Tuesday, November 26, 2024

I don’t typically shoot with a shallow depth of field. I find it to be a crutch that’s often employed for the sake of employing. I think a wide depth of field, when executed properly, opens the potential for a richer photograph. I think that shooting with slower lenses is a more enjoyable experience as the’re almost always smaller and lighter. I think a lot of things. But with that being said…

For years I have photographed at one focal length set to one aperture. I wanted to develop a visual style and I knew the best way to kneecap that goal was inconsistency. And while I’m not close to developing a style, I’m closer. That said, at some point I just went on autopilot to my own harm. My whole one focal length, one aperture approach took shape while I was shooting street. Shooting at f11 made sense given I was zone focusing larger scenes. There was logic and intent behind it.

However, as I’ve moved away from street, I never stopped to think if the style still made sense. And I’ve noticed that a lot of my recent photographs have suffered because of an approach that was born of another context. Yes, I still shoot larger scenes, but not exclusively. And those new photographs do not benefit from my past approach. What was once consistency just became brain-dead uniformity.

I’m all for consistency. But consistency requires intent and logic. Otherwise it’s just brain-dead uniformity. And to be honest, I’d pick shooting with one aperture over utter randomness every day of the week. That said, new subjects require new approaches. And now that I photograph different subjects, it seems reasonable to have different tools. Turns out lenses have different apertures for a reason. In retrospect, that’s pretty obvious, but sometimes it takes me four or five years to figure things out.