Shooting old school to celebrate America

"F/8 and be there." If you know, you know.

It's an old photography saying attributed to famous crime scene photographer Weegee. ​

He, along with other photographers from the 1920s to the 1960s, didn’t have all the fancy camera bells and whistles that photographers have at their disposal today. 

Many shot with a standard 50 mm lens. This fixed focal length lens is considered about as close as optics can come to duplicating what our eyes see. 

Many standard lens photographers are my heroes. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andre Kertesz, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, etc.​

I began with a standard lens and managed to make good enough photographs to prompt my high school art teacher to tell me I had a good eye. (I truly think he was subtly telling me I couldn't draw worth a damn so if I were to insist on making art... try using a camera.)

​But it really wasn't until I got a 24 mm wide angle lens in my hands that I truly found my eye.

Zoom lenses hit the scene in the 1960s and probably didn't really get good until the 1980s. Prior to that are best zoom lenses were our feet.

​They still are in many ways.

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough." That famous quote from Robert Capa is still true today. Many photographers are too timid to get close. Even since COVID, I've used a telephoto much more than I did prior.

 I’ve now been a serious photographer for over 40 years now. In that time, I have had many ups and downs.

The ups I usually can’t fully explain because "flow" goes that way. You do the work and accept the results as sometimes being from a different place. The best photos often feel like they came during an out of body experience.

The lows, boy I understand the lows.

​I feel like I go through moments where I wonder if I'll ever make a really good photograph again. And this isn't easy to to put a finger on why, nor is it always a simple fix.

Lows come from an apathy of making the same pictures over and over again with seemingly no new inspiration. It comes from self doubt or maybe self loathing. Am I holding on to that dream of being a painter instead? But I understand I truly am a photographer with a voice.

During these times of doubt, I often pick up old (and new) photo books and wonder why I can’t shoot like that?

Sometimes that is enough, but usually I try to also do something mechanically different. A different lens maybe. Carry a different camera or bag. Switching to cargo pants and shorts was a game changer once. Shoot with my phone only has also worked. Anything to minimize possible distractions from the true meaning of photography and to concentrate just on making an image with the tool in my hand as best I can to tell a visually interesting story.

Zoom lenses slow this process for me. Though I admit truly good quality zoom lenses are great. Sometimes they give too many options when I just need to get to the heart of what is in front of me.

Over time, I minimized my equipment to a 20mm wide angle and a 300mm telephoto and simply made images without wondering if it would look better at 27.5mm or 28.2mm.

Recently, feeling in a rut and my back and shoulders hurting, I decided to try shooting only with my 50mm lens again. Something I don't have a long history of success doing. But it is a challenge to myself and I am hoping to find my inner Cartier-Bresson, Frank or Kertesz.

Though I have not yet truly found my 50mm eye, my second day was better than my first in the experiment.

At Jolly July 3, I tried it out (below). Not much success. But the following night at Thunder over Franklin on July 4 (above) I had a tad more.

It felt fruitless at first and I really struggled, making timid images instead of embracing the idea.

At first I was thinking more Robert Frank... straight observations that hold meaning in just pure rawness of what is there in front of the view. I quickly was reminded I'm no Robert Frank.

​I also realized I wasn't seeing or finding the Cartier-Bresson "moment," or the Kertesz juxtapositions of form and space.

But then I began "feeling" the lens a little more. I tried to carry that over to the following night in Franklin and, at first, again felt too timid and was not using the frame for all its potential. By the end of the night I was getting closer, but I still have a long way to go.

I plan on continuing this experiment for a little while longer. Which means I am going to apologize in advance if I'm in the way or get too close. I just want my pictures to get better.