In my previous post I mentioned the term “zoom with your feet” which means to physically walk around your subject instead of standing still and using your zoom lens to do the work for you.

So why zoom with your feet? I’m glad you asked.

Firstly and foremost, walking up to and around the subject shows you just how many possibilities there are in shooting that same subject. Walk around the subject and pay attention to the light. You don’t want to lose important details like faces into deep shadow, and you also usually don’t want extremely bright lights like the sun completely overpowering your photo. Or maybe you do? Maybe you want to shoot a silhoette? These are the kind of questions you should be asking yourself.
While you’re walking around the subject, also check out the different backgrounds and the effect that will have on the photo. Now is a good time to notice that rubbish bin overflowing with beer bottles and make sure you keep it out of the shot, or notice the really nice garden you could have as your background if you changed your position. Heaven forbid, you might even ask the performer to turn around so you can get a better photo.

Generally speaking, the closer you get to the subject, the wider the zoom you will use when shooting them. Moving closer to the subject drastically alters the effects of perspective, and using a wider zoom also increases the amount of background detail in the photograph (and a longer zoom decreases it). Knowing this you can manipulate your position and zoom to frame your subject, include as much background as you want, and control the perspective of the shot. It’s all a matter of give and take. If you get up close to the performer and use the widest focal length (zoom setting) you have then it will exaggerate the perspective as much as possible. For a stilt performer this can be used to great effect if they have arms and legs going off on angles, but it’s not very flattering for glamour portraits. Alternately you can stay back and use a long focal length (zoom) to “flatten” the image and include less background detail for a more flattering portrait, but with less emphasis on the huge stilt legs. Refer to the image below which shows three photos of the same subject taking up roughly the same space in the frame all shot with the same camera. The only difference is that I started off with a very wide lens and positioned the camera very close to the subject (just a few inches from her face, hence the nervous look!) and then got progressively further away and used longer lenses.

And don’t just limit your movement to getting closer or further away from the subject. Get down low and up high, try all sorts of weird angles. Don’t be lazy, and don’t be afraid to try new things.

You’ve already spent so much time and effort just to be there with your camera, don’t spoil it because you can’t be bothered walking 100m and spending another 2 minutes getting a bunch of different shots. And when I say a bunch, I mean more than you think you need. Memory is cheap and you can always delete the ones you don’t like on the computer. There’s nothing worse than getting home, looking through your shots and wishing you had taken more shots of a particular subject.