National geographic ultimate field guide to travel photography

down low to photograph children or to add pleasing distortion. Get up high, but not too high, to add context or to find juxtaposition. In short, move! The result is fresh perspective.

When shooting a Traveler feature called "London Calling:' Will van Overbeek got a fresh view of the Big Ben tower by "Dutching the angle:' that is, tilting the camera so that the oft -shot tower was slanting to the left. "I simply twisted the camera in relation to the horizon:' van Overbeek says. When shooting "Best Little City in America:' an article about Austin, Texas, van Overbeek got down low to shoot a portrait of 93-year-old musician Pinetop Perkins. "I held the camera at about the height of the middle button of his shirt:' van Overbeek says. The composition emphasized Perkins's left hand, which held a cigarette up to his mouth.

Change the focal length. Switching from a standard lens to a wide-angle or telephoto TIP can have dramatic effects on composition, When attempting to shoot a muland the more extreme the lens, the more tilayered composition, think in terms of foreground, mid-ground, dramatic the effect. A wide-angle lens can create a sense of place, showing a subject and background elements. One of the elements, often the forein context. The wider view can capture an entire scene, telling a story. In his coverground, should be dominant, to avoid a cluttered look. Use techage of "The High Road to Machu Picchu:' Aaron Huey shot wide to show the trekniques of graphical perspective, such as overlapping, foreshortkers hugging each other at the pinnacle of their journey, atop Salcantay Pass. ening, and atmosphere, to add The advantage of a telephoto lens is just depth to the composition. the opposite. It effectively cuts out excess elements, allowing you to focus on a central subject. For this reason, telephotos can be good for portraits. For the Traveler article "The Last Real America:' about life in rural eastern Montana, Huey got a dramatic portrait of a cowboy by using an 85mm lens, his favorite focal length for portraits. Telephotos also compress space, making distant objects appear closer to you or closer to each other. Finally, telephotos have a shallow depth of field (see below), making them useful for blurring the background.

Control the depth of field. Depth of field (DOF) is the depth to which a scene stays in focus. With shallow DOF, little more than the focal point, or subject, of the composition remains sharp. With long or deep Master the Core Concepts 25