The Walls of Glacier at 50mm

Here’s a little snapshot I took of the eroding walls directly above Siyeh Creek in Glacier National Park.  I’ve bought into the “as seen by our human eyes” landscape shots more and more.  Don’t automatically put your wide-angle lens (24mm, 17mm) on in the great outdoors.  Take in what your eyes see at 50mm.  Yup – 50mm is about equal to the field of vision of a human eye.  That’s why many people just love the “feel” of a 50.  I personally love the way the Glacier wall is prominent, and huge, while it is accented with the coniferous trees below, and not a touch of sky above.  And yes, these are BIG walls, but they seem even bigger if they can’t fit into a camera frame! [click on image to enlarge any picture]

Why fifty:  Well, there are at least 50 reasons – but I’ll only name a few here!

The level of detail is much better when one zooms in.  More opportunity for subject isolation (like this ripple above).  50mm is a perfect “tweener” size wherein you can see some large-scale elements, while tuning the audience in a bit more to patterns and details.  Less distortion is key as I get annoyed with how much distortion wide lenses have (even with “Corrections” in Camera RAW).  50′s are light and easy to carry.  50′s are fast – allowing you to create a narrow depth of focus shot with a sub $100 lens, and yes this is the BEST $100 you’ll spend as a Canon shooter.  [Although do note that on a 1.6 crop camera this lens becomes a 85mm equivalent, which is also cool, but much tighter.  You need to get the slightly pricier 35mm to get this effect].

Processing: These images were processed in OnOne software Layer’s program where burning, dodging and creating multiple exposures is pretty easy (and much cheaper than Photoshop). Throw-back cross-processing colors were developed in Adobe Lightroom.