PhotoWalk Tuesday, revisited

I love having a little companion on my photowalks.  She inspires me to look at things from a different (shorter) perspective.  She keeps me hopping.  She reminds me just how annoying it is to chimp after every. single. shot.  "Look, Mommy!  Good shot...good shot."  While I don't want to stifle her enthusiasm, I also don't want her to be so busy looking at the LCD screen that she misses another "good shot."  I'm trying to teach her that it's okay to look every once in awhile to make sure she captured what she wanted, but it's better to show your images all at once.  Later.  After editing.  (Ya'all have heard me expound before on the importance of editing, so I don't need to get into that again.) (Except to say that more people should edit.  Heavily.  Before showing their images to everyone.  Or anyone.  Or at least me.)  I realize I'm guilty of the over-chimping thing, which is probably why I'm so sensitive to it with her.  I'm in essence trying to train both of us.

I decided to go on the walk yesterday after blogging about how much I wanted to go out and shoot.  "What's stoppin' ya?" a little voice said.  "Hell if I know," another answered.  (Which is when I started to get a little worried about the two-way conversation going on in my head, but then promptly moved on when I realized that it was, at least, a logical conversation.)

Then a part of me (a third voice?) groaned at the idea of lugging a bunch of weight around.  I didn't feel like being burdened, or unwieldy.  Not that I don't love my gear...I do.  It's just that my workhorse lens, the one I use 99% of the time, weighs as much as a Yugo.  I decided to step out of that rut, that routine, and use a different lens.  And I remembered that it's been ages since I used my sweet little 50mm prime.  A prime lens is simply one that is not a zoom.  It's got a fixed focal length.  While that seems rather limiting, it can really be freeing at times.  And forces you to see differently and "zoom with your feet."  It's fast as hell at f/1.4, and it's got phenomenal optics.  Just gorgeous.  It's not actually 50mm on my D300, though, because it's one of them there ol' fashioned lenses made fer film cameras ('member those?), so the difference between the size of a 35mm frame of film and the sensor in the D300 means I have to multiply the focal length of the film lenses by 1.5.  So my sweet little 50mm prime becomes a 75mm prime, which is fine.  It's also the smallest (read: lightest) lens I own.

I took off the 17-55mm (seriously, you could do reps with this thing and build up some serious bulk) and mounted the 50mm.  Then I got really wild and crazy and removed the quick-release tripod mount plate.  Gasp!  What resulted was a greatly pared down camera that didn't feel like it was banging into everything as I walked.

What also resulted was a completely different way of shooting than what I'm used to.  Because of that f/1.4 focal length and good light, I could open the lens wide and get wicked short depth-of-field.  I've been wanting to experiment with DOF for awhile now, and shooting yesterday made me wonder why it took so long.  I might have to continue with this experiment for awhile.

Yeah.  I told you her shots were better than mine.  Ah, well, at least I was shooting!