The Compositional Cost Of Getting Too Close With A Wide Angle

Foggy beach mornings are a stress test for your kit and your patience, especially when the background turns into a blank sheet of white. If you usually lean on long lenses or dramatic light, this video puts a spotlight on a different skill set: building strong frames from close-range texture, shape, and context.

Coming to you from Andrew Banner, this grounded video tracks Banner working a small stretch of working shoreline with an ultra-wide lens and a very specific goal. He keeps circling back to what a true wide angle lets you do when there is nothing usable in the distance. Instead of hunting for a horizon, you start hunting for edges, lines, ropes, chipped paint, crates, and the way fog strips a scene down to essentials. He talks about rotating between a familiar zoom and the lens that ends up doing the heavy lifting, the OM SYSTEM Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO versus the AstrHori 9mm f/2.8, and you can hear him realizing he had not really pushed the 9mm before. The trade is obvious: more in the frame, more chances to tell the truth of the place, more chances to include something ugly by accident.

One of the most useful parts is how plainly Banner talks about “gear mistakes” without turning it into drama. He brings a Freewell carbon fiber tripod for comfort and handling in the cold, then runs into a basic limitation: it is not tall enough for the angle he wants, and he starts improvising. That moment will feel familiar if you shoot low a lot and then suddenly need a little extra height to clear a rail or get a cleaner line through a subject. He is also working at tighter apertures, calling out f/11 and f/16 while trying to hold depth and focus when he is close to the boat hardware. Then rain shows up, and the discussion shifts to a problem that has nothing to do with technique and everything to do with staying out there when your mood flips.

Banner’s detour into apathy lands because it is not presented as inspiration or a pep talk. He describes the switch-like feeling: you are fine, then you are done, and you cannot explain why. The way he handles it is practical. He stops, goes home, makes coffee, and keeps the conversation moving, which is a better model than forcing yourself to grind through shots you will not even want to review later. If you have days where you bail early and then beat yourself up, this section reframes the exit as part of the process, not a failure, and it sits right alongside the on-location decisions about weather sealing, risk, and what is worth protecting.

The core idea he builds toward is context, and he does it through a simple example that you will recognize without seeing every frame. A subject on its own can read as generic, even if it is sharp and clean. Pull back, include the right surrounding clues, and the same subject starts to carry a small story, including scale and location, not just shape. He also touches on distortion and how an ultra-wide view can make ordinary machinery feel bigger and stranger when the environment is empty and fog-softened, then he hints at the editing and sequencing side by talking about a cohesive set of images as a “mini project,” which is where the real payoff shows up if you follow his full walkthrough. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Banner.

And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out our latest tutorial, "Photographing the World: Japan II - Discovering Hidden Gems with Elia Locardi!”