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In this video we're gonna talk about lenses but it's gonna be very different than what
I do with the lens days videos in the sense that those are videos where we tend to pick
apart lenses and optics and talk about corrections and look at things like very granular level
but what I want to do is I want to pull back in this video and I want to talk about it
from just a pure photographic perspective of you as a photographer the optics are essentially
the tools that we use as photographers, we can't take photography without glass and so
using an optic becomes a tool and is a tool through which weAre able to one come up with
things like compositions something that's intelligent in the picture how we communicate
visually it's our artistic vision as photographers and these are the tools that facilitate this
and so when you look at different focal lengths of lenses, and like I said, this is very top
level here, but we have many options you can use an ultra wide angle 14 millimeter you
can use a 50 millimeter you can use a 135 millimeter you can get a 500 millimeter if
you need to shoot a long way away and so each one of these focal lengths has what we call
its own visual signature think about that for a minute, it's own visual signature. And this is something that is not my term
I wish it was because it's very poetic and beautiful but it actually comes from Ralph
Gibson I had this wonderful opportunity last year during the pandemic last fall to actually
start studying with Ralph and he became my mentor and we would do these weekly lessons
we do them over soon and he would basically would look at a lot of work talk about a lot
of things and he would have an assignment for me to work on for the next lesson the
following week and so we can watch for instant repeated this way and about the second or
third lesson in he started seeing some things in my work at a direction to explore and he
said it was funny because I had my zoom. All set up so I had this you know of all my
gear behind me and I had a bunch of lenses on shelves and he said here's what I want
you to do you're going to shoot on nothing but a 50 millimeter and arrange fire new throw
all that stuff sitting behind you away and I thought that was kind of funny and I said,
okay, I understand we're gonna limit the possibilities I said but I'm curious why have 50 millimeter
and he says well a lot of the stuff you've been shooting is standard focal length so
50 millimeter and he said also in the history of like 35 millimeter photography which is
now become digital photography look at all of the famous photographs that have been made
at that focal length. I mean, we're talking like you go back to
to Henri Cartier-Bresson, W Eugene Smith, Robert Frank - all of the great photographers
that was kind of the standard focal length that they would use and I thought okay this
makes sense because I think one of the things that we have that becomes problematic because
we have so many tools that are offered to us. I mean, if you look at just like this last
year how many lenses have been released alone from camera companies all of them pretty amazing
and it's really easy to get excited about that, but as a result a lot of times when
we go shoot and look I'm guilty of it too bring a whole bag of gear with me and I spend
more time fooling around and changing lenses than I do in the moment capturing an image,
so. We start talking about this whole idea of
exploring the concept of visual signature and what that means and just to put this into
context let's say pretty much everybody's pre familiar with the standard focal length
of a 50 millimeter lens, let's say that you're shooting architecture and you might think
from a traditional perspective well. I need a wider lens so I can capture everything
which is not incorrect a 14 millimeter lens or some kind of ultra wide wheel bring all
that together if you're shooting architecture a 50 millimeter lens on the other hand if
that's all you have requires a very different interpretation of what it is that you're trying
to photograph. And I find this fascinating because all of
a sudden you're required to think about it sure it's easy to grab and ultra wide angle
lens get everything in but a 50's a little bit.And I also think it works the opposite
way because I found that like for instance of 50 millimeter which is what I've been shooting
on for almost the last year now pretty exclusively in my own work. I know I review lenses and stuff on the show,
but when I'm doing my own personal work my own personal projects, that's my focal length
of choice and I've resorted to I even went on a trip a couple weeks ago went to Michigan
and I just took the 50 and it was amazing liberating because all of a sudden I am shooting
I am thinking and I'm not changing lenses. I'm not fooling around with different cameras
yeah. I'm in the moment and I'm actually working
and this hasn't been tremendous effect.On your output and also your artistic vision
and what it is that you're trying to do we're all trying to improve this photographers we
want to prove the way we think our communication skills visually and to be able to do this
and start seeing those results because you've limited yourself on the tool that you're using
I think is amazing the other thing I like about the 50 is sure it's not going to be
an ultra wide but it's kind of for me at least it has a digital signature that allows itself
enough versatility to where I can still take portraits. I can get close to a subject without being
uncomfortably close, so it's a portrait lens, it's a standard lens if I need more of a 35
millimeter-ish lens then I can step back allowing that I have room assuming that I have room
and I can still get that but it all has that same kind of visual signature to it now also
want to clarify that visual signature does not necessarily mean the granular things like
the way the bokeh renders or the way the sharpness looks or whether it's sharp edged edge. I mean those certainly are aspects of lens
and those are the finer details and of course those are going to vary lens to lens depending
on what lens it is how nice it is so and so forth but I'm really just talking about the
look of the lens and that's what I mean by the visual signature like for instance. I mentioned you can pull back with a 50 or
you can be closer with a 35 and they're gonna have two very different looks to it and it's
just the way that light renders at that focal length there are distortions that happen that
usually are corrected especially with modern lenses, but they still have a different look
to them and I think that's another reason to put a lot of thought into what it is that
you're trying to photograph years ago when I started out and I was shooting a lot of
film a lot of 35 millimeter on my F3 my Nikon F3 my first lens was a 50 millimeter f/1.8
and that may be one reason why I'm so comfortable with it because I've shot a lot at that focal
length, one of the second lenses that I remember. Mine was a 28 millimeter and it was a series
e and if you know anything about the old Nikon stuff series he is usually made fun of by
people because it was their budget or their economy series at lens was actually a pretty
decent lens you can get them for nothing now and I shot a lot with that but what I loved
about the 28 is it was very different because the 28 millimeter lens is only four millimeters
tighter than a 24 but it's completely different look and it's very unique and this is what
I'm talking about with this whole idea of visual signature even though I still do especially
and it's been very deliberately this last year about 95% of my work with just the 50
if I do want to change lenses. I still go back to the 28th it's a look that
I absolutely love Interesting story So the other day my friend Blair Bunting and I were
texting back and forth which we do on a daily basis He's an excellent photographer a very
good friend and a lot of times we will if there's work or experimenting with we'll text
each other an image sometimes to get a second opinion. Well, he had this commercial piece that he
was doing and he texted it to me and said what do you think? And it was this cool image. He was incredible. It was this this kind of landscape image with
a guy on a bike in the center of the frame and this beautiful sunset going down and it
had that look. So I text him back I said man, I dig it. I said is that 20?Eight minute I said 28 millimeter
with a question mark and he text me back says OMG I can't believe you guessed the focal
length Well I know what 28 millimeters looks like and so we got into discussing that and
there was an image that I had texted him a while back that I shot when I had the like
a Q2 monochrome which has a native 28 millimeter lens that he really liked it was a landscape
thing. I said this was 28 too and so we started talking
about it back and forth and he said, you know, he said it's fascinating and observation that
he had is that some photographers are certain photographers tend to view the world in a
very beautiful way through specific focal links. And I think that is so well said you know
if you look at somebody like on record table song who did so much with the 50 millimeter
that was just amazing or you contrast that with somebody like Gary Winogrand who pretty
much shot exclusively with a 28 two different photographers two different voices two different
artistic statements two different ways of visually communicating both very valid and
at two different focal lengths and I've found that just absolutely fascinating and I want
to dive down a little bit more into this because I kind of have a theory on this that I want
to run past you and I think it's something that you can start to incorporate into your
own work and again we live in this world. We're bombarded and distracted with the possibility
of buying new year all the time So what can we do if we pull back and just simplify this
down into just the heart of what is photography But really quick I want to give a shout out
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this video. The other day I was unpacking some boxes in
my office into my new studio space and I ran across.Some smaller boxes of film and color
transparencies that I realized I had never scanned I had shot all these images and probably
got busy at the time and went on to other things and came back around anyway I'd never
seen these since I had developed the film. And so I started to scan these and was interesting
going through because a lot of these images. I mean, these go back some of these are like
15 years ago and at that time my equipment and my approach to photography was a little
bit different than it is now. I wasn't shooting digital very much back then. I was pretty much shooting film exclusively
and film is a different medium, therefore, it has a different look to it. The way that book has rendered.The way that
sharpness is rendered the way you have grain on the image especially some of these black
and whites are shot at moves team X3200 film that I had push process to 6400, so it was
got pretty grainy at times but I was looking at these and I realized it was such a beauty
and an elegance of back when I shot film all those were done on this camera and this was
the only camera I used for a number of years. It's an icon F3, it's pretty beat up and I
have a 50 millimeter F1.8 lens on there and so when I was getting these images and looking
at them on the computer, I realized how much I really missed this setup. It was simple. It was elegant. I didn't.Do a lot of lens changing It was
just very straightforward in my approach I also realized that look this 50 millimeter
F 1.8 lens can be found for very little money. It was designed I think in the late 70s so
78.79 was too variations on this but this one does go back that far and you know, I
realized that when you come up now to the year 2021 and what we have in terms of options
for lenses, yeah. I mean if you a be comparison with test shots,
you're gonna find that, you know, their lenses that are way sharper than this lens. They have better bouquet. They have better chromatic aberration angling.In
there. They have better distortion control. We have modern lenses that can do some amazing
things but I'm realizing that just from this this higher level of just me as a photographer
looking at my own work.Or if we really come there's still a tool to have a visual conversation
with the viewer of the picture and if that's successful I guarantee nobody's sitting there
like picking it apart looking for chromatic aberration for instance or they're not going
to judge a photo based on the okay, if they are you probably don't have that great of
photo to begin with and so that was kind of this aha moment that I had earlier this week,
and I mean look all the tools and all the crazy stuff that we have now is present to
us is a lot of fun. I'm just saying that it's really tempting
as a photographer to want to take that into a level that is it's not asImportant as it
really is to your own development and the work that you're doing in your own output
Want to make one other comparison to this So this is kind of a small aside but stick
with me comes back around some music comparison. So last night, I was actually thinking about
this video today and I went down to a jazz club here in Fort Worth called the Scat Lounge
and a friend of mine was playing with his band. It was his trio he's the drummer Same as Andrew
Griffith and he was a really good friend of mine we went to high school together. We used to play in bands together back in
the day and he's a really good cool guy and I really love seeing like how intensely good
he's become at.What?Does I mean he's one of the best jazz drummers in the country I think
and he you know his has done very well with that and so it was fun to catch up But one
thing I thought about when I was watching him is I'm pretty sure he has the same drum
set that he had when we were in college which was years ago and it's interesting because
music much like photography, well there are companies that will come up with many ways
that YouTube can spend your money on the latest and greatest and he just doesn't do that. He's just so intensely focused in on the music
and what his abilities are and I just knowing him. I just know he doesn't care about that kind
of thing. And I thought about it also it'sLike you know
I think maybe a better photography analogy as if they think of the saxophone right There
are many different types of sex ones There's a soprano sex there's an alto saxophone a
tanner sex phone a baritone saxophone, if you are saxophone player it is fairly easy
to adapt to playing any of these. Now sure there are saxophone players that
go out and they probably own every kind of saxophone and they probably switch around
and use them all. A quick this to focal links on lenses and
when you think about the history of jazz and when like I'm up absolutely these days obsessed
with John Coltrane, I'm going back through a major culture. And I listen to John Coltrane and yeah he
played a little bit of soprano but he's known as a tenor player You'll get Charlie Parker
he's known as an alto player You look at Jerry Mulligan was known for the baritone. These are different types of instruments. They are all the same essentially because
if you can play one you can adapt to the others with some modifications obviously but it is
not too hard to adapt but I think that's the same as a photographer owning lenses in every
focal length. The more you spend just being kind of all
over the place with them the less time you're spending on getting really good at one of
them. I would really love to know what you.Guys
think in the comments so make sure you leave me one and we'll continue this discussion
as we go but I want you guys to think about the visual signature and also think about
your own word, maybe limit yourself to one lens talked about this in videos before maybe
we need to do a full proper photo assignment with this anyway. Let me know what you guys think. I'll catch you guys in the next video. Until then later!
