Seeing In Focal Lengths

I went to The River yesterday and had the most joyous time. Under the dark cloth with everything upside down… Sort of like this country’s political climate. I digress…

After this post I will go into my darkroom to process those sheets of film. I got me a winner… I think. Nevertheless…

I had fun. I had fun seeing, carrying heavy equipment, mounting the 8×10 on the tripod, the bulky 8×10 film holder case…

I learned this from Fred Picker, my buddy, long ago in Dummerston, Vermont. We went out for the day with our view cameras. After he watched me mount my 4×5 on the tripod and carry that around until I found something worthy of an exposure, he said, and I quote, “Watch how I go about seeing.”

He then started walking near the river with nothing more than his meter and his viewing screen (an 80 Wratten Filter that turns color to black and white). He saw a composition worth the effort. He went back to his car, a white Saab at that time, and grabbed his tripod and returned the spot he found visually interesting. He set his tripod, adjusted the height, put his chin on the tripod’s camera mount, moved the tripod a bit here and there by just a few inches and returned to his car. He gathered his 4×5 camera with a 210mm lens on it, attached it to the tripod, got under the dark cloth, focused, took a meter reading, made the adjustments of aperture and shutter, closed the lens, cocked the shutter, loaded the film holder, pulled the slide and made the exposure.

That is how you can see in focal lengths. It is critical to see in focal lengths because then you know where to set the tripod. As a photojournalist I used fixed focal length lenses. I never used zoom lenses. Too tempting to just zoom the lens instead of moving your feet.

So… there I was yesterday at The River. Took the tripod to a spot on a hunk of a granite boulder and did what Fred taught me. This photograph is not a world beater but still a successful day.