Contemplating: Seeing Like Henri

Henri Cartier Bresson was a magician with a Leica and 50mm Lens.

I say this because in studying his images, it would be easy to assume he was using that classic reportage Lens the 35mm. After all, the Leica Camera he used was a film Camera and the Film was 35mm. This is now industry standard.

So, in studying his work, I was amazed to see that his images had a lot of context to them: the background of station was the canvas for man jumping over a puddle of water. His images from his book Europeans shows people in a park, a group of people standing on these gigantic steps in Turkey, children playing in narrow streets. All of these created using a 50mm Lens.

I thought I would experiment with my 50mm to see if could achieve the 35mm “look”. I discovered that I needed to stand around 10-12 metres away. This allowed plenty of “breathing space” around the scene.

I figured Henri Cartier Bresson must have done something similar because his images contain a lot of information, it’s quite magical.

Just consider, he did use a Lens with a wider field of view for some of his Landscape work and yet his 50mm was the one Lens he used throughout his entire life.

This is astonishing to me because his eye was tuned into this field of view and his physicality and relationship with life meant he interacted with the scene in front of him.

Seeing is everything.

Using my equipment well is no different to me than my sleight of hand card magic.

Stories, Context, Framing, Composition, Visual narrative are all terms I use when designing my card magic, they apply to crafting an image as well.

The cheapest zoom in the world are my two legs.

This has been a useful exercise in seeing and relating wider to my environment.

The master continues to inspire me.

Bravo Henri.

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