Discovering infinity in a restroom mirror...

 We love to talk about process but we shy away from talking about why we shoot what we shoot. Sometimes I like to make mirror-selfies just so I can see, physically, and one step removed, how I'm doing. How I look to everyone else. How I fit into the spaces I find myself in. A detailed selfie is one of my best motivators to get my hair cut. Or to throw away a sweater that makes me look dumpy. 

Many times I'll wake up when it's still dark outside, sit on the edge of the bed in my underwear, take a deep breath and think about why I'm interested in getting out that day with a camera. My usual answer is that I might see something that changes my mind about everything. 

Someone hit the nail on the head in some comments yesterday. It was about the creative process requiring, in my mind, some bit of friction in order to make it work. That brain worm of a thought was with me all day yesterday, in every step I made with my camera. 

Part of my ennui of late might just be a profound lack for friction. Living too comfortably inside the bubble. Too well fed. Too well taken care of. Too well off. When the upholstery gets too comfortable it gets harder and harder to get out of the chair. 

But neither do I want to end up going through life as a tourist,  just jetting by for a week or two to grab some trophies for whatever has replaced the boring slideshows our ancestors used to punish dinner guests with. 

If we're actively looking for a project I think it means that we're so well off that we're starting to look for trouble in order to disrupt our complacent bubbles.

The circumstances that buffer you from the rough patches in life create the constraints keeping you from directly having diverse experiences. Maybe that's what I'll think about today when I go swim. Up and down the lanes thinking about whether or not I made the cocoon too comfortable and now hesitate to be....uncomfortable. 

Everything is a balancing act...

Whether you are photographing on assignment or just for yourself, it's nice to introduce yourself, shake hands and win a person over before you use the camera. Just sayin.

I never got this gentleman's name but he was downtown, just outside the city council building enjoying a cool, early Spring afternoon. I saw him and thought his eyes were expressive. Just like everyone else I am a little nervous about approaching strangers and asking them if I can make their portrait. But the only alternative to not following through is to stand back, out of the circle of most interest, and shoot a bit wider. And without their collaboration. And that means you get less energy from your subject.  It's a tricky choice. 

There seems to be either power toward, or a detraction from, success in making the right decisions based on your core intention. At least as far as getting an interesting photograph is concerned. On this particular day I was mostly intending to get photographs that, in combination with other photographs, which would paint a collage for me about the people I come across when I'm out for a pleasant, no-agenda walk.

I guess I could have shot wider. I could have used a telephoto lens. But it was his eyes that drew me to him and that's what I thought should be emphasized in the final image. I also knew that I wanted to have the background drop as far out of focus as possible so the viewer would have no choice but to pay attention to the man's eyes. It would have been easier to stand back, shoot with an 85mm lens and a full frame camera. I would have had more control over the camera-to-subject distance. I could have kept my distance. Stayed in my own circle of comfort.

The camera I had with me was an older, cropped frame (APS-C) Sony and the lens I had on the camera was a fast 50mm. I went with what I had. If I had a bag full of lenses I could have stopped and changed to something longer but I know I would not have taken the time because all permissions from strangers feel like they come with a time constraint attached. After all, you are pulling them away from their own self-guided free time. Their own schedule. Their own safe space. So I kept the lens I arrived with. 

Whatever dialog we had together is lost to the mists of time. I try to be honest and not fawning. I might have said I was drawn to the power and calmness of his eyes. But I just as likely smiled and said I would really like to take his photograph...if he didn't mind.

With the burden of my years of commercial experience I find it nearly impossible to take only one or two frames and then to walk away. When I got back home I looked through my images for the day and saw that I'd snapped away for nine or ten frames. And, as I expected, the frames followed a familiar pattern. Good energy but a guardedness on the first few frames. Then the  subject feels like he should deliver a different pose or expression and we do that for a few frames. Finally, the subject starts to feel either bored or comfortable and drops his guard enough so that, if you are quick, you can capture something that feels authentic. That has the right energy. In nearly every encounter you know when you've hit the peak of expression and you sense, if you are awake to it, that the subject has had enough attention. Because people aren't used to being stared at by a Cyclops camera. And most people are used to a snapshot being one frame. 

The image was taken on a camera with a 3:2 aspect ratio but the tight, square crop seemed to mirror what I was thinking when I made the portrait. I think it's successful. You may not. And that's okay. As long as you have a reason other than the idea that it's wrong to crop out the top of the subject's head. 

(Just above) Here's another image from the same day. I changed lenses and was playing around with a cheap Sony zoom lens on the same cropped frame camera. This was taken with a much longer focal length. A 180mm FF equivalent. While I think the photo is okay there's a lot that falls flat. I wish I had gotten closer and asked the man in the hat to look into the lens. I wish the lens had been faster. The f5.6 aperture at the focal length I was using did a fairly good job of defocusing the background but I would have loved a stop or two less detail back behind him. 

It's interesting to me that after making one really good photo in an outing your brain kicks in and for the rest of the walk, with every image you shoot, your brain tries to replicate the feeling and the parameters of that one great shot. Your brain figures out that this is what you are looking for. And it hardly ever works out. 

It's the same thing with a studio portrait session. You have to take a lot of images while you feel each other out. As a photographer you keep trying little changes and shifts, in framing and also in conversation, and you keep looking at the images to see how the changes affect the way the camera sees the subject. At the same time, if you are doing your part right, the subject becomes more and more familiar with how you work and what you might be looking for. At a certain point you find you are both working in synch. You keep slowly but decisively moving toward a perfect expression and a perfect emotional connection--- which you try to capture. Once you both know you got the shot you might keep working on getting more; especially more based on that successfully instant you already got but what you are really doing is winding down. Making sure there's nothing more left in the creative tank. 

Then you congratulate each other and promise that, because this was so satisfying, you'll both do it again real soon. And, unless the subject is really special you'll probably never photograph together again. Well, unless you marry your muse and spend the next (however many) years together making images for each other.

I'm anxious with every encounter in the streets. Perhaps more so since witnessing a brutal attack on the trails a few months ago. But I continue to try to make photographs of strangers because it's interesting to me. I'm also nervous before every studio portrait session because you never know what's behind the curtain of your subject's personality. Will they be cooperative? Responsive? Able to relax? And will you have skill to understand and then capture what you find to be the special look individual to that person?

Everything else I could tell you about making portraits in the street or the studio is bullshit. 

As commercial photography changes more and more quickly I am running out of things I want to write about here. Validating my long held hypothesis that everything has a parabolic trajectory which starts at zero and inevitably ends at zero. The longer the curve up, generally the longer the curve down.

I have to confess that I'm feeling less and less connected to the rapid evolution of photography. You can  see it, I think, in my purchasing habits when I buy older cameras designed in 2012 and use them in the same way that my old photo-heroes used their rangefinder cameras in the 1950s and 1960s. My selection of favorite lenses is also boringly traditional and echoes what better photographers have preached for decades. I'm attached to the iconic old focal lengths of 35, 50 and 90. Trained by my parents' subscriptions to Life Magazine, National Geographic and Look Magazine. I am a product of my own history and the era in which I grew up, and during which I started working as a photographer. 

In the arc of my career I've mastered everything from shooting still life photos with an 8x10 inch view camera and color transparency film to shooting 4K digital video on small, sleek digital cameras. But to me, now, nothing is as attractive or alluring as the older digital rangefinder cameras and lenses that could have come straight out of 1965. 

I'm slowly winnowing down my client list and re-directing myself toward more and more fun, self-assigned projects. And here's the issue for a blogger doing work for himself; it's less prone to fit into norms and structures of mainstream photography. I can frame a photo the way I like to but bristle when I post it and get feedback that it doesn't work because I didn't consider the rule of thirds, or impart into the image a full range of tones, or that the noise in the file is too obvious. Or the subject matter is boring. The reality is that I've never posted to the blog with the intent that the photographs represent some sort of online portfolio and I've never really looked for feedback of my work. Having a representative gallery of images was never the intention for this blog. 

While I impulsively pre-ordered a Leica SL3 last week I doubt very much that I'll follow through and buy one. I already have too many choices to make every time I go out the door. While the price isn't an impediment what's stopping me is the fact that, over the last year or so, none of the new additions and features to new cameras do much to excite me. Cameras are already so good that it would take something truly spectacular to move the needle from "oh that's pretty cool" to "Oh Dear God I must have that NOW!"

It's always enlightening to have a long history with a practice. One can look back at work done over decades and see what was and wasn't important to your own art. The work that truly made you happy and satisfied. The work I did for myself in 1980 - 2000 is still very satisfying for me to look at. Not because the cameras and film were so great but because of my enthusiasm for the subjects. For the "look" and for the entree photography provided for social observation and cultural literacy. 

It's inevitable that one becomes jaded by experience and age. Lost is the newness of things. 

As I look across the blogging and personal video landscape what I'm finding everywhere is repetition, repetition, repetition. Since camera introductions have slowed down and the progress of camera and lens technology has become less and less important content producers/creators have stumbled about to find things to fill the space (and time) with. I can't imagine that my descriptions of walking through the streets of a car-centric, middle class city are so riveting and fascinating that they fill a need for my readers. I can't imagine what people are thinking when fellow photo bloggers veer into posts about mid-brow, mid-century home architecture or tube amplifiers. I can't share the enthusiasm over videos of younger people with cameras roaming around urban landscapes pontificating about the perfect street shooter lens while sneaking zone-focused shots of inherently banal subjects. I guess that's when you know it's time to move on and mark the end of an era. 

And by saying that I'm not implying that these are not the "golden years" for someone else. Kids just now discovering the magic of photography have their own point of view about what is relevant and what is cool. It might not be shared universally but it's good for them. It all has value for them.

I have never had the intention to steer the blog into being a geriatric entertainment channel. I don't want to write about high blood pressure, compression socks, senior discounts, the benefits of Metamucil,  or how we used to do things in the good old days. I'm not interested in how to "slow down gracefully." I'm already tired of writing about my hobbies (swimming. more swimming. food that's not "health guru approved" and so on). 

I think I wiggled under the lowest bar my younger and more interesting self might have set for me when I started to write about the installation of a new floor in our living room. I can't imagine for a moment that anyone thought that was the least bit compelling of a subject. 

And then there are the comments. Most of them are fine. A lot of them are wonderful and insightful. But so many are about some favorite camera from the 1970s that you love and which is not even on my radar. Nor does it need to be on my radar.  I'm resistant to every comment that tries to shame me into traveling more. I'm not the world's greatest or most fervent traveler but I have been to over a dozen countries and many of those countries I have visited more than a few times. So much we've done that isn't in the vitae. Have you been to Russia? How about the Dominican Republic? Turkey? Jordan? Or even Mexico City (as opposed to the tourist towns on the Mexican coasts...)? And, oh my gosh, I spent most of the 1980s through the early 2000s traveling from one corporate event location to another. From one advertising location to another. Including some annual report jobs that kept me on the road for weeks at a time. All over the world.  I'll travel for my own pleasure and on my own schedule now...

My least favorite comments have always been the ones that insist I be nicer. That I overlook dumb content elsewhere. That I cut every content "creator" more slack. But why? There's never a good reason to shy away from delivering deserved criticism. My readers do it to me all the time. Not ad hominem attacks. Just honest critiques written out plainly and without pulling punches. 

I've tried to walk away from blogging before but something always pulled me back in. I do love the practice of writing but I think there must be some more effective venues in which to do so. While we can't all be a John Sanford  (and here's where a more mercenary/desparate blogger would add an affiliate link to his latest book...) I can do a decent job of writing like Kirk. 

Blogs are dying off and the ones that remain are ripe for the contagion of generative A.I. Sooner than you expect you'll inadvertently be reading the musings of a computer program as you savor that morning cup of coffee. And you might never suspect it... We'll all be living in the matrix.

Just a few thoughts on a Monday morning. I'm not angry, sad, disgusted, frustrated or otherwise emotionally stressed. To be frank I've become bored and by extension the writing is getting boring. Long in the tooth. Time, I think to try something else and to leave the photo space to writers who need to generate income from their writing work. And the audiences who will support them.

Writing out loud. Mostly just for me. Feedback not necessary. 

A lot of times it's the necessary nuts and bolts of camera gear that makes the difference in photography.

 

Heading back to my car after a pleasant afternoon of photography.

Interesting that most folks are fixated on their camera and lens when it comes to the idea of going outside your home base to make photographs. Sure, you need a decent camera and lens if you are going to come home with nice photographs but so many times it's the lack of a small and inexpensive product that messes up your otherwise best laid plans. 

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only photographer who has absent-mindedly left the house without a memory card in his camera. You might have come in late the night before and rushed to download your files and,  being all sleepy-headed you left the camera's usual memory card in the card reader. You get to your shooting destination, turn on your camera and get a message telling you that there's no card. 

You probably have read so many times about the necessity of making a checklist for commercial projects and I'm sure you follow that checklist for work; it's when the career is not on the line when the checklist gets "overlooked" or ignored. Knowing that no client will be disappointed is nice but it doesn't take the full sting out of having to circle back home to find that missing component. It's much worse if you've traveled for an hour or so to your destination... That's happened to me. I searched out an office supply store and paid an outrageous price for a mediocre card with limited space. But at least I got to do some photographs. Better to check for a memory card every time you pick up your camera to leave the office or the house. Even better to keep a back-up card in the car and maybe even in your pocket.

Remember the film days when camera straps had attachments that would hold an extra roll of film? Maybe someone will come out with a small strap attachment that holds and extra memory card. Or two. 

A different version of the "lost" card is grabbing a card that still needs to be downloaded before it can be re-used and only finding that out on arrival to your once in a lifetime photo opportunity. Do you erase those previous great images to make room for a new group? Do you sit in your car and try to edit down the number of images on the card so you can continue onward? Naw. Better to always check. I usually re-format my cards as soon as I've downloaded jobs, projects or even an afternoon's fun shooting. When I pick up a camera these days I turn it on and hit "play" to make sure there is nothing on the card that might need to be saved. 

Of course, if you are updating memory cards it always makes sense to me to buy a lot of capacity. I try to buy 128 GB cards --- at a minimum. And I always try to buy V90 rated cards as well. The larger capacity means I can probably shoot on a previous used and un-formatted card with enough space for both the last job and the current one. The reason to buy V90s is my belief that the fast the card's read and write speeds the faster the operation of the camera will be. 

I've met a number of photographers who've bought state of the art cameras and then, in a state of ignorance or self-defeating frugality, have put in older, slower, smaller capacity cards. The one's they've been using for years. These are the same ilk of photographer who buys a top of the line camera and, to save money, uses it with a cheap and mediocre, third party ultra-focal length zoom lens. And then complains about the lack of sharpness in the corners. One good body and one great lens is better than a whole raft of crappy lenses. And easier to carry as well. 

Then there's the camera battery. Or batteries. Once you've checked to make sure you have a memory card in the camera and that it has enough capacity to hold the number of images you want to take the next biggest point of failure is the camera battery. So much to go wrong here. 

I've heard stories of people checking their batteries, finding that they've got a full charge and then shoving the camera into a camera bag in such a way that the camera gets switched on and the shutter button gets constant pressure from the material in the bag. The battery that was perfect when they left the house is on its last legs upon arrival at the destination. If nobody thought to bring a back-up battery then the shoot is effectively over. And...good luck trying to find a Sony, Nikon or Leica battery at the drug store in tiny Johnson City. Or at the convenience store closest to that state park you wanted to document. You might have ten thousand dollars worth of camera gear in your hands but it's all kind or worthless without a charged battery. At that point it's just ballast for your camera bag...

When I go out for an afternoon of photographing for fun I make sure my camera battery is fully charged. If I'm using a camera bag I take the battery out of the camera and put it in its own pocket. No accidental discharges happen that way. I also have some little thick plastic bags that are just the right size for most camera batteries. I keep an extra battery in the little plastic bag. Fully charged. If I'm using a camera bag (not often) the battery rides in the small bag, in the camera bag. If I'm going with the "one camera/one lens" rig then the extra battery (and its plastic bag) goes in a pants pocket. Why the plastic bag? To keep from accidentally shorting the battery out on a set of car keys. That would be the most dramatic version of a "Hot Pocket." 

So, you've got the batteries sorted, and the memory cards. You've arrived at the parking facility for your final destination and you decide to double check everything. You pull off the lens cap and, just in that moment, your allergies hit and you have an uncontrollable, autonomic urge to sneeze. And you do. Right on to the front element of your precious and only lens. That's when you're so happy you brought along a cheap, inexpensive, easy to carry, lens cleaning cloth. And you fish around in the center console of your car and find a small spray bottle of lens cleaner. Hurray! Your foresight pays off. 

I keep Zeiss lens cleaning kits in all the cars, in my camera bag and on my desk in the studio. Most of the time all I need to keep a lens working right is a little bulb blower. Just enough air pressure to take the dust off. But if you need a cleaning cloth you really NEED a cleaning cloth. Just try to protect that front element if you can. As an ancient photographer once famously said, "It's better to keep your lens clean than to keep cleaning your lens." The idea being that no matter how resolute the coating is on the front element it can eventually be scrapped off. And now one wants an expensive but very low contrast lens...

I find the biggest culprit, when it comes to dust on lenses, is our cavalier approach to lens caps. If you are like me you are generally in a hurry to get busy and you pull of your lens cap and stuff it in your pocket. But most pockets are lint magnets; dust storage areas. If you must toss your cap in a pants pocket then get that little bulb blower out and give it a few squirts of air before you put back on your camera. And remember, those plastic lens caps can generate their own static electric charges that are even better at attracting and holding on to dust. Dust is just about every where. Unless you are photographing in a .35 micron clean room...

This will probably fall on deaf ears but I have two lens cleaning rules. First, your shirt tail or sweaty t-shirt is not a lens cleaning cloth. Most of the time it just makes things worse. Second, exhaling on your lens to help clean a spot is, well, a bit crazy. As you exhale on the surface of your lens you are coating it with moist acid from your mouth. And then, no doubt, scraping it with that shirt we talked about. Bad news for the multi-coatings. If you are going to photograph someplace sloppy, with flying diet Coke, some rain in the forecast and with a dusty, unpaved racetrack as your location then I would suggest that you cover that lens with a very high quality filter. Shooting sparks and molten metals splashing? Maybe a cheaper filter. Clean air, blue skies and no small children splashing around juice boxes? Maybe lose that "protective" filter and get your money's worth out of your lenses. 

Finally, I'm going to suggest something that I never really thought about until a brand new camera and an iffy strap almost parted ways on me when I was walking downtown. The strap retainer was defective. The strap was holding onto the camera by the barest of connections. I happened to look down and saw the strap about to abandon one side of the camera. Hasn't happened to me in decades but there you are. I got back home, ordered new straps and checked all my other cameras. Crazy shit happens. And it happens mostly to people like me who just take stuff for granted. But who would I have blamed if I ended up sweeping up bits of my Leica off the sidewalk? There's only me. 

All these things come into play and can ruin an otherwise pleasant shooting day. A bit of time spent double-checking is good insurance against either frustration or lost opportunity --- which I guess is the same thing.

Why did I write this? Because I made a stupid error yesterday. I forgot that the camera I selected was the one camera that doesn't have a built-in diopter or an accessory diopter added on. I need a +2.0 diopter on the eyepiece of my Leica M cameras if I am to focus correctly. Either that or I need to wear my glasses but the eye point stand off on the M240s is a short and it's hard to see wall-to-wall for the wide angle frame lines with glasses. Forgetting all of this I tossed my glasses on the dining room table (don't need them yet for driving) and just took for granted that the camera had diopter-ability. It did not. So I spent the afternoon pressing a 28mm lens into service; mostly for its extensive depth of field. Instead of  the 75mm lens I really wanted to shoot with. When I screw up on one aspect I tend to start reviewing all point of possible failure. Why? Hmmm. Maybe it's 40+ years of being scared of disappointing paying clients of all kinds. One screw up per decade is about the most your business will grudgingly accept. So there's that. But even if I'm just shooting for fun I'd always like to optimize my experience just because it feels so much better to get everything just right. 

Amazon Prime advertising an upcoming series on their video service. Grab shot. 

the $1920 dollar Ferris Wheel. Right on Congress Ave. 

this giant piece of temporary infrastructure is actually a super large screen (see through-able in daylight) that is used to project video after dark. It's a street corner that Netflix is using 

to market themselves at SXSW. I think it beats the Amazon truck advertising. 

Portrait of a photographer I often run into downtown.

Below: We took turns photographing each other photographing. 

Zone focusing can be wonderful. And quick. So quick

Quicker than your Sony can AF....

Caffeinated sports/energy drinks everywhere. Free samples until you go into 

atrial fibrillation. Not a big worry for those who are still young at heart. 

All photographed on the 28mm lens and a rangefinder camera. 

a rangefinder camera with no diopter...sigh.

Warming up to the 28mm focal length by default. Lens pressed into service to compensate for user unpreparedness. Photographer now on probation at VSL...

 

Sixth Street was strangely quiet on this second afternoon of the SXSW event. 

Busy day. Morning swim practice. Coffee with two friends after. Home to help move furniture for Monday's big floor project. A break to eat Chinese food with spouse at a favorite, nearby restaurant. Back home to take a door off its hinges and remove it. Facilitating the repositioning of a large, sectional couch into one of the unused bedrooms. 

By four in the afternoon I was ready for a break. I grabbed one of the black Leica M240 cameras. I stuffed the 50mm f2.0 and also, as an afterthought, the 28mm lens into a very small Domke shoulder bag. The lens on the camera when I backed out of the driveway was the new-ish 75mm f1.9. In fact, it was my intention to use the 75mm exclusively and I would have done so if I had not (uncharacteristically) screwed up my preparation at every step. In fact, I'm amazed I made it back unscathed. 

I have diopters on two of the three M240 cameras but of course the one I grabbed to use this afternoon was the one without the diopter. First mistake. Thinking I was fully diopter-ized I left my eyeglasses in the car. Second mistake.  I walked about a mile before stopping to take my first photograph and realized the diopter imbroglio when I went to focus the rangefinder and the patch was too blurry to nail perfect focus. I didn't want to go back to the car because the weather was gorgeous and it was a perfect late afternoon to walk through SXSW with a camera in my hands. 

I dug into the camera bag and brought up the Ziess 28mm lens. I figured I'm pretty good at zone focusing and that the increased depth of field would save me from out of focus shots. It was actually an advantageous choice since I had just taken delivery on a 28mm accessory viewfinder that fit into the hotshoe of the camera. Easier to see the edges of the frame with the external finder than through the regular viewfinder. And I was anxious to test out the new finder...

Next up, I thought I had mastered all the menu items required to operate the camera effectively but I hadn't. I wanted to use the camera in manual exposure mode and I also wanted to take advantage of the auto ISO controls. I set the camera up the way I thought I'd get the best results and shot a couple of test frames. I was disappointed when every frame was two or three stops too dark.

Frustrated, I went back into the camera menus and looked for a solution. It's right there in the Auto-ISO sub-menu. The fourth line down reads: "AUTO ISO in M mode" = On (or off). I set the selection to "on" and instantly cured my exposure issue. I was elated. I'd never really noticed that control in the menu before but it strikes me as a pretty critical setting. I need to check that on the other two bodies!

I used the 28mm for the next two hours, randomly walking around downtown while the sun set and the bulk of SXSW attendees stood in endless lines to see lame stuff. Like a tiny amusement park with a small Ferris wheel that the company, Audible, set up in a parking lot on Congress Ave and Third. Imagine being an adult with a job, and forking over $1920 for a wristband to an eight day event in Austin, splashing out six or seven hundred bucks a night for a hotel room, etc. only to stand in a line for about thirty minutes waiting your turn to ride.... on a small, slow moving Ferris wheel. It boggles the independent mind. It really does. 

I came home and looked through the files and was delighted to find the image at the top of the blog. It seems very...forgive me...three dimensional. One of the super powers of the wider angle lenses that I seemed to have forgotten when I wrote in praise of longer lenses earlier in the day. Ah well. Live and learn. 

On my way home to have dinner with B. I stopped by Whole Foods and picked up a pecan pie. My favorite. I wish I could say it was Vegan or somehow healthy and medicinal but it's just a pie. A good pie but a pie. Maybe the joy of eating a big piece is somehow curative. Not sure what I thought needed curing....

Author with 28mm Zeiss Biogon ZM and TTArtisan 28mm viewfinder on a Leica M240 camera. 

Photographer Justin Mott delivers more "Reality Therapy" about professional photography in the midst of a sea of YouTube influencer (uninformed) fantasies. Good stuff.

 Go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XihVfuRoIUE  Watch that. Come back and tell me what you think. 

Does subject matter drive lens preference or is it the other way around?

 Throughout my time as a photographer I've had an affinity for short telephoto lenses. I like the idea that a tighter angle of view helps to eliminate clutter and allows me to really zero in on the things about a subject that I want to convey. One of my photographer friends, Will, gravitates to wider angle lenses for his images. His work incorporates much more of the context in which his subjects exist. Neither point of view is the "correct" one but I think the choices we make are part of how we, individually, see the world. 

I notice that when I walk around with a camera in just about any milieu I am always drawn to a single subject which I want to largely separate from the background. If I use too long a focal length the images start to feel unreal, inauthentic. But if I use too short a focal length the images seem to be filled with distractions which, for me, dilute the attention I think should be focused upon the main subject.

I often profess a love for the 50mm focal length on a full frame camera but I know that my real favorite focal length for the way I see things is the 85-90mm focal length. I often choose to use a 50mm because it's easier, a looser framing doesn't require that I control the image to the same extent as I would if I had fewer elements in the frame with which to work.

Rome. On the Spanish Steps.

But if I don't have to work quickly I'll almost always default to a longer focal length because, in most cases, the subject of my photo is far more interesting to me than the relationship of my subject to the background or the environment. Since I find people to be my favorite subjects I have to say that I'm more interested in the mystery each person represents than I am in the greater context of where I've found them. 

B. With her OM-1 film camera. 

There are some who depend on wider angle lenses for their art. Mostly, the images I see made with wide angle lenses are from "street" photographers like Joel Meyerowitz and by the legion of street photographers who display work on YouTube and Instagram. They work with wide angles out of necessity, I think. The photographers aim to capture people and people's expressions and gestures but they do so without the complicity or cooperation of the subjects and so have to work quickly. Since grabbing a shot with a longer lens is complicated by the much more limited depth of field of a longer focal length the shooters gravitate to lenses such as the 35mm and, especially, the 28mm in order to exploit the much greater depth of field. In short, they have a greater chance of getting their subjects in focus but the tradeoff is less control over composition, subject size in the frame, and the ability to control the in or out-of-focus rendering of distracting backgrounds.

In order to effectively shoot on the fly most wide angle street photographers are using 28mm lenses, stopping down to f8.0 or f11, and then zone focusing so that when a subject presents themself to the photographer's attention all that's required is to quickly frame the shot and push the shutter button. And the wider the lens the less rigorous the framing needs to be. But, to my mind, the less impactful each of the images will be. And the more awkward the apparent distortions, caused by close proximity of lens to subject, will be.

Rome. Spanish Steps.

In the two examples of casual street photography I am including just above and just below I did use a 50mm equivalent lens with a medium format Mamiya 6 camera. The lens was a 75mm. I could have used a 50mm MF lens (28mm equivalent) to capture the scene from both angles, on the fly, but in the top image the wide angle's proximity to the row of people on the bottom would have changed the size relationship between their heads and the head size of the young man holding the book. It would have been a "forced" perspective that would have called attention to technique and reduced the reality of the scene. Huge heads in the foreground and small head in the background...

In the scene just below (which is the same group but shot from the opposite angle) a quick "snap" with a wider angle lens would have caused the woman on the right hand side of the frame to look much larger than the people beside her and would have rendered the man on the left side of the frame much smaller. The idea of having an "objective" view of the scene would have been compromised by the obvious signature of a wider lens. Neither of these shots were "set up" or arranged but neither of them were surreptitious either. Working calmly and with no drama makes it possible to take one's time, use the right optic and compose more accurately. Or at least more in line with your own vision. 

Rome. Spanish Steps. Reverse angle.

As I look through decades of photographs the one's that I like best, the ones which describe what I think of as my style are the more considered and less chaotic shots that come from shorter lenses. In the two examples below I've used two different focal length lenses in the same general setting. The image of Lou with the magazine was done with a 50mm lens and includes a certain amount of context. 

Contax RTSiii camera. Tri-X. 50mm lens

Little City Coffee Shop.

The image below was taken in the same location but from a different angle and it was done with an 85mm lens which allowed me to make a close up portrait which, while you can tell it is not a studio portrait, very much eliminates intrusive and unnecessary details. Less of a story, perhaps. More of a "study." More interesting to me, in some regard. Mostly because I was more interested revealing the subject than in showing a scene. 

Contax RTSiii camera. Tri-X. 85mm lens

When it comes to focal lengths longer than 50mm my current favorites are 85 and 90mm. In the film days and in the time when digital cameras had far lower resolutions I would try to match lenses to what I considered would be the final crops. The final presentation. The idea being to maximize quality by using all the available pixels or film detail required longer lenses; like the 135mm. Now that sensors have advanced so far I'm less likely to use longer lenses such as 135mms and default to cropping in post production instead. 

Now I am most likely to work with one of the following lenses for photographing a single subject. Depending on my final use and the prevailing conditions these are: The Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art lens, the Voigtlander 90mm APO lens and the Sigma 90mm f2.8 Contemporary lens. When photographing with the M rangefinder cameras I find I am more drawn to the 75mm focal length and I am more confident now in my ability to crop since all the cameras have at least 24 megapixels of rich detail. 

There is a time and place (and subject matter) for all sorts of lenses but if you want to move from "generalist" to "artist with a style" you will, over time, find your comfort zone in the jungle of available focal lengths through trial and error. Which means you'll need to try various focal lengths to see what resonates with you. The focal length lens you are most comfortable with will usually do the best job elevating your work. And making your eyes happy.

I'd love to say that for me it's the 50mm focal length on a full frame camera but time and self-curation shows me that it's really somewhere "north" of 80mms. And I'm okay with that. 

85mm. 

 Close enough to be able to interact with one's subject.

Long enough to give them a comforting distance.