ENTROPY FOR SMARTIES

Having “too much camera” for the job is worse than not having enough.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

SEVEN YEARS AGO, THE NORMAL EYE BEGAN ITS BLOGGY INFANCY based on a very simple idea, one which I hoped might help its content outlast the comings and goings of trends or fashions. That idea was (is) that this photography thing is a journey, not a destination, that we are always on the way to something, be it personal development or increased technical mastery or both. Indeed, our welcome page specifically refers to the “journey from taking to making”, a trek which is designed to reveal something new about ourselves at every turn in the road. This small-town newspaper, then is never so much about the “how to” side of photography as it is about the “why do we do it?” side.

On a personal level, the blog was also a by-product of a yearlong stretch during which I used a 50mm prime lens exclusively, forcing myself to shoot anything and everything with a single optic in an effort to increase my own mindfulness. I needed something that would slow me down so I could anticipate, plan, even pre-imagine shots, rather than effortlessly clicking them off in mega-batches. I also stuck an additional pebble in my shoe by shooting only on manual, again with the idea that streamlining my lens choices and functions would allow me to take greater conscious control of whatever I set out to capture.

This is not just the photographic equivalent of setting off into the wilderness with just a hunting knife and some beef jerky to win some bar bet about your ability to live off the land. It’s not a stunt or a dare. It’s about learning to emphasize your own vision rather than relying on equipment to hand-deliver you technically acceptable but emotionally empty images. Using a single lens for everything still gives you just as many creative choices as you’ll find lugging around half a dozen different optics and gizmos, so what we’re talking about here is speeding up your reaction time (no fumbling to change out gear, hence fewer shots missed), teaching you a personally consistent way of imagining/framing a shot, and getting to the point where your bond with your camera is so instinctual, you’ll devote a much higher percentage of your day to seeing instead of calculating. Prime lenses, which have only one focal length, are also called “normal” lenses, and that word intrigued me. What, in terms of how we first learned to use our senses, could be more “normal” than seeing with a full and profound sense, versus just having things pass by our eyes largely unnoticed? Thus, as I worked to get everything out of my “normal” 50mm, I was also trying to re-normalize my own vision, taking it off the auto-mode settings imposed by cameras that have conditioned us to choose convenience over honesty.

I restate this little epistle from time to time because it continues to inform everything I try to do as a photographer. And because there will come times when you have, due to bad luck or fate or stupidity, limited options for getting the picture. Equipment will fail: cameras will be sucked up by a swamp or tumble over a cliff: batteries will die. And when that happens, even though your technical choices have become more narrow, your ability to make the picture you want will not. Your “normalized” eye will empower you to produce results with any camera, any lens, in any situation. And that’s what the journey is all about. Call it Entropy For Smarties.

In the next installment, I hope to illustrate how I’m trying to call on this flexibility to help me deal with an approaching shooting situation that I know will be more restrictive, gear-wise, than I’d like. I have to keep reminding myself that making images is only partly about the gear. The trick is to make it as small a part as possible.