A Scenic World

“Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.” ~Arthur Miller

I shoot almost completely with prime lenses. That means there’s no zoom; if you want the object to be bigger in your viewfinder, you either move closer to the object or you move the object closer to you. Or as someone else once said, you have to zoom with your feet.

I went from having a superzoom bridge camera to another bridge camera that didn’t have quite as much zoom to an SLR with one prime lens. When I went to Spain and Morocco, I owned three prime lenses; I took them all. I spent three weeks in two of the most picturesque countries in the world and was only able to shoot at 21mm, 43mm, or 70mm. And I’m fairly confident those are some of the best pictures I’ve taken in my life.

I own more lenses now, but there’s only so much room in my camera bag – I can’t bring a 14mm, a 21mm, a 35mm, a 50mm, a 70mm, a 100mm, 135mm, and 200mm to every shoot. Every time I step outside to shoot, I have to make a decision as to which lens(es) I’ll be bringing. When I go biking, I generally take just the camera with the DA 35 Macro. When I go walking, I always take the D-FA 100mm Macro and anywhere from one to four other lenses. Which lenses I choose will determine what I shoot that day.

One thing I like about my lenses is that I feel like I know them (or most of them, anyway). If I have the 31mm, I switch my “view,” the one I have in my head, to “31.” Sometimes a shot comes into my sights that obviously requires another lens; with any luck, I have that lens on me and can switch. If not…well, if it’s the kind of shot that can be taken on a different day, I take note of the time and place and come back another day. And if it’s not that kind of shot, I keep looking for one I can take with the equipment I have.

The things that keep me from getting great shots is rarely the lack of the right lens – it’s the difficulty of getting out of the chair and out the door to shoot. Very few of us capitalize on the time we have available to us. Nothing improved my photography more than first cancelling cable television and then getting rid of my tv altogether. I’m no Luddite and I still watch shows I like via the internet, but now I don’t find myself flipping though channels, trying to find something to fill the time. Instead, I find myself outside with my camera during prime time.

Life is short. All we can do is make the most of it, and if we only have one lens, then we’d better make damn sure we’re making the most of that lens.

And it all starts by picking up the camera and walking out the door. Even if you only have ten minutes – even if you only get one good shot while you’re out with your one lens, that’s one shot more than you would have had otherwise. And in ten years’ time, that might be the shot that brings back fond memories of your life now or that hangs in your foyer or that brightens someone else’s day.

So have the right regrets! And I’m going to get off the computer now ;)

Yesterday while browsing the net, I came across some water droplet photos. You know the kind – wonderfully sharp, perfect outlines of the drops, beautiful colors in the background. I thought back to a memorable afternoon in my old apartment, right after I got my first DSLR, when I let water drip into a pot for hours and tried to get shots. Without a doubt, that venture was a failure. But surely I’ve learned a bit more about photography since then, right?

Right?

Things I learned today:

• an off-camera flash is not a necessity, but it sure makes thing easier
• I don’t need a fancy hot-shoe adapter to attach my flash to my spare tripod; the flash worked best placed sideways on a book
• milk stains granite

Allow me to explain. I started out with a bowl of water in a fancy bowl Jens bought me for my birthday. I had the flash on its fancy hot-shoe adapter, attached to my spare tripod, pointed down toward the bowl at an angle. I attempted manual focus. This is the best I got:

Part of my problem was that I was not delivering the water in a methodical way. I just kept dipping a paper towel into another bowl and then squeezing it over the bowl (I had the end of the towel turned to a point). I improvised a system by borrowing this granite picture-holder thingy of Jens’ that had long metal arms sticking out of it to hold the photos. I put one of these over my fancy bowl then took off the shoestring of my shoe and tied one end to the picture-holder. Perfect! Now I just squeezed the water over the shoestring, and it dropped perfectly each time. Still, this water wasn’t that awesome. I’d heard that oil is interesting to work with, so I added a layer of vegetable oil.

Oh, God, no. Now it just looked like a goopy mess, which is WAS. I washed out the bowl and decided to try some milk. Unfortunately it meant I was going to have to waste a lot of milk, but hey, it’s for art!

Focusing was still the hardest thing to do. The bowl reflected any lights on in the apartment, so I basically sat in the dark and tried to focus with my right hand while my left dripped milk on to the shoelace with my only source of light the bright flashes from my onboard and external flashes when I tripped the shutter.

I found that the best method was to allow an almost steady stream of liquid to flow down and right as it tapered off to snap like crazy. I tripped the shutter by hand and with a remote, and honestly I didn’t notice a different in the rate of keepers. Both resulted in almost none.

Of course, sometimes you ended up with too many drops in the photo:

As I said, the attrition rate was insane. I shot something like 683 photos today; about 30 were keepers. A lot of them were just bizarre-looking landscapes like this:

Of course, even that’s better than what most were…..

…which is nothing at all:

Still, it wasn’t a total failure. In fact, some of these I even like! You can see the entire set by clicking here, or you can just look at this one:

By the way, I made an incredible mess, and milk DOES stain granite, or at least it leaves a weird residue. Also, my shoelace now feels a little crusty, even after I let it soak in soapy water for a while.