I love the 35mm focal length. While, I enjoy a fast 50mm and have an affection for a sharp 85mm, the 35mm holds a special place in my photographic heart.
It’s likely due to the fact that I cut my teeth as a photographer on a fixed focal length 35mm lens. It was the lens through which I learned to see when I started using my first DSLR. Some people diminished its value because it wasn’t wide enough or because it wasn’t a true “normal” lens. I didn't care. There was something about the view it provided that I’ve really enjoyed and thrived on.
Even before I began using the x100s which with its fixed 23mm lens provides the equivalent of a 35mm, I almost always had a lens that provided me that 35mm field of view. Back in the day of shooting film, I would proudly tote around a Nikon F3 with a 35mm and rolls of Kodachrome in my pocket and take to the streets. It was all that I needed.
The slightly wide field of view offered a challenge for me. Unlike a longer focal length that would allow me to isolate the subject, the 35mm demanded that I consider everything else in the frame and not just the subject. I had to think about the background and foreground and how I could create a photograph in which the composition was balanced and didn’t include distractions.
That was no easy feat as as I came up with many images in which distracting elements along the edges of the frame ruined a photograph. I was so focused on my subject, I didn’t see that red truck in the background or that tree branch from the edge of the frame. In the days before Photoshop and the clone tool such things could and did ruin many an image.
Though cropping might have been a solution for some, I was often shooting slide film. And if I were shooting negative film, I had filed my negative holders down to get that nice black edge around the image, for my prints. If I wanted it to be right, it had to happen in the camera.
Now, with digital I am still drawn to the 35mm focal length. Even with the amazing zooms that are available to me, I’m more than happy to hit the streets with just one lens. So, whether its the 35mm on my 5D Mark III or the x100s, I know exactly how I’m going to see the world and capture it.
I’ve taken two trips abroad where I was shooting with a 35mm focal length and only that and never did I feel lacking or at a disadvantage. It’s just become the way I see. Though there are certainly times when other focal lengths are appropriate and needed, most days I am happy enough to keep it nice and simple, my 35-mil and me.
David Hobby is the lead instructor for all X-Peditions trips.
He spent 20 years as a staff photojournalist, completing more than 10,000 assignments before leaving The Baltimore Sun in 2006 to found Strobist.com. Over the following 15 years, Strobist grew to be the world’s most popular resource for professional-level photographic lighting education.
Valérie Jardin is an award-winning French photographer who has developed a unique style that is both evocative and authentic. Her work is characterized by a strong sense of narrative, capturing candid moments that reveal the human experience in all its complexity and beauty. With a discerning eye for composition and a keen understanding of light and shadow, Valérie Jardin creates emotionally charged photographs of everyday moments.
Rob Hammer is a photographer based in Denver, Colorado, who shoots for commercial clients like Nike, Adidas, Foot Locker, Fox Sports, and Smithsonian and produces other personal documentary exemplary art projects, including American barbershops, basketball culture, duck hunting, and real Cowboys in the American West.
Mikko Takkunen is a photo editor at The New York Times’s Foreign desk, where he spent more than five years between 2016 and 2021 in Hong Kong as the desk’s Asia photo editor. He began taking these photographs in early 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and continued until the summer of 2021 when he left Hong Kong. His latest monograph is titled, Hong Kong.
Ivan McClellan is a photojournalist and designer based in Portland, Oregon. His work reveals marginalized aspects of black culture and challenges broad assumptions and myths about racial identity in America.
In 2015, photographer Ivan McClellan attended the Roy LeBlanc Invitational in Oklahoma, the country’s longest-running Black rodeo, at the invitation of Charles Perry, director and producer of The Black Cowbo
For over 40 years, Jay Silverman has excelled as a leading Director, Producer, and Photographer specializing in award-winning films, television, digital, and print campaigns.
Jay’s narrative films have been awarded numerous Best Feature and Audience Awards at festivals nationwide. His current dramatic feature ‘Camera’, stars Golden Globe, Emmy, and Grammy Award Winner Beau Bridges, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Scotty Tovar, Bruce Davison, and Miguel Gabriel.
Petronella Lugemwa is a storyteller, speaker, educator, and Creative Director of Petronella Photography – an award-winning destination wedding and family photography studio based out of the New York area. She specializes in helping multicultural, interracial, or mixed couples celebrate their love in a modern way and believes that what makes you different makes you beautiful.
Martin Parr CBE (born 23 May 1952) is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist, and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects, which take an intimate, satirical, and anthropological look at aspects of modern life. He particularly documents the social classes of England and, more broadly, the wealth of the Western world.
Alex Kilbee has over 20 years of professional photography experience. He received his formal education in South Africa at the prestigious Pretoria Technikon Photography School. He runs The Photographic Eye, one of the most respected photography YouTube channels.
Jesse Lenz is a self-taught photographer and multidisciplinary artist. As an illustrator he has created images for the most well-respected publications around the world, including TIME, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many others. He is the founder and director of Charcoal Book Club, Charcoal Press, and the Chico Hot Springs Portfolio Review. From 2011-2018 he also co-founded and published The Collective Quarterly and The Coyote Journal. He lives on a farm in rural Ohio. He latest monograph is titled Seraphim.
Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind.
Elinor Carucci (born 1971) is an Israeli American photographer and educator living in New York City. She is noted for her intimate portraits of her family's lives.[2][3][4] She has published four monographs: Closer (2002), Diary of a Dancer (2005), Mother (2013), and Midlife (2019). She teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Shortly after RBG’s passing in September 2020, Time magazine commissioned Carucci to write a commemorative piece on the late justice, focused on the stories behind her legendary collars.
Barbara Peacock is a photographer and director living in Portland, Maine. Since having started American Bedroom in 2016, she has won the Getty Editorial Grant, the Women Photograph/Getty Grant, three LensCulture Awards, four Top 50 Critical Mass Awards, and was named one of the Top 100 Photographers in America 2020.
Nick Carver is a working photographer and photography instructor based in Southern California with over eighteen years shooting experience and a professional career spanning more than a decade. Although his teaching and commercial work hinges primarily on digital photography, his passion is fueled by a love for analog film and creating fine art prints. Nick has sought to educate, entertain, and inspire other photographers both in the classroom and through his YouTube videos.
Robbie Quinn is an award-winning, New York–based commercial photographer specializing in environmental portraits. His work, which has brought him to more than a dozen countries, speaks to current issues, including race, immigration, gender identity, and sexual orientation, emphasizing promoting diversity and inclusion.
Michael Rababy documents US American gambling culture in his new book, Casinoland - Tired of Winning. Rows of shrill slot machines, glowing billboards, and gaudy splendor appear alongside exhausted faces, tired looks, and lost games. Rababy’s realistic camera view scrutinizes the glamorous appearance of the gleaming gambling halls and exposes their mendacious promises of wealth.