Wide angle solves the photograph
I had photographed this farmer working this small field numerous times, but there was one photograph I had not been able to make. I wanted the American flag in the background to become part of the photograph rather than simply an object somewhere behind him.
I tried the seemingly obvious solution. A telephoto lens could compress the distance between the tractor and flag, visually stacking one against the other. I made numerous frames that way. None worked as well as this photograph.
The successful frame came with the 24–70mm zoom at the wider end of its range.
Instead of pulling the flag toward the tractor through telephoto compression, the wider view let both occupy their own space. The tractor and mower form a large foreground mass. The farmer remains clearly visible. The flag is much smaller, but its isolation against the dark trees and blue sky makes it immediately recognizable.
That difference in scale matters. The flag does not have to compete with the tractor for attention. It becomes part of the setting and, at the same time, a visual destination within the frame.
The composition also benefits from the distance that the wide lens preserves. There is foreground, middle ground and background. The mower stretches across the left side, the tractor occupies the right, and the flag rises above and behind them. The viewer can perceive the actual space separating all three.
There is an interesting contradiction here. The telephoto photographs were intended to make the relationship between tractor and flag stronger by bringing them visually closer together. The wide-angle photograph succeeds by doing almost the opposite. It allows the distance between them to remain visible.
After many photographs of the same farmer in the same field, the solution was not finding a new subject. It was finding a different spatial relationship among familiar elements.
Sometimes the photograph you have been trying to make reveals itself only when you stop trying to force the elements together.
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