It’s a big world and our cameras can only show us a small slice of it. Patti Moed asks us to share our wide-angle views. You can join in on this week’s challenge by reading the details here.

She writes, “For this week’s LAPC #165, we invite you to go wide and ‘broaden’ your photographic horizons. We’re looking forward to seeing your wide-angle views of people, places, and objects taken on your camera or smartphone. Most of all, have fun ‘going wide!'”

Patti notes that a wide-angle lens is less than 50 mm for a full-frame camera or less than 35 mm for a camera with a crop frame sensor. My walk-around lens is a zoom that has a 16 mm (crop sensor) wide-angle zoom with a 300 mm telephoto, and I use that bottom end a lot in my work. The opening image didn’t happen to be taken with that camera, but this shot of Waimea Canyon on Kauai, Hawaii truly needs that wide-angle optic to attempt to show off the expanse of this place known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific.

Some objects are either too close or too large for even a 16 mm wide-angle lens to cover. Such is the case with this image of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. I often find myself using Lightroom’s Panorama tool to take two or more images and meld them into a single wide-angle view. That’s a lot cheaper than buying a special super-wide lens for the occasional time when one is needed.

Since discovering how well Lightroom merges two photos, I’ve probably overused the technique, but I enjoy creating those extra-wide views. This shot shows but a part of the expansive view at the Painted Canyon Rest Area overlooking Theodore Roosevelt National Park in my home state of North Dakota.

Another way to get those expansive views is to go up and away with a camera drone. This view of the Cut Bank Trestle Bridge in Montana is an example. I’ve even been known to stitch two drone images together to make super-wide panoramic images.

For my last image, this photo is of Diablo Lake, a reservoir in Washington state. It, too, is a panoramic image stitched, however, from two cell phone photos via Adobe Lightroom.

Thanks go to Patti to allow me to share one of my favorite styles of images. Of course, wide-angle images aren’t just for landscapes, it just happens that as someone who mostly photographs the wide-open spaces, it’s a tool I use quite often.

You can expect to see more in the coming months as Lynn and I have just started out on our autumn trip. We will spend a month on the road and gather more images of interesting and unusual places to share with you. Invite your friends to come along and follow us on our journeys.

John Steiner