You Can’t Always Move Your Feet
I love prime lenses.
I love their simplicity. Their discipline. The way they force a decision before the walk even begins.
But there is one phrase photographers repeat so often that it has started to sound too easy to me: just move your feet.
Sometimes you can.
Sometimes you cannot.
I was reminded of that at Beaubourg.
I had gone there with a 50mm in mind. It was not a random choice. It made sense to me before I left. The 50mm is familiar. Clear. A good way to keep things simple.
But once I was there, it became obvious that it was not wide enough for what I wanted to do.
I was already against the wall.
There was no elegant solution. No step backward left. The lens gave me a picture, but it also showed me its limit.
And this was not a second-best lens. It was my 50mm f/1.2L, one of the lenses I value most, along with the 85. The limit was not the quality of the glass. It was the focal length itself.
I came back with an image, yes, but not quite with the one I had in mind.
So I went back the next day with my 24-70mm.
That is the part people say less often.
There is also the question of weight. These lenses are heavy, and I try not to carry too many of them. So the choice begins before the first frame.
I still prefer prime lenses. That has not changed. But I have become a little less certain about them.
Sometimes the lens you love is still the wrong one for the place.
Beaubourg reminded me of that.
And of something else too: you cannot always move your feet.
The photographs are gathered here:
Selected Works
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Excellent point Philippe. Sometime no matter how thorough your planning was things don't work out. In reading this I was reminded of the words of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards:
ReplyDelete"You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you might find
You get what you need"
Sometimes not being able to get the shot you wanted is actually a gift. It forces you to rethink things and stirs creativity and try new and different approaches. Coming back with the right lens makes good sense but we have to remember not to waste a good failure - who knows what it might end up giving us?
Thank you very much, Mike. I really like your idea of a “good failure.” In this case, I truly wanted the wider photograph, and the 50mm simply would not let me make it. But I also came back with a tighter image I now like very much. I had found the setting and stayed with it, more like a fisherman waiting for something to enter the frame than a hunter moving from subject to subject. The photograph was not the one I had planned, but the way of working still felt right.
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