Creative Exercise: Lenses And Composition

Last month I gave you three creative exercises to help you make sense of the photos you made over the last twelve months. Hopefully they encouraged you think about where to direct your creative energies this year.

The idea is to plan your photography year ahead of time (at least, as much as you can). What new places would you like to visit? What new subjects would you like to photograph? Are there any new techniques you’d like to learn or new pieces of equipment, like lenses, you’d like to buy?

So far we’ve look at this from a creative point of view. Today I’d like to change that up with an exercise to make you think about the lenses you use.

Lenses are important because they are your camera’s eye. The focal length and aperture used determine the look of the photo and have a direct impact on the composition. You use wide-angle lenses differently to telephotos. You can use prime lenses set to wide apertures to make photos that aren’t possible with zooms. Some lenses create beautiful or distinctive bokeh.

Creative exercise: What lenses did you use most in 2025?

This exercise starts with looking back at the photos you made last year to find your favorites. You have a head start on this if you did the exercise in my article Creative Exercise: Your Ten Best Photo Projects From 2025.

Now it’s time to make a list of the lenses you used most in 2025. Here’s mine:

• Fujinon 23mm f2
• Fujinon 35mm f2
• Helios 58mm f2
• Samyang 100mm macro

All on an APS-C camera.

This exercise is easier if (like me) you use primes. If you use zooms, it’s slightly more complex. For example, if you have an 18-55mm or 24-70mm zoom, the characteristics of the widest focal length (18mm or 24mm) are completely different from the characteristics of the longest focal lengths (55mm or 70mm in these examples).

In this case, it’s easier to think about focal lengths. There are broad categories that can help you:

• Ultra wide-angle and fisheye
• Wide-angle
• Normal (or standard)
• Telephoto
• Super telephoto (around 300mm or longer, the sort of lenses you use for sports and wildlife)

Use an app like Lightroom Classic that supports Collections or Albums to organize your photos. I set up a Collection Set containing four Collections, one for each lens mentioned above.

This creative exercise is useful because it helps you see which lenses (or focal lengths) you used the most and what results you got from them. Ask yourself these questions:

• How did your selected lens (or focal length) and aperture influence your composition?
• What worked well?
• What didn’t work so well?
• What lens/focal length combinations led to your favorite images?
• Which lenses give you the most beautiful or distinctive bokeh?
• Do you prefer to use a wide aperture to isolate the subject, or stop down to get the whole scene in focus?

When you do this exercise patterns and themes should emerge that help you decide which lenses (or focal lengths) to use this year.

It can also shake up your approach to photography. You may decided to revisit a place, a subject or a project using a different lens (or focal length). Switching lenses (or focal lengths) can give you creative energy to explore a project or theme.

Creative exercise: My results

Now it’s time to show you the results when I did this exercise. It’s the first time I tried this, but I found it so useful I’m going to do it again every year.

Fujinon 23mm f2 lens

This is a moderate wide-angle lens that I used for photographing gardens. The photos below show how I use the lens to create complex, layered compositions with a distinctive foreground, middle-ground and background.

Depth-of-field: I used small apertures (usually around f8) to get the entire scene in focus. The lens captured every detail.

Field-of-view: Wide-angle lenses are lenses of inclusion. They help you fit more of the scene in the frame. The wide field-of-view and the exaggerated perspective creates a sense of space. In both these photos, I included foreground interest and used diagonal lines to pull the viewer’s eye across the frame.

Here are some more photos made with the same lens.

Fujinon 35mm f2 lens

A normal (or standard) lens on my APS-C camera. Normal lenses are versatile. You can use them to photograph a scene, like a wide-angle but with a tighter crop. You can move in close for close-up photography. And you can use a wide aperture and focus on something in the foreground to throw the rest of the scene out of focus, a bit like a telephoto lens. The photos below show all three techniques in action.

The versatility of this lens means that I used it a number of different ways. These are the key lessons I learned from looking at the photos.

Depth-of-field: This is a lens that you can stop down to get the entire scene in focus, or use with a wide-aperture to throw most of it out of focus. I’m a fan of both techniques, but this year intend to play with deep depth-of-field more.

I found that this lens gives a better result at f2.8 rather than wide open at f2. There’s a visible difference in image quality. And often, the depth-of-field at f2 was too narrow, but just right at f2.8.

Keep this in mind if you use prime lenses. Experiment with the wide aperture settings to see which gives you the best results for the type of photography you do.

Field-of-view: The tighter field-of-view helped me create tighter compositions than I made with the 23mm lens.

Here are some more photos made with the lens.

Helios 58mm f2 lens

The Helios is a vintage manual focus Russian lens with an M42 screw mount. I use an adapter to mount it on my Fujifilm cameras and a Canon 500D close-up lens to get closer to the subject.

The Helios is known for its swirly bokeh. Conditions have to be precise to get this effect. Your subject needs to be the right distance from the background and the effect is strongest at f2. On my APS-C camera, it gives me a subtle swirly bokeh effect that I like. The background of my close-up photos is different from what I would get with a 50mm macro lens. It helps my photos look distinctive. The photos below show some of my favorite images that I made with it last year.

Simple compositions: This lens works best with simple compositions, like a single flower against a blurred background.

Depth-of-field: I get the best results with this lens at the wide aperture settings of f2 and f2.8. The swirly bokeh effect disappears when you stop down.

Here are some more photos I made with this lens.

Samyang 100mm macro

A manual focus 100mm macro lens sold under the Samyang name in Europe and Asia and Rokinon in North America. It’s an inexpensive macro lens ideal for any photographer that doesn’t mind the lack of autofocus.

It’s a heavy lens that needs support. A monopod gives me more freedom than a tripod. It steadies the lens but lets me move around to explore the subject with different compositions. Here are some of my favorite photos I made with this lens last year.

Complex compositions: My favorite technique to use with this lens is to shoot through things and use a wide aperture to blur them. This lets me create more complex compositions than I get with the Helios lens. The blurred features make the compositions more layered, interesting and dynamic.

Compression: The long focal length compresses perspective, drawing the background in close to the subject. It’s less isolating than the Helios lens and makes background flowers and plants a more important part of the composition.

Depth-of-field: A long focal length and wide apertures gives narrow depth-of-field, which helps add atmosphere in close-up photos.

Here are some more photos made with this lens.

What I learned from this exercise

The main lesson I learned is that I’m going to use the 100mm macro lens more this year. Lat year I started off using the Helios 58mm lens for close-up photography, then moved to the 100mm macro for a few months, then switched back to the Helios lens in late summer.

But now, with lots of photos to compare, I can see that I like the complex compositions created with the 100mm macro. Shooting through other plants and flowers created lots of interesting compositions. This year I intend to lean into that idea more and see where it will take me.

100 Composition Assignments

If you liked the ideas in this article then why not challenge yourself with my ebook 100 Composition Assignments? It’s like a workshop in your pocket, with 100 assignments to light a fire and help you improve your composition skills.

Click here to learn more or buy the ebook