A face does not become less human because it belongs to somebody on the other side of a wall.
That ought to be an ordinary statement. Yet an extraordinary amount of political effort goes into persuading us otherwise. We are given categories before we are allowed to see people. Enemy. Threat. Security risk. By the time a photograph reaches us, somebody has often supplied instructions for whom we should pity and whom we should fear.
I make pictures of people. That does not give me special authority on the Middle East. It does make me suspicious of language that turns a whole population into a problem to be managed.
Looking at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, I understand why people reach for the word fascism. Extreme nationalism, the belief that one people’s rights take precedence over another’s, and the weakening of restraints on government power deserve to be examined plainly. But calling Israel another Nazi Germany can let the historical comparison swallow the present evidence. Palestinian suffering deserves attention in its own right.
Jewish people are not collectively responsible for the Israeli government. Nor does the history of Jewish persecution confer innocence on that government. Both statements are necessary. Neither cancels the other.
There is a comforting idea that suffering makes people wiser and more compassionate. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it leaves fear, suspicion and a determination never again to be powerless. There is no automatic moral education in being hurt. What matters is what people, institutions and political leaders choose to do afterwards.
My reading is that Israeli leaders have repeatedly made political use of that fear. The need for security becomes an argument for permanent control. Criticism becomes easier to portray as hostility. The possibility of another attack is used to narrow the discussion of what may be done to prevent it.
The Hamas-led atrocities of 7 October were real. The murder of civilians and the taking of hostages require no qualification to be condemned. Neither gives a government permission to make another civilian population answer for the perpetrators.
And the occupation did not begin that morning.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice concluded, in an advisory opinion, that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory was unlawful. It also found systemic discrimination in the restrictions imposed on Palestinians. Those are findings about an established system of government and control, not simply the excesses of a single military operation. www.icj-cij.org
To my mind, that prolonged inequality is central. Once unequal rights become routine, people learn to live around them. The checkpoint becomes background. The restriction becomes procedure. The person delayed, displaced or denied permission becomes somebody else’s administrative difficulty.
A photograph can show a particular person caught in that machinery. It cannot, by itself, explain the machinery. We owe the subject more than an emotional response to a powerful frame. We need to ask who controls the road, who can return home, and whose account will be believed.
The political intention is sometimes explicit. In September 2025, Netanyahu ruled out a Palestinian state west of the Jordan and promised further settlement expansion. It is difficult to describe that as merely a temporary response to danger. It is a programme for deciding another people’s future without granting them equal authority over it. www.gov.il
Within Israel, the struggle over judicial independence has also exposed the danger of a government seeking fewer restraints. Huge protests against the proposed overhaul showed that this course was contested by Israelis themselves. Opposition is part of the picture too. Cropping it out would make the argument simpler and less honest. www.reuters.com
That applies to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, which concluded in July 2025 that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. The government rejects that accusation. Whatever judgement a reader reaches, the organisation’s work makes one thing clear: Jewish identity does not dictate support for state violence. www.btselem.org
I do not need a Palestinian face to resemble somebody in my family before I recognise a claim on my attention. Nor should an Israeli civilian have to pass a test of political agreement before their death matters.
The standard has to survive our preferences. Otherwise it is only loyalty dressed as principle.
When I look at a photograph, I try to begin with what is actually there. A face. A gesture. The space someone is permitted to occupy. Then come the questions the frame cannot answer.
Who put the wall there? Who benefits from keeping it? Who has to live in its shadow?
Accompanying illustration: AI-generated editorial artwork depicting an invented scene.
The Nikon D810 is a great camera, but it asks something of the person holding it. Give it accurate focus, a sensible shutter speed and light worth recording, and it produces files with enough detail and tonal subtlety to withstand close examination and substantial printing. Work carelessly, and it records the carelessness too.
That is a useful distinction. A camera can deliver a beautifully detailed photograph without making the photograph interesting. The D810 gives you considerable technical room to work. What you put inside that room remains your responsibility.
The D810 arrived in 2014 with a 36.3-megapixel full-frame sensor, no optical low-pass filter and a native sensitivity range beginning at ISO 64. These remain substantial capabilities for still photography. Its appeal is particularly clear when the finished picture depends on fine texture, controlled highlights and gradual transitions between light and shade. Nikon About Us
A face in window light is a good example. There is more to a convincing portrait than a sharp eyelash. The light across a cheek, the distinction between skin and fabric, and the separation of a person from the room behind them all contribute. The D810 gives you a detailed starting point for working with those relationships.
Its resolution also provides useful freedom in the edit. A modest crop can strengthen a picture while leaving plenty of information for printing. That freedom is valuable when a fleeting gesture prevents perfect framing. It can also become an excuse for standing in the wrong place. Cropping should improve the photograph you saw, rather than routinely compensate for never quite deciding what it was.
What ISO 64 gives you
ISO 64 is one of the D810’s most useful features. Nikon designed the sensor to accumulate more light information at its lowest standard sensitivity, supporting rich tones and substantial dynamic range. In practical terms, that makes it an attractive setting for carefully exposed landscapes, architecture, still life and portraits when the available light permits it. Nikon About Us
The qualification matters. ISO 64 is no achievement if the shutter speed becomes too slow for the person in front of you.
In a market, someone may appear to be standing still while their hands, head and expression keep moving. A wonderfully clean file containing a blurred face is rarely the result you wanted. Raise the ISO when the photograph requires it. A little noise is usually easier to accommodate than movement through an important feature.
Nor does dynamic range remove the need to expose intelligently. There is latitude to adjust a RAW file, but lifting every shadow can flatten the light that made the scene interesting. Darkness sometimes belongs in the picture.
The central illustration suggests that problem: a sunlit building, foliage and shaded recesses. A considered exposure preserves the important bright surfaces while allowing the darker areas to retain their character. Making everything equally visible would weaken the sense of sunlight.
A particularly capable portrait camera
The D810 suits portraits because it allows both precision and restraint. You can describe a face clearly without processing it into a catalogue of pores.
That distinction becomes increasingly important as resolution rises. Excessive clarity, texture and sharpening can make skin look brittle. Conversely, heavy smoothing removes the ordinary details that make a person recognisable. Good portrait processing involves deciding what deserves emphasis.
Your familiar pairing of the D810 and an 85mm f/1.8G makes practical sense. An 85mm lens gives a useful working distance for a close portrait, while a wide aperture can separate the face from a distracting background. But the lens does not need to live at f/1.8. Sometimes f/2.8 or f/4 gives a more useful balance: enough separation, with more of the face held in focus.
For environmental portraits, the background needs a deliberate role. A shop doorway, workbench or market stall can tell us something about where the encounter occurred. Blur it completely and you may discard the most useful part of the setting. The left-hand illustration shows the intended relationship: a clear face with enough surrounding information to establish place.
There is also the matter of focus. At close distances and wide apertures, a small error can put the sharpest detail on an eyebrow or ear while the nearer eye falls outside the plane of focus. Focus and recompose can introduce errors under those conditions. Selecting a suitable focus point and making smaller changes to the framing is often the better approach.
The D810’s autofocus system includes 51 points, 15 cross-type sensors and Group-area AF. It offers useful options for different subjects, although choosing the right mode remains part of the work. nikonusa.com
For a cooperative portrait, a deliberately placed single point is a sensible starting point. For someone walking towards you, continuous autofocus becomes more useful. There is no virtue in making one setting serve every encounter.
Sharpness starts before processing
High resolution does not create camera shake. It makes small amounts of shake easier to notice when you enlarge the file.
There is another complication: viewing a higher-resolution image at 100 per cent means examining it at greater magnification than a lower-resolution image. Some disappointing comparisons are really comparisons at different viewing sizes. Judge the picture at the size at which it will be used, as well as checking it closely for actual faults.
Nevertheless, technique matters. With an 85mm lens and a living subject, 1/250 second is a reasonable handheld starting point; 1/500 may be more appropriate for movement or less steady handling. These are working suggestions, not guarantees. Distance, stance, subject movement and intended output all affect the result.
Support the lens with your left hand. Keep your elbows reasonably close. Release the shutter without stabbing at it. When possible, pause your own movement before making the exposure. None of this is glamorous, but it often contributes more than another round of sharpening.
For static subjects on a tripod, Nikon provides an electronic front-curtain shutter to reduce vibration. Its implementation on the D810 operates in mirror-up mode and is intended for situations where vibration can compromise fine detail. It is a specialised tool worth understanding, rather than a setting to assume is active during ordinary handheld shooting. nikonusa.com
A tripod, of course, steadies the camera. It does nothing to steady a person.
Using it on the street
The D810 can be an excellent street camera, particularly when you want an environmental portrait or a frame containing several layers of information.
Its size is part of the bargain. A substantial DSLR changes how you move and how people notice you. Some encounters accommodate that easily; others become awkward. Carrying it for several hours also makes the weight of the complete kit more relevant than any isolated specification.
The optical viewfinder offers approximately 100 per cent frame coverage, which helps with deliberate composition. You can examine the edges and place a subject within the surrounding scene before releasing the shutter. Nikon About Us
That is particularly useful when the picture includes architecture, signage, passing traffic or another person at the edge. Resolution gives those details room to survive, but it cannot organise them for you.
At full resolution, the D810 shoots up to five frames per second. That is useful for short sequences of changing expression or gesture, although it places a premium on anticipation when the action becomes fast. No Optical Low-Pass Filter
You still need to notice the raised hand, the turn towards the light or the approaching interruption. A burst can cover a moment. It cannot tell you which moment matters.
Exposure, colour and monochrome
Highlight-weighted metering is a useful addition for subjects lit much more brightly than their surroundings. Nikon specifically describes its usefulness for stage lighting and similarly uneven scenes, where ordinary whole-frame metering may sacrifice important highlights. Nikon Professional Services
On the street, treat it as another option to evaluate. A bright sign or reflection may influence the result, so check the histogram and the important parts of the subject. Protecting every insignificant glint can leave the face unnecessarily dark.
For colour, restraint usually serves the D810 well. Correct an unwanted colour cast, establish believable skin tones and then decide how much colour the picture needs. Strong saturation is not proof of a strong file.
The same restraint applies to monochrome. Fine detail can help describe weathered hands, clothing and buildings, but a black-and-white photograph still needs tonal separation. If the face, shirt and wall become similar greys, detail alone will not rescue the composition.
A monochrome conversion is an interpretation. Consider what happens to skin, foliage and backgrounds as you adjust their relative brightness. The aim is to make the photograph readable without forcing every surface to announce itself.
RAW is particularly useful when you expect substantial tonal or colour work. JPEG remains a practical choice when exposure, white balance and the intended rendering are already settled. Choose the format to suit the job and the amount of revision you anticipate.
Where its limitations become apparent
The D810 produces large files, and those files impose costs in storage, backup and editing time. A day of unnecessary bursts becomes an evening of unnecessary decisions.
Its rear screen is fixed, and its video capability tops out at Full HD rather than 4K. Photographers who need flexible low-level screen composition or a camera built around contemporary video work will find those limitations relevant. No Optical Low-Pass Filter
Its handling and autofocus also require involvement. For portraits at wide apertures, you need to place focus carefully and check that the lens and body behave consistently. If an error repeats, investigate it; do not immediately blame the sensor, the lens’s reputation or the age of the camera.
The absence of an optical low-pass filter favours fine detail but creates the possibility of moiré in repeating patterns. Certain fabrics and architectural details deserve close inspection. That is a trade-off, rather than a general problem with every photograph.
The print is a good reason to use it
The right-hand illustration points towards one of the D810’s strongest uses: making a photograph that can be held, studied and lived with.
Its maximum image dimensions are 7,360 × 4,912 pixels. At 300 pixels per inch, that works out to approximately 24.5 × 16.4 inches before cropping or resampling. It is a substantial amount of information for a print. No Optical Low-Pass Filter
But printing also exposes decisions that can be obscured on a bright screen. Shadows may need more careful treatment. Sharpening needs to suit the paper and print size. A face can become too prominent through contrast, or lose its presence through timid processing.
The D810 gives you enough material to make those decisions carefully. It does not dictate the result.
That is why it deserves to be called a great camera. It offers a demanding, flexible file and a body built for deliberate work. With good light and sound technique, it gives you considerable freedom to refine a photograph—and enough detail to make a large print worth approaching closely.
The Nikon D700 is often discussed as if it had one job: street photography, perhaps, or black-and-white work. I’ve never found a reason to keep it in that box. It is a capable portrait camera, and it can handle plenty of other kinds of photography too.
I have three D700s, all bought used and in working order. That tells you something about how I regard the camera. I don’t keep three because it is fashionable or because I think the past was better. I keep them because they remain useful tools, and because I know what they can do.
The D700 gives you a full-frame sensor with 12.1 megapixels. That number looks modest beside modern cameras, but it is enough for a strong portrait, a well-made monochrome image, or a print that doesn’t need to be examined with a magnifying glass. The limit shows up when you want to crop heavily or make very large prints. That is a real limit, but it isn’t a reason to dismiss the camera before you have made a picture with it.
For portraits, the D700 offers what matters most: a dependable way to put the lens where it needs to be and make the exposure. Pair it with a suitable lens and you can control the background, hold attention on the face, and work in available light. The camera doesn’t make a portrait for you. You still have to stand at a distance that feels right, notice what is happening behind the subject, and give the person time to settle. A sharp eye is useful. It is not the whole photograph.
Street photography is an obvious fit. The D700 is a substantial camera, and it is no pocket companion, but it is a steady, familiar instrument. In a busy place, familiarity counts. You want to be thinking about the person crossing the light, the gesture that may last a second, or the background that is about to become cluttered. You don’t want to be puzzling over the camera every time you lift it.
The same camera can work for a quiet scene, a market, a gathering, or a landscape. The picture changes; the basic work does not. You still have to read the light, decide where to stand, and make the frame hold together. The D700 will not give you the extreme resolution or the generous cropping room of a modern high-resolution body. It will give you a file with enough information for many photographs, provided you pay attention when you make it.
That last part matters. Older cameras can be unforgiving when we ask them to repair careless work later. Focus, exposure, shutter speed and composition all count. The D700’s lower pixel count can be a relief in one way: you spend less time worrying about whether every last detail survives at 100 percent. But it doesn’t excuse a missed focus or a weak frame.
There are newer cameras with more resolution, better video and more advanced focusing systems. They make some jobs easier. The D700 is not secretly better because it is old, and no camera becomes important simply because it has stayed in a cupboard for years. But the D700 is still capable of portraits, street pictures and a good deal more. If the photograph depends on seeing clearly and being ready, it has not run out of work.
Criticism of Zionism is not inherently antisemitic. Zionism is a political movement and a set of ideas about Jewish national self-determination; antisemitism is prejudice, discrimination or hostility directed at Jews because they are Jews. Political ideas must remain open to criticism, including fundamental criticism. But describing an argument as “anti-Zionist” does not automatically prevent it from expressing anti-Jewish prejudice.
The distinction matters in both directions. Equating criticism of Zionism with antisemitism can suppress legitimate discussion of Palestinian rights. Treating antisemitism as merely an accusation invented to protect Israel can leave actual hatred of Jews unchallenged.
A serious discussion must preserve the ability to recognise both.
Judaism, Jewish identity, Zionism and Israel are not interchangeable. Judaism is a religious tradition. Jewish identity also encompasses peoplehood, ancestry, culture and secular forms of belonging. Zionism is a modern national movement. Israel is a state, with institutions, citizens, laws and governments whose decisions are open to scrutiny.
Modern political Zionism emerged in the late nineteenth century, partly in response to European antisemitism. It drew on much older Jewish connections to the land of Israel, but those connections and the modern political programme are distinct. The Holocaust subsequently gave the demand for refuge and sovereignty devastating urgency; it did not originate Zionism. Holocaust Encyclopedia
Nor has Jewish political thought ever been unanimous. The Jewish Labour Bund, for example, opposed Zionism while organising explicitly around Jewish working-class life and interests. Jewish disagreement over Zionism is therefore part of Jewish history, rather than evidence that one side has ceased to be Jewish. YIVO Encyclopedia
That history does not mean that the involvement of Jewish critics makes every anti-Zionist argument sound or free of prejudice. The identity of the speaker cannot settle the merits of an argument. But it does make the claim that Zionism and Jewishness are simply the same thing untenable.
The first question should be: what, precisely, is being criticised?
Criticism of an Israeli government is not necessarily criticism of Zionism. Someone can support Israel as a Jewish national home while opposing its government, settlement policies or military conduct. Conversely, someone can oppose Zionism as a political principle without harbouring hostility towards Jewish people.
The term itself needs care. One person uses “Zionism” to mean the continued existence of a secure Jewish homeland. Another uses it to describe a system they believe privileges Jewish national claims over Palestinian rights. If those meanings remain unstated, people can argue past each other: one hears a threat to physical survival where the other intends a demand for political equality.
A useful discussion therefore moves beyond labels. Does the speaker oppose a particular government? Territorial expansion? Unequal citizenship? The principle of an ethnonational state? Any form of Jewish collective life in the region? These are different positions with different implications.
There is nothing inherently antisemitic about arguing that a state should accord equal rights regardless of religion or ancestry, or that Palestinian dispossession deserves recognition and redress. Nor should a political movement’s founding principles be exempt from examination merely because its supporters understand it as a liberation movement.
Understanding why Jews sought safety and self-determination does not require accepting every political arrangement pursued in their name. Equally, recognising Palestinian injustice does not require denying Jewish history or attachment.
The difficult boundary concerns people’s rights, rather than a state’s immunity from criticism.
Consider two propositions:
“I support a shared democratic state in which Palestinians and Jews have equal rights, security and political representation.”
“Jews should be expelled from the country.”
These are radically different positions. The first proposes a constitutional arrangement whose practicality and safeguards can be debated. The second advocates persecution.
A credible egalitarian proposal must address more than the language of equality. How would it protect people from violence? How would it secure religious freedom, language, cultural institutions and meaningful political participation? What would prevent a new majority from dominating a new minority? Those questions apply whether the proposed arrangement is one state, two states or a federation.
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism expressly distinguishes opposition to Zionism from hostility to Jews. It allows advocacy of different constitutional arrangements founded on full equality, while identifying denial of Jewish inhabitants’ ability to live and flourish as Jews as antisemitic. Its approach protects people without requiring endorsement of one constitutional model. jerusalemdeclaration.org
This is also why the phrase “Israel’s right to exist” can obscure rather than resolve a disagreement. It may refer to the safety of its population, recognition of its sovereignty, its borders or the preservation of its present constitutional character. A person should specify which they mean. Questioning a political structure and threatening the people living within it cannot reasonably be treated as identical.
The principal definitions of antisemitism disagree over some of these boundaries.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition explicitly says that criticism comparable to criticism of other countries is not antisemitic. Its contextual examples nevertheless include denying Jewish self-determination, describing Israel’s existence as a racist endeavour, and applying certain double standards. Supporters see these examples as necessary for recognising prejudice expressed through discourse about Israel. IHRA working definition
The Jerusalem Declaration was developed partly in response to concerns about those boundaries. It states that criticism of Zionism, evidence-based arguments about discrimination, and boycotts of Israel are not in themselves antisemitic. That is a classification of the speech, not an endorsement of every argument or campaign. jerusalemdeclaration.org
The Nexus Document similarly distinguishes political opposition from anti-Jewish prejudice, while recognising that discussion of Israel can reproduce conspiracy theories, collective blame and discriminatory treatment of Jews. It also cautions against using accusations of antisemitism to suppress political criticism. Nexus Project
There is consequently no honest basis for claiming that every contested case has one universally accepted answer. The disagreements are substantive. Definitions help structure judgment; they cannot replace examination of what someone actually said or did.
Where, then, does criticism cross the line?
A central warning sign is the transfer of responsibility from identifiable political actors to Jews collectively. Holding a Jewish neighbour, student or synagogue answerable for Israeli government actions imposes political liability through identity. The IHRA definition expressly identifies collective responsibility for Israel’s actions as antisemitic. IHRA working definition
Another warning sign is conspiratorial explanation. Investigating a named lobbying organisation, a donor’s disclosed contributions or a government’s decisions is ordinary political scrutiny. Claiming that an invisible Jewish network controls governments, banking or the press turns scrutiny into an ethnic conspiracy theory. Substituting “Zionists” for “Jews” does not cleanse an argument if the intended target and underlying stereotype remain the same. Nexus explicitly addresses this use of familiar antisemitic accusations in discussion of Zionism and Israel. Nexus Project
The distinction can be made concrete:
Political scrutiny
Anti-Jewish prejudice
Examining the documented influence of a particular organisation
Claiming Jews secretly control public life
Criticising an official’s decisions and stated beliefs
Treating Jewish ancestry as evidence of disloyalty
Advocating equal political rights for Palestinians and Jews
Demanding Jewish expulsion or subordination
Criticising a company’s documented activities
Targeting an unrelated business because its owner is Jewish
These are illustrative distinctions, not a mechanical test for every dispute. Context matters, especially where words have several meanings or a speaker’s wider conduct contradicts their professed principles.
The same need for precision applies to political images. A caricature can attack a leader’s vanity, cruelty, hypocrisy or appetite for power. But adding imagery of Jewish financial control or collective religious guilt changes the argument. The criticism is then no longer confined to the leader’s conduct.
What about disproportionate attention to Israel? That alone does not establish antisemitism. People concentrate on particular conflicts because of family connections, direct experience, their government’s involvement or the political influence they believe they can exercise. A Palestinian does not owe equal attention to every other conflict before speaking about Palestinian life.
The Jerusalem Declaration accordingly says that excessive criticism or an apparent double standard is not, by itself, sufficient to establish antisemitism. jerusalemdeclaration.org
Yet selective attention should still be open to examination. The useful question is why a different standard is being applied. A specific political connection may explain it. An assumption that Jewish wrongdoing reflects an inherent collective defect would reveal something else.
There is also a distinction between an argument being non-antisemitic and being correct. A claim can be inaccurate, inflammatory, historically shallow or strategically foolish without being anti-Jewish. Rejecting an accusation of antisemitism does not establish the truth of the underlying political claim. Conversely, a valid criticism of Israeli policy does not excuse a prejudiced explanation attached to it.
Terms such as “apartheid”, “colonialism” and “genocide” should therefore be examined through their definitions, evidence and relevant arguments. Their seriousness is a reason for careful scrutiny, not an automatic reason to prohibit their use or accept them without examination.
Finally, accusations of antisemitism should be taken seriously without being treated as conclusive merely because they have been made. Ask for the particular statement, action or pattern, and the reasoning behind the allegation. The same standard should apply to claims that an accusation was made dishonestly: disagreement about a boundary does not, by itself, prove bad faith.
The defensible principle is that criticism of Zionism is not inherently antisemitic, and neither Jewish identity nor Palestinian advocacy should carry a presumption of guilt. Political movements, governments and constitutional arrangements must remain open to challenge. Jewish and Palestinian people must retain their equal claim to safety, dignity and freedom, whatever political settlement someone favours.
Zionism should be neither condemned by reflex nor defended by habit. It deserves the same hard scrutiny as any national movement: what does it promise, whose safety does it protect, whose rights does it limit, and what has been done in its name? Criticism must not turn into hostility toward Jews; support must not become an excuse to ignore Palestinian suffering. Thought is required on both sides.
A photograph does not always reveal everything at once. You look at the main subject, take in the setting, and think you have understood it. Then your eye catches something else. A hand. A glance. A face beyond the person you were photographing. Suddenly, there is another picture inside the first.
That smaller picture can change how you read the whole frame.
In street photography, there is usually more happening than we can properly attend to. People cross behind one another. Someone turns towards a voice. A gesture begins and finishes while our attention is elsewhere. We choose a subject and try to make sense of what surrounds them, but the shutter records details we may hardly have noticed.
This is one reason a photograph deserves more than a quick look on the back of the camera. The first glance tells us whether we caught the obvious thing. A slower look may tell us what else we caught.
Take a hypothetical photograph of a crowded market. The stallholder occupies the foreground, and that is where the eye goes first. Further back, two people exchange a look. Their part of the frame might have its own balance, its own tension, enough to make a separate photograph. Or their presence might be precisely what gives the stallholder’s picture its depth. There are several lives continuing inside the same rectangle.
Finding these relationships while shooting takes attention. It helps to look beyond the person you have focused on. What is happening behind them? What enters at the edge? Does a reflection add something? Is there a second gesture that belongs with the first?
Sometimes the adjustment is small. Half a step changes the space between two faces. A lower viewpoint brings a background figure into view. Waiting a moment allows someone to emerge from behind a shoulder. These decisions can make a detail readable without forcing it to dominate.
There is a danger, though, in becoming so busy assembling the frame that you stop attending to the people in it. An elaborate composition can still be an empty photograph. Several layers of activity are useful only when they give us something worth looking at.
The discovery can also happen during editing. You open a photograph and find your attention settling somewhere you did not expect. The intended subject is perfectly adequate, but a quieter detail keeps drawing you back.
That is worth investigating. It does not mean every unnoticed detail is significant, or that the photograph contains some hidden truth. It means you have seen a possibility. Now you have to judge whether it holds up.
Cropping is an obvious way to test it. Tighten the frame around that smaller scene and see what survives. Does it have enough substance to stand alone? Do the gestures still make sense? Is there room for the people to exist within the frame, or have you squeezed them into an arrangement that merely looks tidy?
I accept a crop when it helps the photograph be seen better. But removing part of a picture also removes information. A person who appears alone in a tight crop may have been surrounded by companions. An expression that seems directed at one thing may have belonged to an exchange now outside the frame. The new picture can suggest a different account of the moment.
That matters particularly when we present photographs as documentary work. We should know what our decisions have excluded and whether those exclusions change what we are asking the viewer to believe.
Sometimes the smaller picture is stronger. Sometimes it is simply smaller. Enlarging a detail gives it prominence; it does not automatically give it meaning.
There is also pleasure in leaving the discovery where it is. A photograph need not deliver all its interest immediately. The eye can move from the main subject to a second encounter, then back again, with a little more understanding of the scene. A print gives that kind of looking room to happen. You can live with the image for a while rather than dismiss it with a swipe.
When looking through your own work, try following your attention before reaching for the crop tool. Notice where it goes after the first few seconds. Look at the edges and the spaces between people. Then ask what would disappear if you isolated the detail that interests you.
You may find a second photograph. You may find the reason the first one works.
There are days when I take a camera out and cannot see a picture. The street is busy enough. The light changes. People pass close by, stop, talk, turn their heads. All the things I normally look for are present, yet nothing seems to hold my attention for more than a second.
I used to think that meant I had lost my motivation. Now I am less certain. A photographer can be willing to work and still be unable to see clearly. The two are often mistaken for the same thing.
Sometimes the problem begins before I leave the house. I have seen too many pictures, including my own. I know what a promising corner looks like, where the light will fall, how far I want to stand from a person. That knowledge helps me work quickly, but it can also make me predictable. I spot a possible frame and dismiss it because I think I know what it will look like. After a while, I am no longer responding to what is in front of me. I am responding to a catalogue of pictures already in my head.
The camera can make this worse. When I am in a lull, I become unusually interested in what to carry. Perhaps another lens will change the way I see. Perhaps the D700 will loosen me up, or the D850 will reward a more careful look. A change of camera can alter my pace and working distance, and that may help. But the question is usually settled within the first few minutes outside. If I am preoccupied, I can fail to see with any camera.
Then there is the weight of expectation. After a productive day, I want another one. After several poor days, I feel I need one. I start a walk with a result in mind: a strong portrait, a frame for an article, something worth printing. The pressure makes me impatient. I watch a scene develop for a few seconds, decide it will amount to nothing, and move on. On another day I might have stayed long enough to find out.
Street photography requires patience, but patience is difficult when you feel you ought to be making pictures. You can spend an hour in one place and come away with nothing. That does not necessarily mean you chose the wrong place. A person may have passed through the frame a minute after you left. Or nobody would have passed through at all. There is no way to know. Much of the work involves giving ordinary life time to do something interesting, without demanding that it do so on your schedule.
A lull can also follow a period of making a great many pictures. I may still enjoy going out, yet feel tired of the decisions that come with it. Where should I stand? Is there a picture here? Should I approach this person? Am I close enough? Have I misunderstood what I am looking at? Photographing people asks for attention and judgment as well as quick reflexes. If I am tired, I can raise the camera, but I may not have much to give the encounter.
That matters because people are not there to cure my lack of inspiration. A stranger’s face can be arresting without my having a reason to photograph it. If I find myself looking for someone unusual simply to make the day feel productive, it is worth putting the camera down. A lull may be telling me that I need to recover some interest in the people around me, rather than hunt more aggressively for a frame.
There are quieter causes. Life outside photography can take up the space in which attention usually works. Worry, poor sleep, physical discomfort and simple exhaustion all follow us into the street. We may expect photography to provide relief, and sometimes it does. At other times, even a short walk asks too much. There is little to be gained from treating every tired day as a crisis in one’s ability to make pictures.
The edit has its own part to play. If I sit down after a day’s work and see fifty ordinary frames, it is easy to think the day was wasted. But editing has always involved finding out that a promising moment did not survive the shutter. Perhaps the gesture was a fraction too late, or a person in the background pulled attention away. That disappointment is useful when it teaches me something specific. It becomes harmful when I turn it into a verdict on all the pictures I might make tomorrow.
Looking too often at other photographers’ work can have a similar effect. A finished photograph arrives without its hours of waiting, missed frames and uncertain choices. See enough excellent work in one sitting and your own contact sheets may look thin. I value looking at photographs; it helps me recognise possibilities I might otherwise miss. But when I begin measuring an ordinary Tuesday against someone else’s best picture from ten years of work, I have given myself a poor reason to stay home.
So what do I do when the lull arrives? Usually I make the day smaller.
I might go out without expecting a photograph. I take the camera because I want it there if something happens, but I allow myself to walk, stop and watch. Sometimes I choose a familiar place and try to see what I have stopped noticing. Sometimes I go somewhere else, even if the light is less promising. A new route is useful because it interrupts the little decisions I make without thinking.
I may give myself one modest task: watch how people enter and leave a particular patch of light; stay with a scene for ten minutes; speak to someone before considering a portrait. These are ways of paying attention, not assignments that require a successful frame. If no picture comes of them, the exercise has still taken me out of my own head.
Or I stay in and work with photographs I have already made. Printing an image can reveal strengths and faults I missed on a screen. Revisiting an older edit can remind me what first interested me in a subject. I have occasionally found a picture I passed over because I was looking for something else at the time. More often, the value is simply in spending time with the work without having to produce more of it.
And sometimes I leave photography alone for a day. There is a strange fear that a pause might become permanent, as though the ability to see were a machine that must be kept running. In my experience, forcing myself out when I am thoroughly spent rarely restores anything. Rest is a practical decision. It gives me a better chance of being present when I go back.
None of this guarantees that the next walk will be good. A lull has no neat ending. It may last an afternoon or several weeks. It may return just when I think I have worked my way through it. I can pay attention to its causes, change a habit, lower the pressure and look after myself. I cannot make the street give me a photograph.
What I can do is remain curious about why I stopped seeing. Was I tired? Was I rushing? Had I decided in advance that I knew the place too well? Was I judging every possible frame before it had a chance to become one? Those questions are more useful than asking whether I have lost whatever once made me a photographer.
Eventually I notice something without trying quite so hard: a brief exchange between two people, a face held in unexpected light, a gesture that changes the meaning of an otherwise ordinary scene. I might make the picture. I might miss it. Either way, I have begun to look again.
I have seen photographers dismiss a picture before they have really looked at it. They learn it was taken on a phone, or with an old camera, and their opinion is ready. The equipment has told them everything they think they need to know.
It is a strange habit for people whose work depends on looking closely.
Photography has always attracted its share of snobs. Some judge by the price of a camera. Some judge by format, brand, lens, film stock or editing method. Others have no interest in equipment but are just as certain that their chosen subject is the only one worth photographing. Street photographers can be dismissive of landscapes. Documentary photographers can sneer at carefully arranged portraits. People who shoot black and white sometimes talk as though colour were a lapse in judgment.
I have preferences of my own. After years of making pictures, it would be odd if I did not. I know which cameras I like carrying and which lenses suit the way I work. I am also perfectly capable of seeing a photograph made with something I would never choose and wishing I had made it myself.
That is the useful test. When the picture is in front of you, can you set aside what you know about how it was made long enough to see what is there?
My Nikon D700 bodies are old. My D850 was bought used with a shutter count that would frighten some people away. The Canon 1D Mark IV was the only camera I ever bought new. None of these facts makes a photograph better or worse. They tell you something about how I buy and use equipment. They do not tell you whether I noticed the gesture, dealt with the background or pressed the shutter at the right moment.
Good equipment can make work easier. A lens may focus more reliably, a sensor may give you more room to recover a difficult exposure, and a camera may let you work quickly without fighting its controls. I appreciate all of that. I also know what happens when the light is good, a person turns towards you and you hesitate. The specifications cannot take the picture for you.
The opposite kind of snobbery exists too. Owning an old camera does not confer wisdom. A battered body is a tool, not a certificate of authenticity. If a newer camera helps someone make the pictures they want to make, I see no reason to hold that against them.
Where snobbery does real damage is in criticism. Someone shows a photograph, perhaps one they are unsure about, and gets told what they should have bought or what sort of photography they ought to be doing. The comment may sound knowledgeable. It rarely helps.
A useful critique begins with the picture. What drew your eye? What gets in the way? Does the framing make the subject clearer? Is the exposure serving what the photographer appears to have seen? If the image is meant to show a person, have we learned anything from their expression or gesture, or have we merely been shown that they were there?
Those questions can lead to a blunt assessment. Respect does not require praise. I have seen plenty of technically perfect photographs that leave me cold, and plenty of rough ones that hold my attention. It is fair to say that an image fails. It is more useful to say where it fails and why.
Experience ought to make us more careful here. The longer I photograph, the more aware I am of how much depends on circumstances I cannot see in someone else’s finished frame. Perhaps they had half a second. Perhaps moving a step would have lost the subject. Perhaps the apparently awkward crop was the only way to keep something distracting out. I can judge what is in the photograph. I should be cautious about inventing the decisions that led to it.
Street photography brings another sort of certainty. People make rules about how close a photographer must stand, whether a subject must know they are being photographed, or how much processing is acceptable. These are serious questions, especially when the person in the frame is vulnerable. They deserve more thought than a contest over who is the “real” street photographer.
The person photographed is not there to settle an argument about style. We have to consider what the picture shows, what it suggests and what publishing it might do. A photographer who is willing to ask those questions has something to teach me, even if their pictures look nothing like mine.
There are pictures I do not like. There are fashions in photography that I find tiresome. I do not intend to pretend otherwise. Taste is part of developing a way of working. The trouble starts when taste hardens into a refusal to look. At that point, a photographer may feel certain of their standards while missing the very thing that makes another person’s work interesting.
It is easy to talk about keeping an open mind. It is harder to do when a picture breaks every rule you would have followed and still succeeds. That is when it is worth staying with the image a little longer. Ask yourself why you stopped to look. You might learn something.
Photography gives us enough difficult decisions without turning cameras and genres into ranks. We choose where to stand, what to include, when to press the shutter, what to keep and what to show. We can argue about those choices. We should. But first we have to look at the picture.
I bought my D850 used, with more than 300,000 shutter actuations. It has since given me some of the finest image quality I’ve seen from a camera I own.
Look at the child turning towards the camera. The fine strands of hair, the texture of the clay pot and the light in the eyes are all there. I noticed the expression first. The detail lets me stay with it.
The D850 records a remarkable amount, but it asks something of the photographer too. A little camera shake can be plain to see if not handled with care, and it is a substantial body to carry all day.
These three pictures were made with the D850. The colour, fine detail and clarity give me plenty to work with, while the children’s expressions give me a reason to care about the frames. I cannot call it the best DSLR for everybody. For the quality of photographs it can produce, though, I think it has a serious claim.
1. Stop hunting photographs. Walk. Watch. Give things time. The moment you start desperately searching for a “great photograph,” you begin imposing yourself on what is happening. Emotional pictures usually arrive before you have decided what they ought to look like.
2. Watch behaviour, not faces. Emotion isn’t necessarily a dramatic expression. Look at hands, posture, distance between people, hesitation, touch, avoidance, fatigue and where somebody is looking. A hand gripping a chair can sometimes tell you more than a face.
3. Photograph the moment around the moment. The obvious instant isn’t always the truthful one. Photograph before the smile. Photograph after the embrace. Stay after everybody thinks the photograph has been made. That little collapse of performance is often where the real person appears.
4. Don’t manufacture emotion. If somebody is frightened, poor, grieving, exhausted or vulnerable, you already have enough. You don’t need darker processing, theatrical angles or selective cropping to make their circumstances more dramatic. If reality isn’t powerful enough, don’t fake the missing power.
5. Get physically close—but know why. Close isn’t automatically intimate. Sometimes three metres tells the story better than thirty centimetres because the surroundings explain what is happening. Distance should serve the photograph, not demonstrate the photographer’s courage.
6. Let awkwardness remain awkward. Don’t tidy everything up. Strange gestures, uncomfortable spacing, imperfect expressions and visual tension may be precisely what makes the photograph human. Life rarely arranges itself into a portfolio.
7. Don’t confuse misery with meaning. A homeless person, crying child or exhausted labourer doesn’t automatically produce an important photograph. Vulnerability isn’t photographic currency. Ask yourself whether you’re revealing something or merely borrowing somebody else’s difficulty.
8. Portraits begin when posing ends. Make the expected portrait if necessary. Then keep talking. Lower the camera occasionally. Let the subject become bored with being photographed. Watch for the moment they stop presenting themselves and simply become themselves again.
9. Leave some questions unanswered. You don’t have to explain everything. Strong photographs often contain ambiguity. Give the viewer enough information to enter the picture, but don’t dictate exactly what they must feel.
10. Edit without mercy—but not without conscience. Ask three questions: Is this photograph true to what I witnessed? Have I changed its meaning through cropping or processing? Am I showing this because it matters, or because it makes me look like a serious photographer?
That last question can hurt. Good.
The five-second check
Immediately before pressing the shutter:
What am I actually seeing? What am I feeling? What is the subject doing rather than performing? What will disappear in the next second? Am I photographing this for them, for the story—or for myself?
Then make the picture.
And before publishing it, there is one final question:
Does this photograph preserve the humanity of the person inside it?
If the answer is no, technical excellence doesn’t rescue it.
Put the Tokina AT-X 24–70mm f/2.8 PRO FX onto a Nikon D850 and you’ve got roughly two kilograms of camera hanging from your shoulder. Add a spare battery, perhaps another lens and all the other rubbish photographers convince themselves they need, and by the end of a long day your shoulders know about it.
But pick the thing up and it makes sense.
The D850 is a substantial camera. The Tokina is a substantial lens. One balances the other. Left hand underneath the lens, right hand around that excellent Nikon grip, eye to the optical finder.
That’s how cameras used to be held.
And it still works.
One Lens, Most of the Job
The attraction of 24–70mm isn’t terribly exciting on paper.
That’s precisely why it’s so useful.
At 24mm, I can photograph somebody and still show where they are. The street, shop, market, workshop or room becomes part of the photograph rather than something turned into anonymous blur behind them.
Move towards 35mm and we’re in classic documentary territory. Enough width to provide context without making everything look stretched and theatrical.
At 50mm, the lens becomes wonderfully ordinary. I mean that as praise. The perspective doesn’t shout. You can simply get on with making the picture.
Then there is 70mm.
Now I can tighten things up. A face, a pair of hands, somebody working, a detail across the street. At f/2.8 there’s enough separation available without turning the background into meaningless mush.
That’s why the old 24–70mm professional zoom became such a standard piece of working equipment.
It isn’t particularly romantic.
It simply covers an enormous amount of photography.
But Can It Handle 45.7 Megapixels?
Yes.
And we can dispense with that argument fairly quickly.
Tokina itself described the optical design as intended to provide sufficient resolution for the emerging 50-megapixel DSLR generation, while independent testing on the D850 has measured strong performance from the combination.
Does that mean every pixel in every corner is perfect at 24mm and f/2.8?
Of course not.
But I’m not photographing test charts.
I’m photographing people.
If someone’s expression is right, the light is right and I’ve caught the moment, I have never looked at the resulting photograph and thought:
Bugger. The extreme lower-left corner could be four percent sharper.
That’s pixel peeping.
Photography has rather different requirements.
The D850 Will Expose Bad Technique
This is the more important problem.
Put 45.7 megapixels behind a lens and suddenly tiny mistakes become remarkably easy to see.
A little camera movement.
A shutter speed that was just slightly too slow.
Focus a centimetre behind the eye.
The D850 records all of it beautifully.
That doesn’t mean the lens isn’t sharp.
It means the photographer wasn’t.
With this combination I’d rather use 1/250 sec at ISO 800 than struggle at 1/60 sec simply because somebody once told me lower ISO means better image quality.
A sharp ISO 800 photograph beats a blurred ISO 64 photograph every bloody time.
Hold the camera properly.
Support the lens.
Watch the shutter speed.
Squeeze rather than stab the release.
The basics haven’t changed because cameras have.
F/2.8 Still Matters
Modern cameras have made high ISO so good that some people wonder whether we still need fast lenses.
We do.
Not simply for exposure.
F/2.8 gives choices.
It allows a faster shutter speed when somebody moves. It gives some control over depth of field. It makes a 70mm portrait quite different from the same picture made at f/8.
And when the Cambodian daylight finally disappears and the streets move into that wonderful mixture of shop lighting, fluorescent tubes, headlights and shadows, f/2.8 becomes very useful indeed.
The D850 already handles difficult light extremely well.
Give it an f/2.8 lens and there’s very little excuse for going home.
There Is a Price
Weight.
There’s no escaping it.
B&H’s hands-on testing reached much the same conclusion: the Tokina is decidedly heavy, but once shooting, they found it a versatile and solid performer with good sharpness.
This isn’t the lens I’d put on the D850 for a gentle six-hour wander when I didn’t know whether I’d take ten photographs or none.
For that I’d rather have a small prime.
The 85mm f/1.8G makes the D850 feel almost restrained by comparison.
But that’s a different sort of photography.
If I’m going somewhere because there may be pictures and I don’t know what those pictures are going to require, the Tokina becomes much more attractive.
Twenty-four to seventy.
F/2.8.
One body.
Get on with it.
And It Isn’t Discreet
Nobody sees a D850 with this thing attached and thinks you’re a tourist carrying a little happy-snap camera.
You’re quite obviously taking photographs.
I’m not convinced that’s necessarily a disadvantage.
Street photography has acquired a peculiar obsession with invisibility. Tiny black cameras, silent shutters and photographing people before they’ve realised you’re there.
Sometimes that’s useful.
But I’ve photographed people for long enough to know that your behaviour matters more than another few centimetres of camera.
Approach people properly.
Don’t behave furtively.
Don’t shove a lens into somebody’s face.
Know when the photograph isn’t yours to take.
And occasionally smile.
It works surprisingly well.
Heavy, Old-Fashioned and Bloody Useful
There are technically better lenses.
There are lighter lenses.
There are newer lenses.
And there are certainly smaller cameras than the D850.
Fine.
But photography isn’t a competition to see who can own the most recently released equipment.
The D850 remains an extraordinary picture-making machine. The Tokina gives it a fast, useful focal range in one solidly built lump of glass.
Put the two together and almost every ordinary excuse disappears.
Too wide? Zoom in. Too tight? Zoom out. Light disappearing? Open it to f/2.8.
Need more shutter speed? Raise the ISO.
Need 45.7 megapixels? You’ve got them.
Now there really isn’t much left to discuss.
There is only the irritatingly difficult bit.
Finding something worth photographing.
And no camera manufacturer has yet found a way of putting that in the box.
