Journal /
Photography
One lens for a whole year
I took the zoom off my camera in January and did not put it back. Fewer choices made better pictures, and a slower walk made braver ones.
Last January I took the zoom lens off my camera, put a small fixed lens on, and promised myself I would not change it for a year. I expected to miss the zoom every day. I missed it for about a fortnight.
A fixed lens takes away one decision: how close or how far. That sounds like a loss. In practice it hands the decision back to your feet, and your feet are much better at it.
Walking instead of zooming
With a zoom you stand still and adjust the frame. With a fixed lens you move until the frame is right. You step closer to the market stall, or back into the doorway, or down onto the kerb. Every one of those moves changes the angle and the light, not just the size of things.
After a few weeks I stopped thinking about the lens at all. I knew exactly what it would see before I lifted the camera, which meant I lifted it less often and missed less when I did.
“When you only have one way of seeing, you stop choosing how to look and start choosing where to stand.”
Getting closer
The hardest part of street photography is being near people. A fixed lens forces the issue. You cannot hide across the road, so you learn to be calm, visible and patient. People mostly ignore a photographer who is not sneaking.
A year of contact sheets, all at the same focal length.
I also learned to wait. Instead of chasing pictures, I found a place where the light was good and stayed there until something happened in it. Some of my favourite frames from the year came from standing on one corner for forty minutes.
It changed what I photographed, too. Without the zoom I could not pull a single face out of a crowd from across the square, so I started photographing the crowd itself: groups crossing a road, queues outside a bakery, the shapes people make together. Those pictures say more about a place than any single portrait I took the year before.
Editing got easier as well. Every frame had the same perspective, so the good ones stood out quickly and a set of twelve looked like it belonged together. When people saw the prints, they asked what camera I had used. The honest answer was: the same small one I had always had, used in a simpler way.
I have kept the fixed lens on. The zoom lives in a drawer, and I do not miss it.
Try a month first
You do not need a new camera. Set your phone or your zoom to one focal length and tape it there if you have to. Walk the same route for a month. Keep every frame. At the end, choose twelve and print them small.
You will see your own way of looking more clearly than any gear review could show you, and you will have a set of pictures that belong together because they were made the same way.
Learn this properly
Street photography with one lens
6 weeks
· £190
