A Week with One Lens

I left the zoom on the shelf on a Monday. One 35mm lens, a spare battery, a notebook. That was the bag.

The first two days are loud

You reach for the long end that isn't there. A face across the street, a gesture worth keeping, and your whole body leans forward, waiting for the glass to do the walking. Then you remember. So you cross the street, or you don't.

By Tuesday night I had a handful of frames I'd have made better with something longer. I let them go. Not every picture is yours to take, and a week is a good length of time to practise believing that.

What the lens asks of you

It asks you to stand close. A 35 doesn't flatter distance: a person two steps away is a portrait, a person ten steps away is a small detail in a street. There's nowhere to hide, which turns out to be the point.

Some things I noticed by midweek:

• I stopped scanning for subjects and started scanning for edges, the places where one thing meets another.

• I waited longer. If a frame was good but empty, I stayed put and let someone walk into it.

• I made about a third of my usual number of exposures.

• My feet hurt. That's fine, and probably related to the previous three.

The frame I would have missed

On Thursday, in a stairwell behind a tailor's shop, a woman was pinning a hem against the light of a single window. With a zoom I'd have stood in the doorway and taken her from across the room. A tidy picture, the kind everybody has.

With one lens I had to ask. I said hello, explained myself badly, and she said I could stand by the radiator if I kept quiet. So I stood by the radiator for forty minutes. The frame I wanted happened once, for about a second: her hands, the pin between her lips, the white fabric taking all the light in the room.

I haven't made a better picture this year.

What I kept

On Sunday I put the zoom back in the bag, then took it out again. I don't think the week proved that one lens is better. It showed me that I'd stopped choosing, that the choosing had become a habit and the habit had become a way of not looking.

Nothing here is a rule. If you want to try it, all I'd say is this: pick the focal length you trust least and give it seven days. Write down what annoys you. By Wednesday the notes get interesting.

The notebook, by the way, is mostly lists of doors.