While in Prague, we had the pleasure of working with Lucie the Clown (the wife of one of the students). In an effort to “prove” that I’m a fair guy, let’s look at two examples that were taken during one of the morning shoots. In my first example, shown above and shot with my Nikon D3X and Nikkor 70–300mm at 100mm, it is clear that I am too far away and I need to get closer. The white rooftops at the bottom of the frame are distracting, and there is too much background. I have two options: I can walk closer or simply zoom the lens out farther toward the 300mm range. I opted to zoom the lens, and as you can see in the first image, at 230mm Lucie fills up more of the frame and the background is much cleaner. The once-distracting visual weight of the white rooftops no longer pulls our eyes down.

If all you were able to record was a composition similar to the first shot, you would probably find yourself, upon your return home, calling on the crop tool. Unfortunately, your shot would quickly diminish in quality if you tried to make it any larger than 8 × 12 inches. When you cropped into your composition, you threw away almost half your pixels; needless to say, the remaining pixels can only “stretch” so far before they begin to rip and tear. The bottom line is to do your best to fill the frame while you’re there!

First image: Nikon D3X with 70–300mm lens at 210mm, f/6.3 for 1/250 sec., ISO 100; Second image: Nikon D3X with 70–300mm lens at 95mm, f/6.3 for 1/250 sec., ISO 100