*This year I am participating in a personal project with a group of amazing photographers. We created a blog circle where we challenge ourselves creatively and technically throughout 2018. Life From This Lens is a fascinating look at how a group of photographers around the country interpret the same prompt (or theme) each month. Please follow along in the circle and see everyone’s take on the theme each month. This months theme was Long Focal Lengths*

Friends. The end of summer came and went so quickly I’m pretty sure my head is still spinning around. I hope you have all settled into the rhythm of a new school year and the start of a new season. But for now – back to summer for just a moment! The theme for our August project was “long focal lengths”. If you are not a photographer you are probably wondering what the heck that is. Think of it like this – your eye sees at a 50mm focal length. Anything bigger than that (ie, the number is higher such as 85mm or 100mm or even 200mm) is considered a long focal length. It is a more close up view of what you’re looking at, like looking through binoculars. The higher the number, the more close up your subject looks.My two workhorse lenses (the ones I use ALL THE TIME) are my Sigma 35mm and my Canon 85mm. So I was more than happy to put that 85mm on my camera and go for the whole month. Except that I discovered that I don’t really like my 85mm for photographing my kids. I really don’t like it at all. For client work I looooooove, love, love my 85mm. It creates such beautiful bokeh (the blurry bit in the background of photos) and is so flattering for portraits. The long focal length helps isolate my subject and make them pop against the background. So then what’s the problem with using it for my kids? With a long lens you typically have to stand further away from your subject in order to get them fully in the frame. And I have small kids. Who run…frequently. Or fall. Or scrape their knee. I found it super challenging to get far enough away from them during our day to day activities to photograph them with my 85mm without them getting hurt or doing something that they weren’t supposed to be doing as soon as I got that distance away from them. It’s much easier for my to get close up with my 35mm. In fact I got so frustrated with the situation that I stopped using it halfway through the month and went back to my 35mm – ha!!Instead I decided to use a different long lens, my beloved 100mm macro. It’s been a while since I practiced any macro shots and we just so happened to be camping at Belknap Hotsprings where they have a beautiful rose garden. This definitely made me happy. Much less frustrating too.At the very end of the post I am including a few shots from a recent maternity session that I did (more on that in a couple of weeks!!) so that you can see what my typical client work looks like with my 85mm. After a month of frustration with it I was able to fall back in love with it during my client session.Please follow the loop and check out Kelly’s post on how she photographed with long focal lengths in August.