on landscape The online magazine for landscape photographers

Ruminations of an Optical Neurotic

No-one ever wept before a photograph because it was sharp

Joe Cornish

Joe Cornish

Professional landscape photographer.

joecornishphotographer.com



I was extravagant in the matter of cameras – anything photographic – I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest – or without.~Edward Weston

Whatever society’s cultural view of photography might be, I for one believe it can be practised as an art…and am fairly confident I’m not alone in that view, especially in the On Landscape community. Given that perspective, how is it that I am obsessed with the nuts and bolts of the process…or in our case, the cameras, lenses, tripods, filters etc? And for the sake of this article especially, the lenses?

Airaforce

My art education taught me to believe that art was all about the ideas, the emotion, the story-telling, the conceptual complexity and depth, the highest aspirations of the human spirit…in fact, anything but the ways and means that make the pictures.

My art education taught me to believe that art was all about the ideas, the emotion, the story-telling, the conceptual complexity and depth, the highest aspirations of the human spirit..

Of all the many things there are to worry about, you might (rightly) feel therefore that the question of which lenses to carry on photographic excursions was definitely not one of them. However, I confess that this is a recurring thought pattern when I am out walking around our local woods or moors.



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