JUST YOU AND ME, KID. OR NOT.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS, THERE IS A CONSTANT YIN AND YANG between giving one’s self as many different options in the way of optics and streamlining to very narrow choices in the quest to eliminate clutter and bother. The very fact that dozens of lenses exist on every major manufacturer’s platform is alluring indeed, and it doesn’t take a lot to make the average shooter buy into the idea that the very next hunk of glass they buy will be “the one”, the ultra-precise piece of kit that will make everything make sense and give us flawless results forever. This can lead to closets and bags bursting with specialized lenses that overlap with each other in purpose and results, and it can lead photographers into debt or down a rabbit hole, or both. The other approach, of course, is to do more and more with less and less.

I go through this argument for days ahead of a planned trip, which is where I find myself at this writing. For the next week I will run into a variety of shooting situations, and I have already spent all too much time trying to prepare for them all by packing…what? Will I need a portrait lens? Will my wider lenses accomplish the same thing? Will macro or soft-focus or supple bokeh figure into the mix? How much actual junk do I want to lug through several airports? And, once I arrive, how much of this gross tonnage will I want to carry with me for any extended period? Should I opt for the most choices, or decide that one, maybe two lenses will be more than enough for 99% of the things I’ll want to tackle?

I’ve come close to doing vacations and trips on a single, one-gizmo-does-all lens, most probably my trusty 50mm primes, and yet I still have never actually left home with only a single option in my kit bag. Part of this may be due to the fact that I don’t have enough confidence in my own flexibility, the acumen it takes to make a single lens do what I need it to do in all circumstances. And even though I logically know that many great shooters committed themselves almost solely to single optics, like Cartier-Bresson with his 50 or Avedon with his 80, I seem always to try to give myself an escape route, despite…..despite the fact that, trip after trip, I come back having used one lens predominantly over all the others that I packed along. At this point, all these lenses are not performing the duty of a tool, but instead acting as a kind of Linus’ security blanket. I know this, and yet…

When I force myself to think analytically rather than emotionally, I realize that, as I age, and do more of my work with a limited range of gear options, I worry less and shoot more. And yet. And yet. And yet my pragmatic fears hamper my emotional surety. That’s not a shameful thing, but it is surely the most human thing about being a photographer.