Travel Shooting Tips
Spread with iPhone + Wide Lens
9 shooting techniques
in New York
Nowadays, many people take pictures with smartphones such as iPhones and share them on SNS such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Photos, which are both a record of your own memories and a key to sharing information on your travels, can be made more memorable and impactful by using an attachment lens!
This time in New York, I used the Wide Lens to its fullest.
The Wide Lens widens the angle of view of the camera by 0.66 times, so when using the iPhone XS Max used this time, it is possible to take a photo that is said to be a super wide angle of about 17 mm in 35 mm conversion, which represents the lens angle of view of a single-lens reflex camera. I can.
With a wide angle of view, most of what you can actually see with the naked eye can be captured in a single photo. I have some ideas for using iPhone, so I hope you can use it as a reference to record your travels in photos.
INDEX
- Widen the angle of view to fit the exterior of the building
- Taking advantage of wide lens perspective to shoot dynamically
- Emphasize height by pointing the camera straight up
- Optimal angle of view for shooting interiors such as hotel rooms
- Low angle shot from the ground
- Record your journey using road markings and signboards
- Take the plunge and bend it diagonally.
- Efficient use of obstructive obstacles
- Memories of your trip
Widen the angle of view to fit the exterior of the building
First of all, the scene where the Wide Lens is most useful is shooting in a huge building or in a narrow space, taking advantage of its wide angle of view.
With the angle of view of a standard lens, it is difficult to express a sense of scale unless the building is quite far away.
I'm sure some of you have experienced the fact that even if you wanted to take a picture of a building you liked from the front, the width of the road in front of it was so narrow that only part of it could be captured.
In such cases, you can capture a wide range by using the Wide Lens, so you can capture the entire building, and by including people in the shot, you can emphasize the scale of the building.
For shops with show windows along narrow roads, shops with stylish signboards and exterior walls, etc., wide lenses can be used to capture a wide range of the shop atmosphere.
Taking advantage of wide lens perspective to shoot dynamically
As an easy-to-understand example, I took a picture of Manhattan in the early morning from near the entrance of Central Park.
[Picture 2-1] shows the townscape from the front, taking into account the horizontal and vertical orientation of the buildings. The photo was taken from the front while paying attention to the horizontal and vertical lines, so you can see that there is no distortion and the vertical lines of the building are straight.
In [Photo 2-2], I took advantage of the unique perspective of an ultra-wide-angle lens and shot the top of the building by pointing the camera slightly upwards from the front.
It may be a matter of personal preference, but the second photo shows the whole building in the foreground, so the photo shows the scale of Manhattan and the early morning air from the part that is exposed to the sun. I think you are. The shot of two birds in the center of the sky is something that can only be done with an iPhone because you can take a quick shot while looking at the high-resolution screen when you want to.
Emphasize height by pointing the camera straight up
A wide-angle lens has the characteristic of making objects in the foreground appear larger and objects in the distance appear smaller, so you can emphasize perspective.
This feature is also useful when shooting buildings. I'm sure some of you have had the experience of looking up at a skyscraper and feeling dizzy at your feet, but the Wide Lens can also take photos that emphasize the height that evokes that feeling.
[Picture 3-1] was taken while standing in a place surrounded by skyscrapers and looking up. The height is also emphasized as if the building seems to grow from outside the frame.
[Photo 3-2] was taken looking up from the shop in the courtyard. If you look up at a courtyard or a gap between buildings, the proportion of the sky that occupies the exterior will be smaller, and you can emphasize the city.
Optimal angle of view for shooting interiors such as hotel rooms
The Wide Lens is also used by a large number of people who use it in architecture and interior related work, and it has a very suitable angle of view for shooting interiors.
In [Picture 4-1], you can convey the size of the room, as well as various information such as the clawfoot bathtub in the back, stylish furniture, and how the sun enters.
[Picture 4-2] is a photo of the doorman at the entrance of the hotel and the interior of the entrance.
Low angle shot from the ground
If you squat down and take a picture from the ground, you can capture the perspective of a child or a dog or cat.
[Photo 5-1] is Manhattan in the early morning.
[Photo 5-2] is the New York scene that appears in movies! steam blowing out of the ground. By shooting at night, the atmosphere like Batman's Gotham City came out.
By the way, as an aside, it seems that people in New York don't use studless tires even when it snows. The reason is that the cost of changing tires between summer and winter is wasteful, but instead, it seems that most cars are always equipped with all-season tires that can run in a little snow.
New York, which is on the same longitude as Hokkaido, gets a fair amount of snow, so when it snows, they run slowly. w
New York is already congested with traffic. It seems better to have plenty of time to move the car when it snows.
Record your journey using road markings and signboards
You can take memorable photos with just an iPhone and the attachment lens of tokyo grapher, but there are a great many people who use digital cameras such as single-lens reflex cameras and mirrorless cameras as a sub, so you can use it as a full-fledged camera. The more you get, the more you get in the way, such as the function of adding location information with GPS, so it is not attached.
I myself have a mirrorless camera and carry an iPhone and a tokyo grapher attachment lens, but the GPS function is really convenient, and it comes in handy when I want to tell someone about a place that interests me at a later date.
By using the Wide Lens to shoot information boards installed on roads and stations, it is possible to capture the surrounding scenery in the background while capturing the information board in the foreground, making it easier to link recording and memory.
It might be a good idea to take pictures of the food you ate at a cafe or restaurant with the interior of the shop as the background.
Take the plunge and bend it diagonally.
The basics of taking beautiful photos is to take pictures while paying attention to the horizontal and vertical, but in the case of the Wide Lens, you can take interesting photos even if you tilt it as much as you can by taking advantage of the perspective. It is recommended to make use of oblique perspective instead of simply upward perspective.
[Photo 7-1] is a picture I took while walking, but I held my iPhone up high and took advantage of the clear sky to capture pedestrians and the Empire State Building in the background.・If you try to take a vertical shot, you will miss the moment you want to shoot.
[Photo 7-2] is a famous photo spot where you can see the Brooklyn Bridge from between buildings. This is a picture of the building and the Brooklyn Bridge in one piece.
Efficient use of obstructive obstacles
If you take the plunge and get closer than the minimum focal length, you can create bokeh that is difficult to express with an iPhone.
[Photo 8-1] is a picture of the road through the wire mesh. A wide-angle lens is also characterized by the fact that the subject is affected by the perspective and stretched more than it would be seen with the naked eye. It emphasizes the length of the trailer.
In [Photo 8-2], I took a picture of the railroad through the wire mesh. You can emphasize the depth by shooting from a high place with such a one-point perspective vanishing composition.
I tried to take a picture as if the railroad that continues far away stretches to the sky.
Memories of your trip
A necessary element for a photograph that leaves a memory of a trip is to include the place and the person together in the photograph.
Even in such a scene, if you have a Wide Lens, you can take a picture with the scenery on the spot without taking a large distance from the person.
Wide lens that is frequently used in various scenes even when walking around town
Takahiro Taguchi
Instagram: @tak-tag
Producer, Creative Director, Designer.
In addition to shooting with an iPhone, he also shoots with a variety of cameras, from film cameras to drones, exploring new ways of expression. Founder of Hueart ( @hueart.life ), a community for enjoying photography.