Don't Neglect the "50"

This digger is a subject that I spent a fair amount of time with. It was full of so many dramatic lines and textures and pleasing shapes. Because of the scale and weight of it, this digger presented a fantastic opportunity to use the wide angle lens. I enjoyed the opportunity and got some wide shots I am really happy with. However, some of the shots I got that really give me lasting pleasure are the few I took with my 50mm "standard" lens. I attribute this to a few things.

First of all is that the Nikkor 50mm f1.4 lens is a truly fine piece of glass. It's image quality is very high and its distortion is low. It also has a pleasing out-of-focus rendition (bokeh). But all of this probably matters less than you might think. I think its main advantage is actually simply that it is a so-called "standard" lens.

Standard lenses are not sexy. They don't distort our normal perspective and so they can seem quite "boring". But they do have a unique ability to act as a sort of window into the scene. Because the perspective is undistorted things can seem that little bit more life-like. And the photographer is forced to really create the interest in the scene with colour and composition.

Night Lights

This is part minimalist geometric composition and part exercise in selective focus. I have here isolated one single light with a very shallow depth of field. Another old favourite.

Candy Soft

Same session as the other two flowers here. I love this dreamy look.

Sun Lamp

In the garden again. Same techniques and session as "Dark Beauty". This is, obviously, a sunflower.

Dark Beauty

This is another evergreen for me. It's from about a year ago. We have a short garden season in late winter here in Qatar and this is from that time. I think I was using a closeup lens with my 50mm to emphasise the shallowness of the depth of field for a dreamy look.

Death of Darwish

Easily a firm all-time favourite. Such a story of Doha. This building stood unmolested for many years until I drove by one day and a digger was smashing it down. It was a cool scene at night so I parked nearby and strolled over with camera and tripod. There were two guys standing there complete with chairs and tables who seem to be supervising. I asked permission and strarted shooting. I had trouble telling them it was for my own use, not for newspaper. Amateur photography is much more rare in this region where cameras are often viewed with suspicion. In the morning the building was just a pile of rubble.

This was taken with my 50mm prime which gave me enough speed (wide aperture) to capture the scene on 200 speed film without flash. The sky really was that vivid blue.

Cobalt Morning

This is a shot taken on my America trip of October 2007. This was some of the first rolls I ran through my F4. I took 20 rolls of Velvia 50 on that trip and didn't see the results until much later (had to leave my film at a lab in the US and get them shipped months later). This remains a favourite. The F4's matrix meter nailed just about every exposure. This was good because I'd had less than a month with the camera before leaving on the trip and no experience with Velvia.

CMU-Q in Black and White

This is not the sort of thing I often do, although I like this style. Here the focus is on the balance of the tones and shapes within the frame. It is less about what is in front of the camera than what appears (and where) on the film. The black and white conversion is intentional and helps concentrate attention on the shapes and tones.

The Drivers Seat

I took quite a few pictures of this digger. For reasons that I can't quite explain this remains one of my favourite.