Photographic life under lockdown

As I write this, at the beginning of May, we’ve been confined to our houses by the Covid-19 virus for around six weeks. It’s been a difficult and scary time, but also a liberating one in terms of having some time to take stock.

My working life is quieter than it has ever been at the moment, so I’ve taken the opportunity to focus on my photography. I’m lucky living here in rural Essex as I can get out into the countryside on foot in just a few minutes for my daily permitted exercise. As no one has said we’re not allowed to take cameras with us while exercising I’ve been shooting new imagery every day. This gallery is a small example of the subjects I’ve been aiming my camera at since the 24th March. Click on any thumbnail to see the image larger.

One flash of excitement during this period has been Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, on the last Sunday in April. I’m still waiting for the negatives I shot that day to return, so I’ll write a separate post about the event in a few days. However, I’ve also been shooting some images around our village for a pinhole photography exhibition themed around the lockdown later this year. I got some very strange looks walking around Elsenham toting a wooden box on a tripod, but I had fun and here you can see a handful of the resulting images.

I’ll share further information about the exhibition both here and in my newsletter when I have it.

If you’d like to subscribe to my newsletters to hear about my workshops, exhibitions and more please visit my contact page.

Prime numbers

It’s now almost a year since I stopped my decade long 365 project. After taking a fresh photo every day for ten years I was ready for a break. It’s been liberating at times, knowing I don’t need to create a new image after a long day’s work. But in recent months I’ve missed using my camera so frequently. I always had a feeling that photographic addiction would be hard to shake off!

So what do I have planned to get me motivated again? Well, it’s a project that first occurred to me a few months ago, involving prime lenses.

What is a prime lens?

Put simply, a prime is a lens which shoots only at one focal length - as opposed to a zoom which can cover a range, from wide angle to telephoto. For a long while new cameras were sold with a prime lens, often a 50mm focal length. This was because zoom lens technology wasn’t great and prime lenses were invariably sharper. Over time zooms improved enormously and it’s now the norm for a kit lens to be a zoom of some sort.

So what’s so great about a lens which doesn’t zoom?

On the face of it, the restriction of a prime lens seems a disadvantage. After all, it means you have to walk to get closer to the subject of your photo, rather than simply turning your lens’s zoom ring. However, this very restriction can have benefits too.

When using a zoom it’s very easy to get rooted to the spot, using the lens to change your composition. This often makes us lazy and we work less hard to find the perfect image. It could be that moving a step or two sideways will make an infinitely better picture - for instance, it might mean the person you’re photographing no longer has a lamp post sticking out of their head!

Another factor people often overlook, or have no awareness of in the first place, is the effect different focal lengths have on the pictures we take. A wide angle lens is great for cramming loads of elements into a sweeping landscape photo, but it can make those elements seem distant and create an underwhelming end result. In contrast, a telephoto lens will appear to compress the scene, bringing compositional elements together. These factors mean the appropriate lens choice can be a very powerful tool. Using a zoom makes you less aware of your choice of focal length, whereas you make an active decision when selecting a prime lens to shoot with.

It’s worth mentioning at this stage that almost anyone who has taken photos with the camera on their mobile phone (unless you have one of the swanky new ones with multiple lenses!) has used a prime lens. The average smartphone camera has an effective focal length of about 28mm - fairly wide angle - so if you want to get closer you just have to walk!

Why do I use prime lenses?

I bought my first prime lens, a Canon 50mm f1.8, on a whim in our local camera shop back in about 2007. It was a twenty year old lens, costing just £59 and sounded like an angry bumble bee when focusing, but I loved it!

Prime lenses are simpler in design than zooms, so you tend to get a larger maximum aperture. This lets in more light and creates beautiful bokeh - that lovely creamy, blurred background effect. They also tend to be small and light and often cheaper too. Over the years I’ve accumulated a small collection of primes of different focal lengths and my camera bag will usually contain two or three of them at any one time.

My decision to use primes is largely as a result of seeing what they do for my pictures. As well as being able to creatively blur parts of the image, I find I think more creatively when using them. I’ll walk around a subject, using my viewfinder to locate the perfect spot to shoot from - the place where I get exactly the composition I’m after. After a while you learn to ‘see’ at the focal length of the lenses you use most, and I can predict fairly accurately how much I will get in the frame with a given lens from a certain distance.

I do still use zooms from time to time, although it tends to be in particular situations. For action or wildlife photography I use a long telephoto zoom lens - after all you can’t always walk closer to a bird or a speeding racing car! I’ll often choose zooms for event photography too, where I know I’ll be locked into one spot, unable to use my feet to zoom.

So what’s my big plan then?

Funnily enough it doesn’t require a big change to my shooting habits, but perhaps a more focused one.

As I’ve already said, each prime lens creates a different look and I want to exploit that more by using just a single lens. Occasionally I already leave the house with just one prime lens, but more often I’ll take a selection so I can swap when the mood takes me.

My plan for this project is to have at least one day each week when I use a single prime lens, making myself really utilise its individual qualities. I will use the same lens for a whole month so I can really understand it and learn to get the best out of it. Of course there will be some occasions when I just can’t limit myself to this single lens, so for this reason I’m only committing to a minimum of one day a week.

How long will this take?

At the moment I have six prime lenses, with effective focal lengths from 24 to 150mm. If I spend a month with each lens that should take me well into 2020. Some will be easy to use - 50mm for example. But the 150mm lens should challenge me significantly more. I’m starting off in November with my 25mm f1.4 lens (a 50mm equivalent for those who shoot on a full frame camera) - in fact I already started this afternoon.

How to follow my project…

If you want to see the photos that result from this project your best bet is to pop over to one of my two Instagram accounts: HelenHookerPhoto or HelenHookerArchitecture. I’ll label images with the hashtag #PrimeLensProject so you can also search for them that way. They’ll also be posted over on my Photoblog and you can search there with the same phrase.

This project isn’t as full on as committing to shooting every single day again - I’m not sure I’m quite ready for that yet! But it’ll give my photography a little more focus and will hopefully help me understand my lenses even better.

Why not join in?

If have a prime lens and fancy joining me on this adventure, please feel free to use the #PrimeLensProject on social media and I’ll create a post here every few weeks to let you know which focal length I’ll be using for the following month.

In case you’re wondering, the pictures dotted through this post are the first ones created for this project, taken during a visit to Audley End, with my 25mm lens. Who knows what I’ll aim it at next, but I’m already raring to go with this challenge!