... from a time long before...

I was cruising through my Flickr site and stumbled on an image.  

It was entered in one of David Hobby's Strobist contests and surprisingly to me it won forth or fifth place.

Did I really do this?  Wow.

 

Do lenses matter as much as we're lead to believe they do?

Here I am, staying for yet another three months in Nice, France.  After this year is said and done we'll have been here 6 months.  Half a year.  Extraordinary year, this.

There's not been much time this trip to consider photography, the craft, the art, the tools, nor the techniques.  Yet I snapped a couple images recently that reminded me of something that I've thought about posting.

I wanted to call into question the little matter of lenses and how much importance we place on them.

 

 

Sure, most people who make images couldn't work without at least one lens.  As we know, and without cutting things too fine, there are plenty of photographers who use pinholes and zone plates.

No.  That's not my point.  My point is lenses and the minutiae of optical performance and image rendering are largely subjective and up to the image maker.  

Outside of ourselves as photographers, who really cares what lens made which image?  The viewer?  I think not.

Without looking at the EXIF data, here's what I mean.  These ancient olive trees are found in the park where they used to play jazz into the wee-hours of the morning during a Nice summer give me pleasure.

I'm happy I had a camera and a lens.  I don't think these could be any better to me had I used my "favorite" optics that stayed home back in Paris.

And yet I fret and look and explore and ponder and search and am ready to buy yet another little optic that will somehow make my photographic life "perfect."

I'm a strange being.  Really.  I am.