Images From Switzerland

Images From Switzerland

by William Lulow

On this latest trip of ours, I have been re-thinking the kinds of equipment I take on travel vacations in general. One of the things I have considered is not taking all of my lenses. I just don’t seem to need them. Long telephoto lenses, as I have mentioned before, are really specialized items that should only be used in certain circumstances such as, when you need to throw the background out of focus or to bring distant ones closer or make them larger in the frame. Today, I concentrated on shooting more original Black&White and just used my iPhone when I wanted an image in color (although I did record a few in color with my regular camera as well). When you come upon a scene that can be rendered really well in B&W, there is just no substitute for camera filtration. Today, at Lugano in Southern Switzerland, was what we have termed a “25A day,” because; that’s the filter you use when you really want to make the clouds stand out. Here are a couple of examples:

So, this day, I carried my camera with my 20mm f/2.8 lens plus a couple of filters. These were the images I recorded. As you can see, the clouds were truly spectacular and you can also see the effects of the filter!

Many times, when I am out touring, I just want to capture a view of a place, not necessarily isolate any one subject or go for some kind of effect. That’s why the semi-wide angle lens seems to work best. There are still a number of things the DSLR or the mirroless cameras can do better than cell phones.