Comfort zone or temporary work zone?

Comfy Zone

Blogs are a wonderful feedback tool. The other day I was discussing my downward trending in equipment and made mention that I generally photograph in the middle range. Well, you have to be careful what you say as some savvy reader will pick it up and run with it, as did Earl in this post, Widening the comfort zone. Reading Earl’s post, I started to think about what I had said. Quoting myself:

I find that I tend to stay in the middle range and don’t so much venture out into ultra-wide or telephoto. I’m quite comfortable there.

This was in reference to little used lenses outside of the 18 – 200 range, both super wide-angle and telephoto. I think that we can be quite creative with one camera and one lens, or small range of lenses. There are certain ways that we see the world and one lens may fit that way of seeing best.

A good example of this is my friend Mike Brown, over at Macro Art In Nature who makes glorious macro shots. As a matter of fact, we had dinner together a couple of weeks ago on my way through Columbia, SC. We talked about equipment and, yep, he’s still using all same stuff that he always has. One camera, a lens or two, and cheap stuff that he buys from the dollar store to reflect or diffuse light. He’s recently called himself a “One Trick Pony”, or he doesn’t want to be seen that way. So, perhaps he’ll switch lenses and we’ll see something different.

He never seems to be at a loss on how to make a good picture and he has one camera and basically one lens. He seems to be able to constantly recreate himself with that combination. That is his familiar comfort zone, as well as his work zone and, to my way of looking, it seems as there is no reason or call from him to leave that as long as he is still feeling creative.

I tend to stray out of my normal lens choice when I’m feeling a bit blocked in the creativity department. For a while, I was really into the wide-angle lens and will still put it on when the mood strikes, but it is, for me, such a specialty lens, less so than the Lensbaby, but still a type of infrequent use lens. I would say that probably my favorite focal length is about 50 – 75mm, or what we call ‘normal’ angle of view. After all, it is how the world appears to me. So, I generally go there to capture it.

Anyway, great food for thought, Earl. I appreciate it. I’ll probably keep the 11-18, or perhaps get a 20mm f/2.8 … for when I eventually go full frame!