Simon king wrote:
More likely trhat most contests are entered by amateurs who don't have lenses upwards of 200mm
More relevent perhaps would be research that shows what proportion of lens lenghts are used in all PUBLISHED pictures, rather than thosein competeitions
It depends on whether your photography milieu is reportage or art. (Don't touch that send button! I am NOT saying that reportage can't be artistic, or that art can't report. It's more a matter of intent.) I suspect most images published in newspapers and reportage magazines are made with lenses in the normal range (though they will ALL be made with zooms), with the occasions wide angle lens to show the movie star's crib and the occasional telephoto in the sports section or of the distant politician speechifying on the podium. These images are intended to illustrate facts (or at least they are supposed to) without an excess of drama.
Lenses of extreme focal length allow camera positions that provide dramatic perspective--perspective we can't see with the naked eye. That's what makes them compelling. They show something in a way we don't normall see it, requiring us to reconsider it even if it is a mundane scene. That's why most images I see in galleries, where drama rather than reportage is what sells, are made with more extreme lenses. The lenses are either dramatically long to give us a rare view of wildlife, or they are dramatically short to provide a sweeping and compelling view of the natural scene. The super-long and super-short lenses didn't even exist at the time of Sussman's book, let along the survey he reported.
I will grant that many (inluding myself) have used extreme focal lengths to provide the illusion of drama rather than providing the real drama of a compelling composition that is well-timed. That is, perhaps, the intent of the article on Monaghan's web site. But the sorts of photographers who can't be compelling with an extreme wide will likely be no more compelling with a normal. It isn't the lens that matters, but rather the vision of the photographer.
Even though my second most used lens is a 12-24 on the 10D, the most-used lens is the 20-35 zoom. That's about as normal as it gets on an APS sensor. But "most used" for me means well under half the time.
Rick "still searching for that vision" Denney
