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Storytelling Exposures
by Bryan PetersonPPSOP Founder

Storytelling exposures are, quite simply, images that tell a story. Like any good story, these images have a beginning (the foreground subject), a middle (the middle-ground subject), and an end (the background subject). Your emphasis of one part of the composition over another has profound implications on the viewer's attention and the overall impact of the images. Obviously, for these types of images, choice of aperture makes all the difference.

If using a digital camera with a full-frame sensor, most experienced amateurs and professionals use wide-angle zoom lenses – 14-24mm, 16-35mm, 17-35mm – to shoot storytelling compositions. If using a digital camera with a smaller sensor, try those wide-angle zooms that offer up a range between the 11-17mm range. Wide-angle zooms are popular because they typically include the full range of focal lengths you'd need for a storytelling image. Regardless of the lens choice, there is one constant when making a storytelling composition: A small lensg or aperture (the biggest f-stop numbers).

Once you start focusing your attention on storytelling compositions, you may wonder, "Where the heck do I focus?" In a pastoral scene of a barn in a wheat field, for example, focusing on the foreground stalks of wheat causes the barn (middle ground) and sky (background) to go out of focus. If you focus on the barn and sky, the foreground wheat stalks go out of focus. The solution to this common dilemma is simple: You don't focus the lens at all. That's right – don't focus. Instead, preset the focus via a pre-determined distance setting.

Single-focal-length lenses have a depth-of-field scale that makes it very easy to preset your focus for a given scene but rare is the photographer today who uses a single focal length wide-angle lens . Because the quality is darn good and you simply get a bigger bang for your buck, wide-angle zooms are the norm, but there is a trade-off; namely that they don't have these depth-of-field scales! However, they do have distance settings and knowing how to use set the distance is key and soon you will understand why.

Distance Settings

The distance settings are similar to a depth-of-field scale in that they allow you to preset the depth of field before you take your shot. And since every storytelling composition relies on the maximum depth of field, you would first choose to set your aperture to f/and then align a specific distance,feet/Meter ORfeet/Meters, depending on what focal length you are using, directly above the distance marker. (see illustration above so you know what is meant by distance marker).

When shooting storytelling compositions in which you want as much front-to-back sharpness as possible, try my foolproof formula: First, TURN AUTO-FOCUS OFF!!! If you're using a camera with a "crop factor" and a lens with a 75-degree angle of(18mm on the digital 18-55mm zoom), set the aperture to f/and then focus on something that's approximately 6-feet/meters from the lens. Then, if you're in manual exposure mode, adjust your shutter speed until a correct exposure is indicated then shoot! If you're in Aperture Priority mode, simply shoot, since the camera will set the shutter speed for you. Your resulting depth of field will extend from about three feet to infinity.

If you're using a 12-24mm digital wide-angle zoom and focal lengths between 12mm and 16mm, set the lens to f/22, focus on something 3-feet away, and repeat the final step mentioned above. Your resulting depth of field will be approximately 14" to infinity. For those of you shooting with a full-frame digital sensor and when using focal lengths from 14mm to 24mm, you would simply focus at 3-feet/meter. When combined with f/22, the resulting depth of field will be approximately 14" to infinity. If you're shooting with the focal length of 25mm to 28mm, on a full frame camera, you must set the focus distance to 6-feet/meters, and you'll record a depth of field from three feet to infinity.

Infinity and Beyond

Before going any further, I want to cut off the naysayers right now – the shooters who insist that my advice of using the small apertures is a bad idea and, believe me, there are a number of them out there! So what is wrong with shooting at f/or even f/32? Nothing! But the naysayers will have you believe that when you shoot at these small apertures you loose sharpness and contrast and even color, yet, I and an army of other shooters, (both 'old school' and a crop of new shooters) will insist you turn a deaf ear to this advice. If you do, you WILL create some of the most intimate landscapes and cityscapes you could ever hope to achieve and experience the joy of sharpness from that up close and personal distance ofinches all the way to infinity!

When you insist on NOT using these small apertures yet attempt to record these 'intimate' landscapes, your story-telling composition will be missing the vital 'g' of your story due to a not quite sharp enough "g paragraph". You will never record a depth of field frominches to infinity at f/or f/when using your 12-16mm crop factor wide-angle lenses or if using a focal length from 17-24mm with a full-frame camera. Let me repeat that; You will never accomplish a 14" to infinity depth of field at f/or f/with any DSLR

Check and compare the three images above – all are shot with the same lens from the same point of view, and at the same exposure in terms of quantitative value, yet at different apertures and at different focusing distances. Image 1: when focused close on the starfish and when shot at f/11, does NOT render the background in acceptable sharpness-clearly the lighthouse is out focus. Image 2: When I focus on the lighthouse and when shot at f/11, the foreground starfish are now rendered out of focus. Only Image renders both the starfish and the lighthouse in acceptable sharpness because it was shot at f/and the focus was preset to 3-feet/one meter! And therein lies the key to effective storytelling compositions!

You Keep Shooting!
Bryan F. Peterson/Founder PPSOP.com