Learning to see with one lens

For about six years I owned a bag of lenses I mostly didn’t use. A big zoom for “travel”, a portrait lens for “people”, a wide one for “architecture”. I carried them up Lisbon’s hills like a pack mule, changed them on street corners and missed nearly everything that happened while I was doing it.

Two winters ago I sold the lot and bought a second-hand Fujifilm X100V. It has one lens, fixed, 23mm — about what you’d see with a 35mm on film. You can’t zoom. You can’t swap. You just walk.

Walking closer

The first month was frustrating. Everything was either too far or too near. The fishmonger at Campo de Ourique was a speck; the laundry over Rua dos Remédios was a blur of sheets. I came home with forty pictures a day and liked none of them.

Then I noticed I’d started moving my feet. Instead of standing still and wishing, I crossed the road. I stepped into doorways. I asked the fishmonger, in my best Portuguese, if I could take his picture, and he held up a dourada like a trophy and laughed. That photo is on my fridge.

A fixed lens is really an argument for getting nearer to things — physically, and a bit emotionally. You can’t hide behind a long zoom across a square. You have to be part of the scene, even if only as the woman with the small silver camera everyone ignores.

Waiting instead of changing

The other thing that changed was patience. When you can’t change your lens, you change your timing. I began finding a frame I liked — a yellow wall, a stair rail, a slice of river between two buildings — and then waiting for something to walk into it.

Sometimes that took two minutes. Sometimes forty. Once, on the steps below Graça, it took a whole flask of coffee before a girl in a red coat ran down with a loaf of bread under her arm. I’ve never been happier about a photograph. The same habit taught me most of what I know about shooting golden hour on the 28 tram, where the light changes faster than the stops.

What a year changed

I take fewer photographs now, maybe a dozen on a good walk, and I keep more of them. My pictures look like they come from the same person, which they never used to. They’re all roughly the height of my eyes and the width of my arms, which turns out to be how I see the world anyway.

I also stopped thinking about gear. When there’s nothing to upgrade, you run out of things to read reviews of, and that time goes back into walking. My camera bag is now a canvas tote with a lens cloth and a bag of almonds in it.

I’m not saying everyone should sell their lenses. Wildlife photographers, please keep your zooms; the birds will thank you. But if you feel like you’re carrying more than you’re using, try a month with one focal length. Tape the zoom ring if you have to. Walk closer. Wait a bit. See what turns up in the frame.