A New Project Begins – 3 by 3 Long Lens Landscapes

It is a widely held belief that undertaking a project (or more) at anyone time will help to improve your photography. I would subscribe to this view from my own experiences of undertaking projects, I’ve learned such a lot from them. As I have said many times in my blog that being part of a photography also helps improve my photography. I am part of Fotocom, which is a members based group created by Chris Sale. For 2022, rather than have a separate project outside of the members, it was agreed that each member would undertake a project from a list that was curated by Chris Sale. I chose Long Lens Landscapes.

Given that a project is designed to challenge the photographer I wanted to choose a project that would do just that. Looking at the data within Lightroom, most of the images that I have taken are at focal lengths that are less than 70mm. I have owned a longer lens for a while now but never really found how best to use it within my photography. So all the images taken within this project will be using my Tamron 70 to 180mm f2.8 lens. A further discipline that Chris has added to this project is that all images should have a square crop. All cameras here days have the option to shoot in various aspect ratio’s but using the Raw file format the camera captures the whole scene, and can be viewed within Lightroom if required. I’ve always taken my images at the standard 5 by 4 Aspect ratio, so another added challenge within this project.

This past Friday I took the opportunity to get out with the camera and make a start on trying to figure out what the hell I would take images of in the 3 by 3 Project. Armed with a little knowledge from some Youtube research I headed for the Peak District. I decided to head for Upper Burbage, and have a walk around and see if anything caught my eye. From walks in this location in the past I knew there are rock “edges” along with both Higher Tor and Carl Wark off in the distance. There is also a small forest that complements the brook that runs through the valley.

I had no expectations about bagging anything like a decent image on this walk but felt I needed to start somewhere. There are two scenes that I found, the first is a longer shot of Carl Wark, and the second of one of the rock formations on Burbage Edge.

Carl Wark – Roman Fort

From the research I had done, I number of photographers talk about capturing layers, shapes and colours when using a longer lens. In my minds eye there are a number of layers within this image. Starting with the light brown scrub at the bottom of the image, moving through the two lots of green trees. This leads onto the rocks that are on the hillside, and then of course the stones of Carl Wark, and finally the sky. It was a dull old day on Friday and there is no good light to be had anywhere, so there is a dull feel to this image.

This image is taken at 102mm, at f5.6 ISO 100.

Burbage Rocks

I was really pleased that there were plenty of people around. The reason I was pleased was because the majority of them where school age children on what looked liked some outward bound type sessions. They were learning how to climb on the, relatively, safe rocks of the Burbage Edge, which whilst are high enough to hurt of you fall, but are minuscule enough in rock climbing circles. It really was a joy to behold.

I decided to follow the path through the valley and see if anything else caught my eye, as I did so. To my joy and relief the scene above came into view as I walked through the valley. I’m a sucker for a lone tree, and whilst I would normally get much closer to the tree to take an image, I still felt that the tree had a place in making this more than just a composition of the rocks and scree.

Essentially this scene is of a gap in the Burbage Edge rocks. However, from my location it looks far more than just a gap. The small tree in the upper right of this image really did catch my eye. This does provide a focal point in that upper right hand side of the image that balances the rocks in the upper left portion of the image. The scree and rocks are equally spread around the middle and bottom sections of this image. I played around with the composition of this image quite a bit, mainly because the 1 by 1 crop gives you a square to fill. Whilst my natural style would be to go wider and get more of the surroundings in the frame, being at 180mm this was at the far end of the lens and I wanted to experiment at the longest end of the lens.

In all honesty I have no idea whether these are good or bad images, or even fit in with what long lens photography should be about. What they are though is a start, I’ve dipped my toe in the water, I’ve got over that initial feeling of hesitation and actually given it a go. Keep your eyes peeled for the work I do on this project, it’s certainly pushing my boundaries and I’m way out of my comfort zone with this Project so far. That is exactly the point though!!