Putting it all together

[Mark Sawyer]

winogrand said something that relates well to gimmicks. he said he tried working with a 20mm lens for a while, but found that it had such a strong "look" that it made all the pictures look a certain way. and he believed that there's no one way that pictures should look. so he ditched it.

i think this points to a problem with any material or tool that imposes itself strongly. rather than serving your vision, it can end up competing with it. saying what you want to say can be hard enough without an annoying piece of gear fighting to upstage you!

Paul's post is worth reading, then worth reading again as a quote.

And it's also worth remembering that while sometimes something fights to upstage you, other times it sings the most beautiful harmony...

[Brian Ellis]

Henri Cartier Bresson, Richard Misrach and Edward Weston to name a few...

Edward Weston used a variety of different cameras and lenses, see the Daybooks. I thought about Carteir-Bresson but he didn't begin using a Leica until 1932 so he must have used something else before that. And just from looking at the photographs in the book "Henri Cartier-Bresson - the man, the image, and the world" it seems highly unlikely that he used only a single lens. Misrach I don't know about, I'm not that familiar with him or his work and I have no references that provide any detail about his working methods.

[paulr]

guys like weston and cartier bressson used more than one widget during their lifetimes, but they typically stuck with a single, simple setup for the duration of a project ... which in some cases meant decades.

i don't think anyone needs to look at this as a mandate to sell all your toys. but it's a gentle reminder of what's possible when you're driven by a clear vision rather than gear collection lust.

[Frank Petronio]

Yeah but you got to hand to anyone who could still make a decent picture without their Arca-Swiss/Ebony/Carbon Fiber/110XL. Cripes they didn't even have Enzio monitors back then.

[Jack Flesher]

i don't think anyone needs to look at this as a mandate to sell all your toys. but it's a gentle reminder of what's possible when you're driven by a clear vision rather than gear collection lust.

Precisely the point.

[Brian Ellis]

guys like weston and cartier bressson used more than one widget during their lifetimes, but they typically stuck with a single, simple setup for the duration of a project ... which in some cases meant decades.

i don't think anyone needs to look at this as a mandate to sell all your toys. but it's a gentle reminder of what's possible when you're driven by a clear vision rather than gear collection lust.

I think this is getting to the dead horse point. All I asked was who all these great photographers were who used only one camera and one lens. I didn't take anything as a mandate to sell any toys, nor did I question the fact that it's possible to make great photographs with a single camera and lens.

[paulr]

I think this is getting to the dead horse point.

around here the dead horse point usually marks the beginning of conversation, not the end.

[Jack Flesher]

"Dead Horse Point" is a GREAT photo location! (Canyonlands NP)

,

[Paul Coppin]

You could make a single focused theme about someone beating a dead horse....

[Alan Rabe]

Actually Dead Horse Point is not in Canyonlands NP. It is in Dead Horse State Park. But they are next door to each other