exploring point of view part 3     
letting the elements do the work
becoming friends with the wind


Here in the netherlands the weather is rather volatile, with regular bursts of storm and rain. I used to curse the wind a lot for ruining my shots by roughly shaking the flower i was about to take a close up  of ..... until i realized i could  'go with the flow' or rather: 'bend with the wind' .....!

Here are some shots of a daisy i found on the dike path i take with my dogs. The wind was blowing it in all directions, and instead of framing a standard close up and wait for the wind to die down enough to take an unblurred shot, i changed my settings a bit (faster shutter speed) and then followed the movement of the daisy with my camera, pressing the shutter whenever the wind blew the daisy to a different position. This way i got some very interesting points of view just by moving my camera around instead of my body...

exploring point of view part 2    
letting your lens do the work
shooting from a fixed viewpoint 


A telezoom is a great tool for shooting a subject from different angles and perspectives without having to move around much. When your mobility is limited for whatever reasons this can be a real blessing...!

My dad lives in a beautiful apartment complex that was designed by Ricardo Bofill. It was built in a crescent shape. Sitting on his terrace on the ground floor, looking up,  i can almost see the whole building. I love looking at the rows of windows, glass rectangles that gather and reflect everything at the opposite side of the building's half-circle. Above are some shots taken at 150mm with my Olympus PEN P3 (which means a 300mm focal length on a full frame camera) while leaning back in my chair. For the second shot i turned my camera to the left and upwards, providing a slightly different view and perspective, with brighter and more detailed reflections. I've added a small pink spot to indicate where the shots overlap: the window in the top left of the first shot is situated below the top right in the second one.

Here i've changed my perspective by zooming out. First to a focal length of 85 mm, showing some of the layers of grey concrete framing the rows of windows, then to a focal length of 40 mm, providing more contextual information about the shape and size of the building.  The pink spots again indicate the orientation, on both shots the spot is somewhere near the left middle of the frame.