but I love to have converging verticals I love to to play with perspective to create distortions I want you to think about the the edges the literal edges of photography and go and explore out there with your wide angles to throw the rulebook out of the window and just see what happens to help you make the photographs that you discover even stronger I've put together a video talking about the basics of composition it's on screen now click on it and enjoy thank you ever so much for watching and I'll see you again soon