Working the primes: the 35mm and 50mm

Want to get better? Spend some time with a 50mm or 35mm prime. Better yet, spend all of your time with them. Dump the zoom for awhile. Give yourself no escape. Force yourself to stick with it until it works. You can always go back to the zooms anytime. But the experience gained from being locked into primes is invaluable for those who haven’t done so.

I choose these two lenses for the singular reason that they are just plain boring. I remember when I got my first 50mm for my Nikon FM2 way, way back in the day, I was utterly underwhelmed. This was the lens of heritage and tradition! The lens of Cartier-Bresson! Dull, dull, dull. Aperture aside, a 50mm will do you no favors. And a 35mm won’t do you a whole lot more. These lenses impart little signature, and you’ll rarely find that it’s just the right focal length for your shot, especially if you’re relatively new to photography – either it’s too tight or not wide enough. You won’t get the dramatic scope and skewing that you start to get around 24mm, and you won’t get the creamy bokeh that comes into play with lower apertures at 85mm. But these are exactly the reasons that the 50 and 35 can be so electrifying. They are lenses about clarity, framing, juxtaposition, and message. They force trade-offs. They make no easy decisions for you, so you have to make them yourself. They leave you with nothing to work with but content and intelligent thinking. And what combination is more potent than that?

Now using the 50mm is a well-worn subject, and every article on it will mention Cartier-Bresson. And rightfully so. But what most forget is exactly what made Cartier-Bresson so stunning. Yes, yes, there was the timing. But to look at his images is to look at brilliant composition, beautiful juxtaposition, and incisive timing. These are the hallmarks of great documentary photography. Instead, most articles supply a laundry list that reads something like available light, bokeh, naturalness and so forth. Then they’re paired with some of the most boring and uninspired imagery you could imagine. A portrait here. A plain shot of child there. A flower, a skyline, more portraits. Banish the thought of such things. Yes, it’s a great portrait lens. I get that. But the very reason you spend time on primes is to learn how not to take pictures like those.

Primes are the free weights of the photography world. They’re simple, but they’re versatile and effective ways to strengthen your mind. You can never outgrow them. You can’t zoom, so you have to move, and as you move your perspective changes. The relationship between objects change. Things overlap that didn’t. Things don’t overlap that used to. They give you no choice but to refine your position and discover new spatial connections. They also require great attention to timing. There’s no free ride on the visuals, so the timing has to be good.

But, quite possibly the most important aspect is that they condition you to recognize the world as it relates to focal lengths. You see the way the camera sees, and if you know how the camera sees, you can in turn execute your vision. When you shoot with a zoom, you almost never know the focal length you’re using. Who remembers whether they shot something at 38mm or 57mm? So instead of thinking of framing and position first, you think of what you see first, with position and framing as after thoughts. That’s putting the cart before the horse. Pretty soon, you start to chase every shot possible, and rather than looking at space, waiting for timing, and thinking about content, you’re making lightning fast decisions about 10 things at once without giving much consideration to any of them. Most photographers are anything but ready for that. You’re playing Duck Hunt, shooting at anything that moves. That’s not photography. That’s a video game.

Primes limit you. You learn to see that some shots will not work with certain focal lengths, while others call for them. You quickly start to see what shots you can capture and what shots to let go. Whether you use a zoom or a prime, good lensing narrows your focus. It lets you hone it on what works, letting you filter out the distractions and prepare yourself by finding good position. And that really goes to the heart of what good photography is. Being prepared. Observing. Seeing something before it happens. If you can do that, you can capture the world the way you want to. If not, you owe your fortunes to the gods of luck and chance.

 

Thought it was cool to frame everything on the bottom? Cartier-Bresson was doing it way before us. Notice the great use of form and the juxtaposition of the people in front with the structure in the back. Not just a play on space, but a purposeful way to bring emphasis to the building while capturing the flavor of Madrid’s streets.

 

David Alan Harvey captures a wonderful boat scene. The inclusion of the Eiffel Tower in the upper left thoughtfully transforms this shot from a simple picture of people on a boat to a slice Parisian life. The expressions create a wonderful complexity that informs us both of the nature of people and the culture.

 

It’s tempting to show the whole body when it’s there. Christopher Anderson makes a more powerful statement by including just enough for implication, but not enough to be prosaic. What better way to convey New York life?