P52.2 | Week 14

It is a new year, a new month, and a new topic on Who We Become. For the first two months we will be spotlighting Perspective, with four weeks examining the way your choice of lens can alter your viewpoint, and the second four focusing more on the camera and photographer.

Most everything in photography is a compromise, choices in which each of the options carries specific consequences. Our perspective results from how we make those choices - not simply the story we tell, but how we decide to tell it. Wide angle lenses allow our camera to see wider than the eye can, and therefore allow us to include a great deal of environment along with our subject. As such, they are typically the lens of choice for a landscape photographer. Wide angle lenses tend to flatten our subject into the environment, however, so that most everything seems about the same distance away. And just like flattening the globe into a 2 dimensional map, a great deal of distortion can result, particularly toward the edges of the frame. A savvy photographer can turn these supposed consequences into advantages - the choices allow us to develop our unique perspective.