The above photo taken on October 17, 2020 is a typical example of Milky Way photos. It was taken with an ultra wide angle lens (Sigma 17-35) mounted on a Sony A99-M2. Conventional wisdom says a wide angle lens is (typically used) used for landscapes, architecture and interiors. Whereas, a long zoom lens is recommended for far off objects like a bird in flight, or at an air show, wild life and celestial bodies like moon. The shot below was taken with a Sony 70-400G lens mounted on a Sony A99-M2.
Photography 101 says use wide angle for short and wide reach, and zoom lens for long and narrow reach. Interestingly enough, it happens that the recommended lens for Milky Way is a wide angle lens and not a zoom lens. When I was processing the Milky Way image, it occurred to me that the lens I used for Milky Way is counterintuitive to the typical use of a lens of this focal length. I realized upon further pondering that it is only counterintuitive to use a wide angle lens for some of the farthest objects because we are conditioned to think within the box and the box is determined by our learning.
The revelation I had when I was looking that these two pictures is that I was forcing myself into a box and need to get out of the box. It is akin to learning how to operate a car versus how to drive a car. We all know how to operate a car (aka driving 101) and most of us become well versed with driving a car over time and after gaining experience. I have to not just think outside the box, I should be striving to destroy the box and remove barriers to experience new ways of looking at our world, new ways of using the tools that we have and more importantly understand the limitation of the tools that we have and figure out way to over come the barriers created by my own box.
Epilogue: I am now trying hard to break away from “it worked before so why change”, or “this is what the expert/recipe said so I am going to follow”, or worse yet “it is how it has been done in the past so stay with it” thinking. Break the rules when it is not illegal, immoral or unethical and has no serious consequences. The outcome may be a failure but then failure is an event and not a person.
