I gave up all of my zooms for primes. I may get a cheapy zoom for snaps, but for anything else, I like primes. I found over a long period that most of my work ends up being in the 35 or 50 range, with another good chunk below 24. I didn't use telephotos much, nor macro. So I got three extremely high quality primes, with close focus properties. Trust me (or should I say, "I feel") they have better image quality than zooms...a few zooms get close, but they also (generally) have a lot of distortions etc.
...and yes I had a lot of "L" zooms, etc. etc. - they're generally excellent, but my primes more so...
Many photographers actually see at different F/Ls and sometimes you have to explore different avenues to find that out about yourself. I think what you see is very natural and I say continue to explore it.
Seeing is the key to anything good photographically speaking TO not see as a photographer is to a musician to not hear and I'm speaking in the true sense of the word. By the time Beethoven wrote the 9th from all accounts I've read he was deaf (probably from about the 5th on actually) but he could still hear. It takes time discipline and the ability to hear and feel time to be a great musician. And much of that is discipline. You have ot have natural ability but to for most to really get great it takes practice and discipline to get there. Its not that much different with photography.
Heres a couple quotes about seeing from some of the greats.
"The photographer’s most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically – that is, learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make."
Edward Weston
"Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things."
Edward Steichen
"In my mind's eye, I visualize how a particular . . . sight and feeling will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice."
Ansel Adams
"Photographs now speak in an eloquent way about the nature of vision itself. The philosophical implications of sight, of being able to see the world in three-dimensional terms, becomes very important within the context of the artistic photograph. The riddle of space and time is somehow stated with a little bit more clarity by virtue of seeing in-between the heartbeats."
Ralph Gibson
"To be able to see in concrete terms what was created in a fraction of a second is a rare luxury. Even though fixed in time, a photograph evokes as much feeling as that which comes from music or dance. Whatever the mode – from the snapshot to the decisive moment to multi-media montage – the intent and purpose of photography is to render in visual terms feelings and experiences that often elude the ability of words to describe. In any case, the eyes have it, and the imagination will always soar farther than was expected."
Ralph Gibson
