january 28, 2023
my style is still developing, it will always be developing, but I do really think I had a breakthrough in the past year or so: there is no greater photographic technique than to put a 50mm lens onto your camera and begin walking away. (I am, of course, not the first person to figure this out; this is just a fun daily post deconstructing my thoughts.)
theoretically, this should be the most boring style of photography - the 50mm lens (on a full-frame sensor) most accurately resembles the typical human eye's perceived depth of field - and indeed, that lens length often produces fairly bog-standard photography as a result, and shots that don't feel reminiscent of what you really saw.
this is because the human eye's field of view is much broader than 50mm - it's around 17-20mm in FOV; eyes are weird because they're curved viewing surfaces - and this is the key to walking away. the only way to combine your perceived sense of focal length (50mm) with your perceived sense of field-of-view (20mm) is to remove yourself from the scene. Walk away and observe your own life; only then will your pictures feel like you can go live in them again.
