Sometimes, when I decide I want to learn something, I invest too hard in it to start. I did some woodworking for a while, pulled back on it, and now I mostly work on making picture frames from old or salvaged wood. So I have a fairly underutilized table saw and chop saw. I’d kind of like to try making an outdoor table again, but it’s actually the basic raw material that is a pain in the neck to get and store. Also I just never skilled up enough to feel confidence about what I was doing.
With photography, I think I more properly went at it slowly. My major mistake was buying a telephoto lens before I really understood what they’re for and the constraints they pose.
The one time I regretted not having a specific piece of gear was on the trip that led to this photo. I went off with a friend who is a more gifted amateur photographer than I am and we went to the Delaware Water Gap in early autumn, around this time of year. It was a glorious morning with striking clouds, low fog over the water, and fantastic crepuscular light breaking through. And I didn’t have a real wide-angle lens. I had the original kit lens that came with my Nikon and that had a bit of a wide-angle range but not so great, and it also just didn’t take very sharp pictures.
I felt really kind of sad when I got home and started processing, because I could see that I had some great shots from a great day that were substantially less great because of the lens and nothing else. You can see in this shot that it just ought to go out wider on either side, take in more of the landscape, as wide as the eye can see and more. It looks like a bad crop of a better picture.
So that was the next thing I picked up and of the lenses I have, it’s the one I’m most prone to swap out for when I see a shot that requires it. My macro lens I only use when I’m planning to do macros, they take some conscious thought.
I’ve been fairly inactive in the last three years in terms of photography. I’m going to try and use some daily games this year to stimulate my ideas about what to shoot and how to shoot it. It’s really almost never about gear. About the only thing I can see that would change what I could do would be a full-frame camera of a more current generation (I use a DX-format Nikon) or maybe a 35mm lens intended to replace my current 50mm prime lens. The former would be expensive, the latter not so much. (I’m always fascinated by large-format photography but that’s a completely different animal in terms of training, cost and dedication: that’s for people who have money and time to burn or for whom it is their bread and butter.)