October 3, 2021

Post 72 / The Average Suburban Dad / 2021-10-03

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This post was pulled from the archives after the web server went down.

Hello!

I have to keep reminding myself that the entire premise of this blog is for me to take photographs that I like and not having to worry about shooting for a brief or to please a client.

This was taken as I was waiting for M (my wife) & R (my daughter) to catch up to me on our walk yesterday. To be totally fair, M was waiting for R and had R not been there, M would have been much closer to me. I probably still would have taken this photo anyway … but I digress.

As this is primarily for me a photographic blog I do hope you will allow this middle-aged photographer some time to waffle on…

According to studies and common consensus, most people view the world through the eyes of a 50mm lens. The 50mm focal distance has often been referred to as the closest to what we see as humans. For me, as I was reminded yesterday, I see it more as 85mm.

For the series of photographs published from this walk, I used M’s 85mm 1.8 lens as I wanted to try something different. The 85mm lens used to be my go-to lens a few years ago. That was before I saw the FroKnowsPhoto YouTube channel and was introduced to the 105mm 1.4 lens by the host, Jared Polin. I’ve used this lens many times on this blog and I love it. I traded in the lens (along with 2 cameras and a massive dent in my card) to acquire the 105 and I haven’t regretted it to this day.

Now back to my point in “seeing” the world through an 85mm focal length. Part of using a lens is knowing where to stand to take the photograph you want. This is especially so if the lens in question does not zoom (a “prime” lens to use the correct vernacular). With me, I knew that 85mm focal length so well I would rarely have to adjust my distance to the subject when raising the camera to my eye and a rush of familiarity came over me when I was using the lens yesterday.

Wow. That was a lot of nerdy camera talk there. It may not make it into the final post.

I’ll try to be less nerdy in the future.

That’s it for now. Talk to you soon. Stay safe.

Richard