What’s your go-to lens? The lens you will put on if you’re just walking around the narrow streets in one of the various medieval villages hunting for that elusive wall hanger? For me, it’s the 17-40mm.
To digress a touch, I’m not a proponent of always using one lens as in one of the prime lenses that so many of the people in my online class with the BPSOP, or in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet always have on.
I find those lenses to be limited since they have such a shallow DOF, which is why I don’t own one. If you’re of the kind that just uses that lens, then, for the most part, your photos will tend to look the same; especially when you’re shooting on a program and not paying attention to what’s in focus and what isn’t. 
As I said, I keep my 17-40mm lens on, and it’s not because I use the zoom a lot…because I don’t. It just gives me a good range of focal lengths when shooting in tight and narrow locations.
It’s always interesting when I tell my fellow photographers that I use it to shoot everything from landscapes to portraits; especially environmental portraits. As long as I keep my camera level, I can get ‘up close and personal’ to my subject while showing a lot of their surroundings.
If you don’t pay attention to whether your camera is level, especially when you place your subject close to the edge of the frame, there will be distortion and not the good kind.
So next time you go out shooting slip on a wide-angle lens and see what it’s like. It will take some getting use to but you’ll find that the reward is well worth it.
Btw, all three photos were shot with my 17-40mm lens.
Visit my new website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my upcoming workshops at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
JoeB
