Selecting a Lens
Jerry L. Thompson, in Walker Evans at Work: Choosing a lens for a particular picture is an important decision for a photographer who uses a view camera[large-format, 8x10 view camera, in Evans' case], because the focal length of the lens is intimately related to his choice of camera position. Where the photographer decides to place his camera, in turn, largely determines how his picture understands its subject. A photographer who decides to photograph a building, for example, has many options. He can stand back and let the structure float in a larger frame so that it is overwhelmed or contradicted by its surroundings, or he can move up and photograph the building head-on, so that the design of the facade fills the whole frame of the picture, seemingly with its own energy.
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