How's it has it guys? Today's episode is brought to you by Frames magazine. We need to talk about lenses and specifically what is the best lens for you. Think back to when you last shopped around for a lens. It's more than likely that you thought about, well I want to take some portraits so I need to find a portrait lens. One of those long telephoto, you know, 85s, one of fives. Or want to do some wide angle photography landscapes. And you thought primarily about the type of image that you were going to photograph. And let that dictate where you went initially in choosing that lens. And then you saw things about build quality and f-stops and all those other technical aspects. Because lenses are expensive so I appreciate you want to think about build quality. But we're overlooking the real aspect of a lens that you should be thinking about before you buy one. You ever considered the camera to be an extension of yourself that you bring it up to your eye and you just take a photo naturally and just feels right. A lot of that comes down to something that John Mivets talks about. What's your personality like? Do you want to compress and flatten everything? Use a telephoto. You want to bring things far away near, use a telephoto. But if you want to plunge into the stream of the street, if you want to swim in there and be like a fish moving through the crowd, you need a lens that matches your vision. I love that. The idea that you have this symbiosis between the camera and the lens and yourself, that the way the camera is seeing the world is fitting your personality. In no doubt, when you think about your own personality and the lenses that you were drawn towards that feel natural, then you can see how this makes sense. This personality is being conveyed through the camera and it works backwards as well. When you look at a lot of great photographers, especially street photographers, they seem to just have this almost natural instinct to just see a photograph and pick up the camera. And it's there. That's because they are seeing the world in the same way that the lens is seeing it. If you photograph on a 24mm prime or a 50mm, some sort of prime lens for a protracted length of time, you start to see the world naturally like this. But this is only one part of the equation when it comes to choosing the right lens for you. Recently I was talking about sharpness in photography on the lens and I'll link to that video at the end and there's some photographs here of animals which I simply adore. They are by a photographer called Peter L. Pedro Cox. They're just wonderful. Such an ex is a good example also of photographs do require a sharp lens. This is when that detail is put too good use. It's like the crazy chicken again. There seems to be a thing when we talk about images on frames that there are animals that have used me. I don't know what it is. Who knows. There's a little duck here. That's a wonderful thing. It's also wonderful to page through the magazine and see these gorgeous black and white photographs. I love these. These are also using a lens to isolate, to make the viewer feel that this is like a flat idea that has become a graphic thing. It's gone away from this idea of trying to make a three-dimensional image and it feels somewhat flat and that's not a disservice to the image. These photographs by Manurved Devail are absolutely beautiful. I really encourage you. If you're interested in Frames magazine to click on the link in the description box below and there's a 10%. Discount for you. I left you earlier a little bit on a tenter hook. There was another aspect towards the lenses that you really need to take into consideration to really impress the most important person in photography. You may not be familiar with the name Roger Deacons. But I am pretty sure you have seen one of his films at some point. The man is a legend and he is, as I mentioned earlier, a criminally underrated resource for photographers. His cinematography has challenged and broken you ground. Think that one shot take in the film 1917. Now he gives us the second part of what we need to make sure that we are choosing the right lens for ourselves. Well, I've got a very strong feeling about lenses and personally I'm sitting here talking to you and you are filming me from over there on a shoulder and a public ear single where I'd rarely do that because I think the camera wants to be to me I would shoot singles inside here unless it's for a particular fact and then I'd drop back off and be more observational with a shoulder in. I think it's a totally different effect to an audience looking at somebody on the end of a hundred millimeter lens. As opposed to some being shot on a 27 close to or 21. So here we are, 32 millimeter or 30 millimeter is on a zoom so sometimes you can't tell what the millimeter. Anyway, but it's different, right? You know, it's the sense of presence you're right there with somebody supposed to be. I think psychologically it's a totally different effect. So I mean, it's just the same as your relationship and real life to somebody. I'm sitting this close to you. I'm not seeing you from over there on a long lens, you know. So I don't think we take that into account as much as we should really. That is one of the most important things you're going to hear about photography this year. I guarantee you, right? That is so important to take into consideration that the lens choice that you are going to use is going to influence how the viewer interprets your photograph because the viewer is the most important person in photography as far as I'm concerned because they are the ones who decide if your photograph is a success or a failure. How often have you taken photos and you've shown them to somebody and you've been really impressed with you go, wow, I really, I like this image and people just kind of go, that's because we haven't done enough as photographers to make them go, wow, to put into their heads a feeling. It's obviously open to, you know, individual, you know, taste, but the more ability that we have to move emotionally, the viewer by using our lens choices correct, by using a lens that fits our personality and it also is conveying the right message. Then we start to be able to have more strings to pull, that's like a puppet master kind of thing in making a person interpret your photograph in a certain way. When you look at the cover of this copy of frames, this is a, I think, beautiful image, but it is completely flat, right, it has no sense and depth to it and that's why it works because it doesn't have a sense of depth to it, has a very graphic kind of feel and it makes it feel cold. It makes it feel emotionally cold, despite the fact that there is that red there. This is a photographer who I will touch on in the next episode because it was lying here and I just thought you weren't going to show it, but it is, it's good. So you need to kind of think about, you know, what it is that you want to convey with your, with your photograph. And if you want to find out more about sharpness, if you want to find out more about what I was thinking about sharpness in lenses, check out this video over here. Thank you so much and I will see you again soon.