Every Wednesday there’s a creative workshop at ICF, called Together We Create. I’ve been attending more and more the last few weeks, and this last time we had a photography workshop. Ever seen a dozen photographers walking around, looking for subjects? This is what it can look like:

Léon had come up with the idea for this week: The 20-step challenge.

Here’s how it works: Bring only one camera with a single lens. Everyone stands in a circle face out, then takes 20 steps forward and stays in that very spot for five minutes. You are not allowed to move away from that spot, the idea is to make art out of what you have. Composition, composition, composition.

Putting rules on your photography really helps you to improve your skills. In Sweden we call the extension of this idea Dogma. “Immediate sketch, done with intution”, as the revered Henri Cartier-Bresson put it.

I selected my fixed 50mm lens, a fantastic piece of optics with minimal size. When confronted with this lens mounted on the camera, many people get frustrated: “Where is the zoom!?” and start to yank the outer ring back and forth. Nope, this is a fixed lens. I am quite dissapointed that nobody else used a fixed lens for this assignment; the other DSLR shooters all used big zooms. I would say that most people misunderstood the challenge of bringing one lens as “bring the fattest zoom you have”. No, the very idea is to spur the creative process by forcing you to think in new ways.

Myself, I was quite satisfied with the following photo.

If you look carefully, you’ll see one of the other participants next to the right door.

Several persons came along even though they didn’t have a camera of their own. Instead, they were recommended to use their phone cameras. Stroke of genius! There’s probably no better way of starting than this. Photography isn’t about equipment, photography is an art. The camera doesn’t matter, what matters is how the photographer approaches the subject. When I spoke to one of the phone photographers she complained about the lack of a zoom, I believe she implicitly blamed the fixed phone lens for her pictures being bad. I just pointed to my own lens and told her not to worry, then pointed to my feet, saying “as a human you always carry around a zooming device”.

Simce all pros attending the workshop had picked their big, bulky 2.8 zooms many of the amateurs assumed that that’s what’s needed for good photography. The photos the pros brought back results were, of course, stunning, but it wasn’t because of the equipment.

Note that my criticism of these type of lenses isn’t from a technical viewpoint, but rather the way people often use them. I had to lay down flat on the concrete to take the above photo. The twisted perspecive and the converging lines draw the viewer right into the frame and leads the eye to the building. In what other ways can one find interesting compositions? By practice and by really concentrating on the subject instead of just zooming back and forth.

Next time we do something similar I hope that we’ll restrict the equipment even further down to just one focal length, to learn about the importance of positioning. Please note that you don’t have to own a fixed or even an SLR lens to do this kind of photography, just pick one focal length and then refrain from zooming. Simple as that. Keep practicing!

What are your thoughts on this subject? Comment below.