When it comes to photography, it’s always a good idea to challenge yourself to do something new and different, just to keep yourself fresh as an artist.
I personally, and many other photographers will agree, that one of the best ways to challenge yourself is to shoot with only one lens. I love to do these kinds of challenges myself. I went to a car show last Sunday called Wish Upon a Car, which was raising money for the Make a Wish Foundation of Georgia. This first image I shot is of a 2012 Chevrolet Camaro that the owner transformed into Bumble Bee from the Transformers franchise, I shot with my Canon EOS 5D Classic with the EF 40mm STM F/2.8.
For this car show, I challenged myself by shooting the car show with my Canon EF 40mm STM F/2.8 pancake lens. I love this little lens as it has the new STM or Stepper Motor auto-focus system, which is very quiet and the lens itself is very small and lightweight.
I know you probably have a telephoto lens or two as I do, but when you take your telephoto lens with you all the time, you tend to get lazy and hang back and shoot everything from a distance, instead of getting up close and personal with your subject. Plus, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, even though zoom lens technology has come a long way, primes still give you superior image and detail quality, especially when you are up close and personal. This second image of a Land Rover, I shot with my Canon EOS 5D Classic with EF 40mm STM F/2.8 as well.
So, your challenge for the month of October, go out and shoot something with nothing more than one of your prime lenses and get up close and personal, as long as you can do it without endangering yourself or anyone else of course.