When it comes to landscape photography I was taught a long time ago that taking in everything in your scope, while good, is not always the best way to go about it. If you go by the traditional rule of thirds then you have to take everything into effect but if you are trying to capture just the feeling or the beauty of the day then little slices can be just as powerful. Here’s a good example of this.
Not everyone lives in the most scenic places on earth. The majority of people live in cities and have to contend with many obstacles to make great landscape images. Certain elements such as power lines, telephone poles, cars, houses, lights and other man made objects can get in the way and make the image worse. Well there are three options in such cases; first you take the shot anyways and make the best, second you go in tight and take a section of the overall scene or third do nothing and just enjoy. As a photographer usually we tend not to do the third reason because our brains are often over thinking of everything else and eventually tells us that we need to make a click happen regardless. It takes practice to turn off our brain and just watch the light unfold. The second option can be helpful.
While out shooting sunset this past weekend, I notice certain areas where the light was hitting but I couldn’t get to. I could have driven somewhere else and seen what else I could’ve done. Maybe something better could have been found. Who knows? Or I did this. Shooting with the D4 and 24-70 AF-S f/2.8, I zoomed in and focused on spots where the light was hitting and I wouldn’t get telephone wires in my frame. Now the 24-70 is one of my favorite lenses that I use constantly! For this type of work the 70-200 VRII would have been better but with the light fading fast I didn’t have time to switch. So, for the bottom image I switched the camera to DX mode or high speed crop which with the D4 doesn’t loose any quality but does give that little bit of extra focal range which got me a little tighter on the clouds. It was a simple solution to a problem that occurred in the field.