Winter finally shows up and I shoot a 50mm again

January 04, 2025

I’ve talked about what an abnormal winter we’ve been having here in Northwest Montana (Is the concept of normality even valid at this point in the light of climate change?). After a dry 40 degree Christmas we finally got a good dousing of snow last night and through the day today, getting around 8 inches here in the valley. As always, living with a cattle dog, the pup was in need of some exercise in order to chill him out and prevent him from being a general menace. But it’s a good excuse to get out and get some time in the woods so before we headed out the door I grabbed the Leica M262 and opted to shoot the Zeiss Planar this time.

I’ve been shooting a lot of 28 lately after having my 28 back so it was interesting to shoot the 50. As I’ve said, the 50 is probably my most used focal length over my years of making photographs. If the 28 is about documentarian, complex, slightly unwieldy, holistic imagery (ideally) then the 50 is the master of honing in, subject isolation, compositional intentionality, etc etc.. The 50 seems to encourage you to really have to narrow your focus and think more intentionally about how you’re selecting subjects, framing, and composing images.

I feel a bit torn about focal lengths lately. I feel very comfortable shooting the 50 and I do enjoy the more intentional way of shooting that it seems to encourage but I’ve also been enjoying the time with 28 despite often struggling to figure out how exactly to employ it effectively in the situations that I’m usually shooting in. I’ve also been shooting 40 off and on as am attempt at splitting the difference and finding a focal length that works as a good middle ground, but that has been largely unsuccessful, suffering from most of the things I dislike about 35mm lenses (sitting in this weird no-man’s land between 28 and 50).

I feel very comfortable with the 50 and the results that I shoot with it are often formally strong (IMO), but they also strike me as a bit stale a lot of the time. It may be a matter of how long I have shot the focal length, it feels very easy for me to go out and just churn our work that is very much “on brand” as far as the aesthetic goes. Obviously this isn’t strictly an issue with the focal length itself, it’s a byproduct me and my way of seeing and working with the focal length. The 50 is a part of it but it’s not all of it.

But enough rambling, here are some more photos for your viewing pleasure

One Last Walk in 2024

January 01, 2025

Yesterday morning I took Ruckus out to a field to play frisbee and get some of his energy out before a grooming appointment. Conveniently my wife works at the pet store where he went to get groomed so I was able to drop him off and then head home with a couple hours to myself. I haven’t walked around town with my camera in a few weeks and I decided that doing so would be a good use of my spare hours. So I grabbed the M262 with the 28 and headed out the door and down the street.

I often struggle to photograph in the winter, not only out in the landscape but especially around town. Something about thew world being cold and dead just makes the vibe a little less inspiring. I think this is part of the reason that I have not really made that much of an effort to get out and shoot lately. But I felt like challenging myself, on two fronts: shooting around town in the winter and forcing myself to shoot the 28 around town, which I find to be a harder environment in which to use the 28. It can be harder to fill the frame at the distances you find yourself working at.

So I went in to it assuming that I would struggle, between the shooting environment and the tool choice, and that if I was able to come away with anything I was happy with, that would just be a bonus. I generally felt dull and uninspired most of the walk, but that's how it goes sometimes. But as I walked longer I was able to start to see things here and there, allow things to speak to me. And some photos started to emerge.

I found myself, unsurprisingly, drawn to the trees, to the twisted branches of cottonwoods stretching to the sky in quiet repose. And to the stillness and emptiness, the slumber of the world, a reflection of the ancient patterns of creation that still find themselves at work around us and through our all-too-human world, despite our best efforts to shore ourselves up against the Other of Nature.

I can’t say that I’ll miss 2024 much. It was a rough year, which seems to have been a strangely universal experience. I’m cautiously optimistic about 2025 but maybe only for the fact that I can’t really imagine how it could be much worse than 2024. Maybe. How does that saying go? It gets worse before it gets worse? Something like that. But I’d be very happy to be wrong.

Christmas morning, walking, reunited with the TTA 28

December 27, 2024

Christmas is finally behind us. Which seems weird, because at least to me I’m not even sure how it got here. My brain constantly struggled to reconcile the objective fact that it was almost Christmas with my subjective sense that it was not even December yet. I’m chalking this up to the weather. We’re having an unseasonably warm and snowless winter so far, so it quite literally does not feel (or look) like Christmas. Regardless, Christmas arrived, and it was a nice day. We started the day with an early, quiet walk in the forest, followed by a relaxing afternoon around the house before spending the evening with family.

I recently got my TTArtisan 28mm lens back from a friend and that Christmas morning walk was my first time taking a walk with it again. Having been shooting 40/50mm in its absence I did feel a bit of that jarring “Whoa that’s a lot of information in the frame” experience when trying to compose images. But it was fun, and I enjoyed working those visual muscles and trying to figure out how to work with it again.

Below is a sampling of images from that quiet Christmas morning

As noted, all the images were shot with the Leica M262 and the TTArtisan 28/5.6