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.

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.

Digger II and Landscape Test

This is another view I really liked. I'm trying to find a good way to accommodate portrait orientation shots and landscape ones both in a good size. This is therefore also a test.

The interest here is the mass and ruggedness of the digger. I've emphasised this by lying down and shooting up from under one tread with a wide angle lens. The best use of wide angles is to get close and bring the viewer in. Here, I think the digger becomes fairly "in your face".

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.